Factually! with Adam Conover - Plastic Pollution is Killing Us with Judith Enck

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Plastic is everywhere. Over the past century, we’ve stuffed our landfills, lined the bottom of the ocean floor, and even managed to get microscopic particles floating through our blood and bodies. Topping things off, the industry is only growing. Plastics simply do not go away, and neither will this problem unless we do something about it. This week, Adam talks about ending plastic pollution with Judith Enck, a former EPA official under President Obama, and the author of the new book The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet Before It’s Too Late. Find Judith's book at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything.

Hey there. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. I'm thrilled to have you on the show with me because today we're talking about plastic. You know, I was born in the 1980s, and I don't remember a time when I was not surrounded by plastic.

That's because plastic is the material of the mass consumer age. Since the 1950s, it's been in our toys, our electronics, our cars, our planes, our clothes, our water bottles, our toothbrushes, and, of course, almost every piece of our packaging. Now, plastic is everywhere because it's, incredibly useful. It's cheap and it can be made in whatever shape and at whatever strength for whatever purpose. And that's why it was a revolution in manufacturing. And today, globally,

plastics are a growing $700 billion industry. But while plastic is omnipresent in our lives, we're now starting to realize that maybe it shouldn't be. Because plastics are a growing environmental and health threat. You know, most materials degrade over time. But plastic does not. Instead, it just flakes off into smaller and smaller pieces. But those pieces don't actually stop being plastic. And now, as a result, there are billions of tons of plastics and microplastics out there in the world around us and millions more all the time. And because those plastics make their way everywhere from the bottom of the ocean to near the summit of Mount Everest, they also end up inside of us. That's right.

Right, microplastics, those tiny particles, are coursing through your veins right now. And we are starting to have some evidence that that is really bad for us, like heart disease bad. So, what the hell do we do about it? Because, you know, even the plastics constitute a huge challenge for humanity. That challenge has come into focus at the exact moment that America as a government and a regulatory state has abandoned any attempt to give a fuck about environmental or health issues on a mass scale. You know, we don't really do that kind of thing as a country anymore. So we have to ask the question, what can we actually do about plastics?

Why wasn't recycling enough? And where do we even start? Well, to answer all these questions, we have an absolutely fantastic guest on the show today. Before we get to her, I want to remind you that if you want to support the show and all the guests we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam. Count over five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show, ad free. And if you want to come see me do my brand new hour, a stand-up comedy, well, get ready. Soon I'm headed to Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Madison, Wisconsin at Comedy on State,

one of the best comedy clubs in the country, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Houston, Texas, and from February 19th through 21st, I will be recording my new special at the historic punchline comedy club in San Francisco. I hope to see you there. Head to Adamconover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now, let's get to this week's guest. Her name is Judith Ank, and she is the founder and president of Beyond Plastics, an organization that is looking to end plastic pollution. She's also a former EPA official under President Obama, and she's the author of the new book, The Problem with Plastic, How We Can Save Ourselves and Our Planet, before it's too late. Please welcome Judith Anck.

Judith, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks, Adam. So how big is the problem that plastic poses to us? It's huge. It's a really daunting problem with solutions. I want to start by saying there are alternatives to plastic. And while global plastic waste is more than doubled from the year 2000 to 2019, there are solutions. So plastic waste has doubled from 2000 or 2019. I remember the year 2000s quite clearly. I was using a lot of plastic then. I'm using a lot of plastic now. I don't

feel perceptually that there's been an increase in the amount of plastic in my life. So why has plastic waste doubled in just 20 years? Well, you've probably made more of a conscious effort to reduce plastic because you've learned about the health problems and the climate change problems. I mean, I may be giving you too much credit, but you seem like an environmentally conscious guy. I mean, I did go through a period where I went through great lengths to not bring home plastic bags from the store. And this is when I lived in New York and I was like walking home with grocery bags. And I would be like, I'd try to bring a reusable bag. And if I didn't, I would just try to carry all my groceries by hand.

And like, I remember really frustrating my, my ex because she'd be like, let's, let, can we just get a bag? And I'm like, no, no, no, we can't do it. Like, I, I did go a little bit too crazy on the individual, uh, contribution to solving the problem. No such thing. If that, if that irritated your ex, you did not have a bright future together. That what? No, that wasn't the problem, Judith. That isn't why things ended.

I bet you was part of it. Not, not the dominant problem. Oh my God. I'm having a breakthrough. I didn't expect that in the beginning of this conversation. You want to talk more about it. It's not you. It's me. It started out all rosy.

And then the plastic crisis hit and we just couldn't, we just couldn't sustain the relationship. My God. Plastic is really destroying everything. It's happened to a lot of people. You're not alone. But I forget what we're talking about. The reason there's more plastic in our economy, whether you and your ex realize this or not, is because there's a glut of fracked gas. Historically, plastics were made from oil and chemicals. Today, plastics are made from 16,000 different chemicals and the byproduct of hydrofraking, a material called ethane. And so because there's so much fracked gas on the market and so much waste, little mom and pop companies like Shell and ExxonMobil have decided to grab that waste product and use it to

make new plastic. So there's a lot more plastic coming on the market as a byproduct of the natural gas explosion of the last 20 years? I would not use the word explosion, but yes. Sometimes there's an explosion, not hopefully. A little nerve-wracking. But yes, because, you're right, because of the increased use of frac gas, you know, none of us have voted for more plastic, but you enter any American supermarket, and it's almost impossible to avoid it. I bet you for your listeners go into any supermarket, and there's a giant aisle of chopped up fruits and vegetables in single-use plastic packaging. It's as if we've lost our ability to chop up fruits and vegetables. We can eat that without it being delivered in a little single-use

plastic package, which, by the way, is much more expensive than if you just buy the apples and the grapes and the berries on your own. Right. Well, let's take a step back for a second. What is plastic? Like, I don't, like, I know what metal is. I feel like, I know what glass is. Those would be materials that would be used to package, for instance, food before the advent of plastic, around, when was plastic introduced? And what is it? So, plastic. Plastic was invented in New York State, I believe, by a guy named Leo Bakelite, B-A-K-E-L-I-T-E. Don't ask me why I know this. Well, because I teach a class on plastic pollution.

Yeah, because you're a plastic expert, Judith. That's why you're on the show. That's why you know it. Don't undersell yourself. You know a lot about plastic. You're right. I should be proud that I know it was Leo Bacolite that has ruined our lives with so much plastic.

So plastic was invented. in the early 1900s, it started being mass-produced after World War II, and it started replacing more traditional products like paper, metal, glass, cardboard. Basically, plastic is poison. It's fossil fuels and chemicals, and a lot of chemicals, 16,000 different chemicals. None of this is naturally found in nature. It does not degrade on its own. every piece of plastic that was ever made, unless it was burned at a garbage incinerator, which is a bad idea, is still with us today on the planet.

And what is it like chemically? Like, I don't, chemistry is one of those subjects I really don't understand very well, but is there any way to describe, you know, what makes plastic unique? Well, there are different types of plastic polymers. These are types of plastic. So you've got plastic in your soda bottle, you've got plastic in your plastic bag, your toothbrush. So it's hard to describe because there are so many different types of plastic, and they all have a different chemical mixture. And there are these chemical additives that make it softer or more stretchy or resistant to sunlight. So it is a complicated little item that is not designed to be easily recycled. And when you think about the throwaway society, you know, it's really about plastic because there's, you know, there's single use plastic all over the earth and it never goes away.

And why did plastic take over as a material? I mean, I think of this little anecdote from my own life. I've gotten into film photography over the past couple months as a hobby and I bought a Minolta camera from 1980, 1979, about there. And one of the reasons I got this one was

this was the last year that they made these cameras mostly out of metal. All the cameras after that were made of plastic and they didn't last as long. You know, they're sort of not as nice in the hand and these old metal ones, it's like, oh my God, there's like a heft to it.

And it feels like a very sort of advanced form of construction but from a previous generation, whereas just like five years later, literally every camera of that type was made of plastic, or at least the majority were. So why did it take over as a, you know, as a material like that in manufacturing? Well, over time, we've become a throwaway society. I mean, there was a time that when your camera broke, you could actually get it repaired, like major appliances. Now when your iPhone breaks. Good luck getting it fixed. You are pressured to spend a lot of money to get a whole new iPhone. So this is part of planned obsolescence, but also for big companies, plastic is cheap.

One reason is because there are a lot of taxpayer subsidies, but it's not really cheap when you look at the environmental impact, when you look at the health impact. So I think it's like who's paying. So if you are making widgets on a construction line and a production line and you can make the widget from glass or metal or plastic, you're often going to go with plastic because you can get that more cheaply. But then they wash their hands a bit. They have no skin in the game in terms of how do you deal with this when it's beyond its useful life? Right. the manufacturer makes a choice to use plastic because it's available and it's cheap, but they're not thinking about how it's made or what happens to it afterwards.

They're just thinking about their step of the process where they make the thing. Yeah, and they want it as cheap as possible and not really thinking long term. I mean, I know someone in who works for a large company will not be named, works on packaging design. What they're really looking for when they have their really smart people designing packaging, they're looking at shelf appeal, they're looking at color, they want to make sure that the product is safe and not compromised in any way, they're not thinking about what happens when you're done with the product, even something that you just use for, you know, a day or two days. Right.

Their responsibility ends when they sell it to you. And then you and I as taxpayers are responsible to get rid of all of this, whether it's through for plastics, failed recycling or collecting it, sending it to a garbage incinerator or a landfill. All of that is really expensive. And the companies that produce this don't have that responsibility. So for instance, in New York State, in Albany, we're working hard to pass a bill that would give responsibility back to the producers of packaging. It's known in the business as extended producer responsibility, the worst name ever, but it means that Amazon and Coke and General Mills and Kraft need to take some responsibility for all the packaging they're

flooding us with. Right. This is what's known, I think, as an externalized cost, right? Do I have that right? Exactly. Yeah. They produce something that imposes a cost in the rest of society that they're not responsible for, like just like the landfill space. Like somebody else has to dig the holes and, you know, push the plastic in with a bulldozer, pick it all up and whatnot. And so a company that decides to, hey, we're going to shift our manufacturing from glass to plastic, is imposing a cost upon everybody else that they don't have to pay for. So part of the idea is to shift the cost back to them. Yeah, and it's a high cost.

It's not just building and maintaining a landfill, but if you're from, say, hypothetically, Long Island, where the only... I am from Long Island. How did you... How are you nailing me so effectively in this conversation over and over again? How did you know Long Island? A lot of people live on Long Island. That's true.

And the only, let me bring this back. And the only source of drinking water on Long Island is groundwater. So it's underneath your feet. So if that landfill is leaking toxic chemicals, which it often does, it will contaminate your groundwater. So every public water supply on Long Island has a really expensive filtration system on it to take out the P-FASC chemicals and the lead and the benzene. It's you and I who pay for that, not the people who create all the waste. Folks, you know, December has 31 days, but I think we can all agree that it feels like the shortest month of the year, doesn't it?

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is that by and large, people don't like plastic. Like, it's sort of a buy word for something that's fake, something that's cheap, something that's cheap, something that you maybe don't want to touch. I think anybody can sort of imagine the feeling of glass in their hand or metal in their hand versus plastic in their hand and they know what the difference is. Why is that? I mean, why do you think that we have such an intuitive feeling against the material? And yet it's so pervasive despite that.

Well, nothing tastes better in plastics. And definitely do not put plastic in your microwave. because it'll leach into your food. You will even taste it. I think people react this way because they're pretty smart and they know that this is not a natural material and you can't make it from natural products

and they often have no choice. I mean, I'm super careful about trying to avoid plastic, but I buy it in the supermarket. I can't avoid it a lot of time. And again, it comes back to who's paying for what? Who's paying for the health damage caused by plastic? Certainly not Dow or DuPont or ExxonMobil. We pay with our health.

And people who live near plastic production facilities, like in Louisiana and Texas and Appalachia, who we dedicate this book to, they're paying a pretty high price for the production of plastic in their own communities. Tell me more about that. Like, what is that price that they pay? Well, there's a stretch of the Mississippi River in Louisiana called Cancer Alley. It's between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. And there's a concentration of petrochemical facilities, many of which make plastic. And so people who live in those communities are exposed to much higher levels of toxics

coming out of smokestacks, coming out of discharge pipes into the river, falling on their soil. And they are getting very sick from this plastic production. We're all having our health impact, which I can talk about more broadly. But people living in these communities, they're known as frontline communities, their low-income communities, their communities of color. and our government agencies, including the one where I used to work, the EPA, have allowed these communities to be essentially sacrifice zones. They don't get the same level of health protection that other communities get. Wow. And what exactly about being around plastic

production is so unhealthy? Like, what is causing, is plastic itself carcinogenic? The chemicals, Many of the chemicals used to make plastic or carcinogenic. They also affect your reproductive system, your endocrine system. Lead is a really strong neurotoxin, so it affects children's ability to learn. You know, we've learned about the problems with lead paint, lead pipes. Well, a lot of these facilities are emitting large amounts of lead into the atmosphere. And it doesn't go away. it lands on the soil.

So these are people who are really struggling, and these are mostly low-income communities and communities of color. These plastic production facilities would not be cited in more affluent communities. Certainly not. And it strikes me again. You said we didn't get a vote about this happening, right?

about our entire manufacturing pipeline changing, about the people in those communities didn't get a vote on where those plants were built. It really is an example of, you know, capitalism making the decisions for us as a society, right? Making the world worse in a way that everybody feels is worse. Everybody feels that, you know, plastic is worse than the alternative. But, and yet we're sort of saddled with it

because these companies were trying to, we're trying to cut costs. We are, except we can adopt new laws and new regulations that change that. So I'm a former federal regulator. So my solution to a lot of environmental problems is to get lawmakers to adopt new laws and effectively enforce those laws. It's been done many times before. But this is more of a problem of political science than science. Because when a city council, for instance, tries to ban plastic bags, they are met with an army of lobbyists from the plastics industry who show up and say, oh, people are not going to shift to reusable bags. Just keep using plastic bags.

And then they lie and say, we can recycle the plastic bags. That doesn't really work. So I believe that the fossil fuel and chemical industries feel like they're in the fight of their lives. and they kind of are because demand for their fossil fuels is reducing for the two major reasons they sell fossil fuel. One is for transportation, and we're seeing more and more electric vehicles. The other major use for fossil fuels is electricity production, and we're seeing more and more wind, solar, geothermal, hydro options. So I'm guessing about 10 years ago, a bunch of the fossil fuel companies got together at some country club somewhere and decided our next big investment is in plastics. Do you know who the largest plastic producer is in the country?

Who? Exxon. Wow. So they have shifted toward plastic production so they can keep. fracking for gas, producing chemicals, and having a market. So that's why, like, when really modest proposals are made, like a plastic bag ban, there's an unbelievable number of lobbyists who show up trying to block this. I once spoke to the Adirondack Garden Club.

I'll go anywhere almost to talk about plastics. And the nice thing about the Garden Club is they always take you out for a really nice lunch afterwards and I'm sitting next to this nice woman and she is to work in the fossil fuel industry and she said one of her colleagues full-time job was to convince Walmart to always use plastic bags to never abandon plastic bags and I said really tell me more about her job have another glass of wine but she wouldn't spill the beans she just said that was her job to make sure Walmart stayed invested in plastic. And yet there are 10 states where Walmart is no longer handing out massive amounts of plastic

bags because residents got together, petition their government, and adopted a plastic bag ban. Like in New York, like in California, although the California bill is about to get fixed. But, you know, when people pay attention to the issue, you can organize. and get things done. Yeah. But these fossil fuel companies, so seeing declining use of fossil fuels for energy, are saying, well, let's just turn those fossil fuels into more physical products. Let's keep them in use for plastics.

I never thought of plastics as being sort of physicalized solid fossil fuels before. That's fundamentally what they are. Yeah, plastic is fossil fuels and chemicals. Wow. dinosaur bones and gas. Yeah, pretty much. And a lot of really toxic chemicals that we're working to get out of our drinking water, for instance. I mean, there's a real problem with P-FAS chemicals.

They're known as forever chemicals. They're in a lot of public water supplies. And they're also in our consumer packaging. And what is the problem with those? I mean, you talked about the problems for people who live near the plants, but drinking water affects everybody. What's bad about PFAS? Well, it's been linked to a number of different cancers and other sicknesses.

And even at really small, small levels, you do not want it in your drinking water. You do not want it in your products. You don't want workers exposed to it. So it's a real, you know, it's a real cycle. And it's going to cost many, many billions of, to get PFS out of our drinking water. So how about not putting it in there? So it's cancerous.

Are there other health problems that those chemicals are linked with? There's a whole family of PFAS chemicals. The two most common are PFOA and PFAS. So PFOA has been linked to a number of different cancers, including kidney cancer. It's also been linked to colitis and eight different major ailments. A year ago, I could have named all ten of them. And the way we know this is through litigation against the manufacturer.

Wow. A number of years ago, I had a fertility expert on the show who was talking about the fertility rate going down. And one of her theories was that it was because of the increased plastic in the environment that it was lowering the male fertility rate, because we're specifically seeing a drop in, like, literal biological fertility, not like social factories, social factors, like literally, you know, the biology of men in American, I think, around the world is causing them to be less fertile. Is that an effect? Yes. When I say it's a reproductive

toxin, that's what I mean. There's a great book by Dr. Shauna Swan called Countdown. And she looked. She, she, we had her on the show. Yes, that was her. Oh, great. You have really good guests. You should. We do. Well, you should know that just because you're here, Judith, because you're a good guest and you know that about yourself. Dr. Shulma's Juan is a better guest.

So Dr. Swan is absolutely correct. And we hear from people just generally saying that, you know, this is a sensitive topic if people are trying to get pregnant and it's not happening easily for them. We hear from people who say they're fertility doctors, advise them, get rid of all the plastics in your kitchen. You know, replace all your plastic food storage containers with glass. Don't drink from plastic beverage bottles because when you turn the little cap, you get a little abrasion and the microplastics fall into your beverage. And so more and more fertility doctors are acknowledging that plastic is indeed. And sadly, a problem.

I mean, is this something that people can reasonably avoid? I mean, when you tell me, you know, hey, if I want to improve my fertility, avoid plastic, I'd be thinking, well, first of all, I'm surrounded by plastic, right? Sometimes I go to the airport and I fly on the airplane. And like, I have to touch a million things made of plastic if I want to eat during that 10-hour trip. You know, I can't bring some food with me in a glass vessel. You know what I mean? Or whatever.

Are you making fun of me? No, is that what you do? Do you bring food in a glass container when you fly? In a little metal tiffin, a stainless steel tiffin. Okay, that's nice. Because there's no good food on the airplane anyway. I mean, no matter how hungry you are, you do not want to eat the little tiny bits of things they call food wrapped in plastic. So I bring my metal water container.

and I bring, it's a little stainless steel Tiffin, T-I-F-F-I-N. Tiffins are making a real comeback. And, but it's really hard. Like, you shouldn't have to go through all of those extra steps, which is why we need laws, because it is pretty much impossible to avoid plastic no matter how careful you are. But I want to quote this great woman, her name is Anne. Marie Bonneau. She's known as the zero-waste chef, and she's a writer. And she says, we don't need a handful of people doing zero-waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.

And that's how I look at plastics and your personal use of plastic. Do the best you can, because it's in your own health interest to try to avoid it. But you're going to use plastic. I use plastic. It's not our fault. We don't need to do confessionals, but we need to, you know, work on companies and governments to try to reduce our exposure. I think in about five or ten years, members of Congress and governors are going to look back and specifically at the health issues and say, why didn't we do more? It kind of reminds me a bit of the tobacco issue. Because scientists are doing important work in the lab, which is why it's so worrisome that the federal government is cutting money for scientific research. The EPA is abolished the Office of Research and Development, the largest office in that agency, which is really irresponsible.

But just in the last few years, scientists have discovered little bits of microplastics. That's five millimeters or less. And then even smaller than that is nanoplastics. So microplastics have been identified in our blood, our lungs, our kidneys, in the human placenta on both the fetal side and the maternal side, in breast milk. So our babies are being born pre-polluted. Microplastics have been found in human testicles, in our heart, art. arteries. So they've done analysis of plaque. And if you've got little bits of microplastics attached to your plaque, you've got an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death.

And then most recently, really troubling is microplastics have been found crossing the blood brain barrier. And there's been a link to Alzheimer's and other neurological diseases. This is early days on that kind of research, but when scientists look, they find it. Now, I've heard the plastics industry acknowledge, yeah, we've got plastics in our body, but it's not really clear that it's damaging us. But now with these new studies on heart arteries and brain, it really is clear. And I'm willing to go out on a limb and say nothing good can happen if there are microplastics in my lungs.

I just don't want them there. Oh, yeah, but what if, uh, sorry, you just reminded me of Mike Berbigley's old joke or it's like when the doctor finds something inside your body, it's never good. It's never season tickets to the Yankees, right? And it's like microplastics in your body. There's never, there's not a bright side to this. There is not like, hey, you'll be able to run faster and jump higher because the microplastics gave you superpowers. It's going to be bad in some way. We just might not know what way yet.

And not to get people, you know, clicking off the podcast right now, but the chemicals in plastic attach themselves to the microplastics. They hitchhike. So it's a dual risk. It's kind of the physicality of having little pieces of plastic in your bloodstream. But it's also that the toxic chemicals will attach to the microplastics and enter our bodies. That's why I wrote the book. That's why I started this group beyond plastics because there is still time to turn the ship. And it's very recent that people have been really focused on some of these health impacts. I think we've known about the waste problem. We've known that plastic recycling has been an abysmal failure. We're starting to understand the climate change impacts of plastic.

I want more and more people to think about these environmental justice communities and what we can do to reduce the demand for plastic. But I think what's going to drive the conversation is, sadly, not that we're turning the ocean into a watery landfill filled with plastic, which is happening. But plastics are in our bodies, and it's not a good thing. Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this show. That is correct, the hidden gem, which has become the favorite gift long after that wrapping paper is gone, everybody. That's right. It's pretty much the season for gift giving. So why not give the number one rated gift we're talking about the ORA Frame?

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Support the show you're listening to right now by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions obviously apply. Thank you, Aura Frames. Thank you, listener. Tell me more about what microplastics literally are. Like, how small are they? What exactly are we talking about? Five millimeters or less is a microplastic.

So it's like the size of a grain of salt. And then even smaller than that is nanoplastics. And in a certain way, the nanoplastics are a greater risk because it's easier to breathe them in and easier to swallow. So that's how the plastics get into our bodies and also into, you know, not just us humans, but fish and wildlife. You know, we are really damaging the ocean with so much plastic and not just microplastics. There are these iconic pictures of seabirds, an albatross, dies.

They open it up in the stomach, the gut is filled with plastic, whales, sea turtles. And remember, the ocean is our major source of protein. So it's not just that we're damaging marine life, but that plastic is building up in fish that we consume. Also, meat products. It's been found in honey. It's been found in beer. I was once talking to a group of senior citizens in Florida on Zoom at about 5 o'clock, and one of the women asked me, has it been found in wine? And I said, not that I'm aware of, and the whole room erupted cheering.

Apparently, they drink a lot of wine in the afternoon. But it's showing up in so many products that we consume. So, of course, it's getting into our body. Yeah. And I imagine, you know, in the, I know like toxins will will accumulate as you go up the food chain, right, that fish eat smaller things. And then those chemicals concentrate in their bodies and then we eat a number of fish. It concentrates for us. I assume the same thing is true of microplastics. Yes. So look, when I hear this argument about microplastics being everywhere, right, in literally everything, I start to feel like, you know, first of all, the idea that any of us can avoid them starts to seem fantastical, right? And it starts to seem like we're just going to make ourselves sort of hypochondriacs about plastic, right? That we're going to be like, oh, God, there's plastics all around me.

and I got to get them off, you know, and it's impossible to because they're everywhere, right? And it also makes me wonder, like, is this problem soluble at any point? Like, okay, if we were to ban the manufacturing of plastics currently, well, we've already made so many and they're with us forever, how will we ever be rid of them? You know, is it even possible to remove microplastics in any meaningful way? Well, it's really hard to get it back once it's out in the environment, especially if it's in the ocean. And most of the plastic in the ocean falls to the bottom of the sea. You know, you've seen these big plastic islands.

They're called gyros. There's always some venture capital guy who wants to fund skimming it off the surface of the ocean. Most of the plastic falls down to the bottom. And you really can't get it back. So I'm not one to throw in the towel, but the stuff that's out there is really hard to get back. What we can do is shift to a reuse, refill economy. We can shift to material. We don't, look, we don't need a space age breakthrough.

I love mycelium packaging. That's made from agricultural waste in mushrooms. I love seaweed packaging. if it doesn't have chemicals in it. That is not quite here in terms of price point, what is here is paper, cardboard, metal, glass. It can all be made from recycled material, and you can confidently put it in your recycling bin

and know that it gets recycled. It's not rocket science. We have alternatives to plastic, and even better than using recyclable material is, I'm so old, I remember Coca-Cola coming in a refillable glass bottle. I remember getting milk in refillable glass bottles. When I go to Starbucks, I bring my mug and they refill it. So it's not really that hard as long as we have the political will to force the innovation and force the change.

I mean, think of Amazon, for instance. They are shipping so much material in single-use plastic envelopes, the plastic itself. I hear that they are an innovative company. They have figured out how to ship you anything you want overnight. If they were to put their best brains on how do we get rid of plastic in their supply chain, they could do it. But they don't do it because right now it doesn't cost them any. You and I, in terms of health damage, then even on just a really basic level, as taxpayers, getting rid of all this stuff. We need innovation, but right now, business as usual is not going to work for us.

So you feel we need regulation on the governmental level to force these companies to come up with plastic-free systems? But just return my previous question, if we were to do that maximally, would, how long would it take for, you know, microplastics to stop showing up in our testicles? You know what I mean? Like, they're already in there. Yeah. I mean, it'll, I don't have an exact number for you, but of course. The bill that we're working on in Albany and the state legislature requires a 30% reduction in single use packaging over 12 years. There's a bill in the New Jersey legislature reduce all single. use plastic packaging by 50% over 10 years.

This is achievable. It reminds me of, you know, I know it's at a style to say we need new laws and new regulations, but like, where would we be without, you know, seatbelts and speed limits? I mean, there is a role for government regulation, food safety. You're preaching to the choir. It's just we've sort of moved away from that as a political system a little bit. We've moved away from regulation of capitalism as being something that, you know, the majority of Americans believe in. Plenty of Americans still do.

But, you know, I mean, look what's happened over the past year. It's been a tough year. At the same time, I think if you talk to Republicans, Democrats, and Independence, and we have polling that shows this, people want to. less plastic in their lives, just ordinary people. So, you know, we need to see the shift. I remember when I worked at the EPA, EPA came out with regulations under the Federal Clean Air Act to improve fuel efficiency for cars. So if you still have a combustion engine car, you pay less at the gas pump because your car is more fuel efficient. And I remember meeting with a group of car company representatives, and they're saying, you know, if EPA goes forward with these

regulations, before you know it, everyone's going to be driving an electric car. And I went, perhaps, you know, that is technology forcing. Electric cars are better for air quality. Car companies don't make that change on their own. So just like we have fuel efficiency standards for cars. We need environmental standards for packaging and plastics in general. I completely agree with you about that. And were we still living in an America that had a functioning EPA in a functioning regulatory state? I'd be like maybe we can get there. I mean, the EPA had been playing that role for years. But as I've talked about on this show before, we're living under administration that just killed like the Energy Star program that

made washing machines more efficient, which like everybody liked that program, like consumers liked it, the government liked it, the manufacturers liked it, and it had been around for decades. And so, you know, we've got like, they're trying to kill LED light bulbs, which like just save money and let you have more light bulbs. And plus, you can make your room a stupid color if you like. And, you know, they're trying to, they're trying to kill those. So, you know, does it, does it make you feel any differently now that we're living under this very intensely anti-regulatory sort of psychic environment in the in the country, not to mention ideologically driven leadership. That is just, you know, if there's something that conservationists think is good,

they're just like, well, that's bad and we're going to undo it. Well, you're absolutely right that we're not going to get anything useful out of Washington, either the White House or the Congress. This is the most anti-environmental administration in American history. Leiseldon is the worst EPA administrator in history. What we are going to see and what we have been seeing is progress at the state and local level. So you need to get big states to do the right thing. And then you have a patchwork quilt of rules. And at some point, the companies are going to say, all right, let's do something federally, and they'll try to preempt the states. The way I look at this is we have no choice than to fully engage on this issue, because the damage is immense. I don't waste my time talking

to the EPA. I do spend a lot of time talking to citizen advocates, state legislators, county legislators, and then you also get proof of concept. You see that it can work in a big state, in a big city. have heard. There's a new mayor in New York City. Zoran Mamdani. He was a co-sponsor of the packaging reduction bill when he was in the State Assembly. So perhaps the city of New York, perhaps the city of Los Angeles, perhaps Chicago and Tallahassee and Des Moines, Iowa, these cities know how serious the waste problem is. So they can really lead the charge here while we're waiting for the federal government to come back to their census. Okay, good.

Well, we do also, though, we don't have to dwell on this, but we have the issue of the federal government is actually going after state regulations now. So, for instance, we've got, you know, I think pretty good fuel economy standards in California, which people say will trickle out to the rest of the other states because, you know, if car companies want to sell their car in California, it has to be, well, you know,

they're not going to make a different car for California than they do for Texas, et cetera, et cetera. Then you have the Trump administration trying to end, I believe, those regulations. And so, you know, we, like, that's how aggressive the current federal regime is. But your point is well made that we can do things on the state and local level. How, though, do we make sure that we are not just doing feel-good regulations? You know, I think about the panic over plastic straws from about six or seven years ago, I want to say. There was like this moment where suddenly the public became upset about plastic straw.

It was almost like a mini George Floyd moment, but just for plastic straws. Suddenly people were like, plastic straws are so bad. I forget even what the specific problem was. I'm sure they're bad for many reasons. But there was some big pop of attention. There was a YouTube video showing a plastic straw in the nostril of a sea turtle that got millions of views. I love that YouTube video. I show it in my class.

Okay, great. But so, okay, there's a big YouTube video about plastic straws. Hopefully this YouTube video. has the same effect. But there's a popular viral video. It wasn't the Numa Numa Kid. It was the plastic straw up the nose of the turtle. And then, so tons of restaurants say,

we're phasing out plastic straws. Plastic straws got to go. And there was all this emphasis on straws, straws. A lot of places go to like compostable straws or paper straws. People use those straws. They're like, wow, those straws suck. my my my my my coke got soggy right i didn't like the way it felt on my lips and then you know in some places now i think it's probably if you're in san francisco you still get a compostable

straw if you're in other parts of the country they've probably given up right and and a lot it sort of became a byword for like a uh a sort of performative environmentalism right of and and you know a lot of times when we're thinking about environmental issues we think about only the things that literally touch our lips there's a reason it's straws right or there's a reason it's packaging, when plastic is so pervasive in our entire society, right? I have to imagine if we just get rid of the plastic that we as consumers touch or touch to our lips, that's only the beginning of the problem, right? Don't we have to go a lot further? Yeah, 40% of plastic is used for packaging. And I think on the straw issue, I kind of view that as a gateway issue. It gets people

thinking, it gets people talking. Also, if you are out and you say to the way it's staff, no straw please. What happens to me when I say that and I say it for my whole table and my friends and family kind of, well, they're used to it now. They used to turn on me. But when I reject straws for the for the whole table, it's kind of interesting. The younger wait staff say, oh, because of the turtle earnestly. I'm like, yeah. And then the older weight staff just want to slap me in the head and say, okay, Miss Green, no straw for you. But I think it just raise the issue. You just never know what's going to break through. And so it's not a bad thing. And also, when I say no to a straw, I'm saving the restaurant money. They don't have to

buy it. And if you really need a straw, you can use a metal straw or you can, at home, for instance, or those, yeah, like when you went to school, those paper straws were really soggy. That's what Donald Trump actually complains about a lot. You've got that in common with him. But there are now these really strong, almost cardboard straws that hold up quite nicely. There's a company called Ardvac. Ardbach. No, I shouldn't even be promoting a company.

But there has been improvements since the soggy paper straw in your milk when you were in third grade. It's gotten better. Well, no, I have used paper straws that I didn't like at establishments like in my 30s. I know that this has happened. And, you know, it's one of those things where when people have had a bad experience, it opens the door to a reactionary response like Trump had, right? And sometimes the compromise, you know, he also goes, ah, it takes longer to do the dishes now.

Like your dishwasher takes longer. And I think that we can all handle that because that means it's more energy efficient. But when people are literally, they're like, ah, the new one is worse, right? It creates a negative halo effect around the idea of conservation. But look, I take your point that consumer issues can be gateway issues. And if 40% of plastic is used for packaging, that's more than I even would have guessed. So obviously, if you just address packaging, you can make a dent. But I'm sure that these fossil fuel companies are going to be very small.

if we ban plastic packaging nationwide of, A, finding other countries that they can impose plastic packaging on, which will still affect us because it'll leach into the ocean and yada yada, and B, like other industries, right? Won't they just find other places to cram plastic into because they're going to want to peddle their wares wherever they can, you know, if they're still in the business of pulling the fossil fuels out of the ground, they're going to want to find something to make out of it, right? Yes. The fossil fuel and chemical industries are not responsible stewards of the earth, which is like the most understated thing in the history of the world. They just want to sell their fossil fuels and their chemicals. And we have to be vigilant. You know, they will export to other countries. But other countries are further along than the United States, some of them. There are countries in Africa that have banned

single-use plastics. Europe, of course, is ahead. India has some good laws on the books. And, you know, there has been an effort to do a global plastics treaty at the United Nations, which unfortunately has not been adopted so far. But I really think this is an issue where we make progress from the bottom up. It starts locally, first your own practices, then you your kids' school, then your faith community, your civic organization. Then you show up to every single city council meeting you can and say, I want you to do this, this, and this. You become that person at the city council. Then you go to the county legislature. Then you find organizations that can work with you at the state level. You know, I'll be honest. I'm a little worried at how

long this all takes because the plastic pollution crisis is very real. Ten years ago, if people told me, if medical doctors and researchers told me that microplastics are in our brain and in our heart arteries, I'm not sure I would have believed it. But, you know, this is science. It's not like when people say, do you believe in global warming? It's not a belief. It's science. And the science every year is getting worse. And so we've got to find some federal and international leadership. In the meantime, we work state and local. I think the comparison you made earlier to the tobacco industry is really apt, that we had this industry that was hurting people, killing people, providing nothing of value.

This does seem like a harder problem, though, because, look, plastic does actually provide something of some value because it allows you to make things more cheaply. I'm sure there's some stuff that we can make with plastics that we just couldn't literally could not make it before. There's got to be some uses like that. I agree. And also, you know, I should have opened with this. There are some appropriate uses of plastic like a car bumper, for instance. You know, it makes your car more lighter, more fuel efficient. But I don't see car bumpers at the beach. You know, wind turbines are made with plastic. That's an appropriate use of plastic. We're never going to get rid of all of it. But we can get rid of it. But we can get rid of

pointless plastic, and we can expect the industry to stop deceiving us. So for decades, as we chronicle in the book, millions of dollars were spent just telling people, throw all your plastic and your recycling bin, don't worry about it. Right. The California Attorney General, Rob Banta, in September of 2024, actually sued ExxonMobil for deception around plastics recycling for not telling the truth. Exxon tried to get that case dismissed. They failed. They're trying to get it moved to federal court rather than state court. The thing about Rob Banta, Attorney General Banta's lawsuit, is he's going to win because it's all about math. You bring in the San Diego Recycling Coordinator and say, how much polystyrene did you recycle? And they'll say less than

1%. You bring in the L.A. County Recycling Coordinator. How much P.E.T. Placis have you recycled less than 10%. And then the attorney general's office says, but Exxon, you bankrolled all of this advertising saying that you can recycle plastic. It's not true. This is a case about math and the state of California is going to win. It's a slow process, but I think we will see similar lawsuits around the country. That's another way to hold plastic producers accountable. Wow. What do you advise for people about recycling? Because I, you know, in Los Angeles here, the rule is really all plastic that isn't contaminated goes in the blue bin. And so I hear people say, oh, that's not recycled. I'm like, just put it in the fucking blue bin. Because that's what you were told to do. Even if it's not recyclable, get it in there and they'll do their best. What is the actual state of recycling in America in terms of plastic? So that's called wish cycling, and I wish your government didn't tell you to do that. Because in reality, you only can recycle things like soda bottles and jugs.

If you look at the bottom of the package, it'll say number one or number two. Those are mostly what's recycled in the U.S. The plastics recycling rate in the United States is only 5 to 6%. So when you put all the other plastics in there, what it happens is it messes up. the plastic recycling sorting process, and most of that stuff is pulled out and sent to a landfill or a garbage incinerator anywhere. Anyway, the theory of your government saying put it all in there is they think they'll get more number one and number two plastics if they make it easy for people. But they don't realize that people are smart and they can figure out, only put in number one and

number two. And I'm not convinced that telling everyone to put all the plastic into the bin actually get you more. So it's really just soda bottles, milk jugs, containers like that, you're a detergent container. But most plastics do not get recycled. We've known this for decades. Yeah, and also, let me just ask, if we are, if our testicles are full of microplastics, so microplastics are a big danger. If I'm like, you know, sometimes I would see a piece of clothing, we're like, this piece of clothing is made out of like 100 water bottles or whatever. Do I want to be wearing clothes made out of water bottles?

Is that a good idea for my health? So two things. One is your testicles are not filled with microplastics. They very likely have microplastics in your testicles. Wait, what's the difference? You mean just that there's a little bit in there? The quantity. Right.

Okay, I'm not bulging. I'm not overflowing with microplastics in my testicles. As far as I know. So. You don't know what I've been getting up to. I don't wear clothing made from recycled plastic because you can have some dermal exposure. And then also when you put it in the laundry, the microplastics will come out in the wastewater of your washing machine and also the dryer.

So, you know, about 70% of clothing is plastic, it's polyester. Hard to avoid. I try to buy cotton, linen. It's expensive. It's not easy to find. The one little tip I will have is I only buy cotton bed sheets because your, you know, your face is in your bedsheet for hopefully seven or eight hours of the day. So you can splurge on the cotton bed sheets and quilts, you know, will quilts, things like that. Like we can't, we have to rely on our

common sense. We're not going to get rid of all plastics, but what is your most common exposure and try to avoid that, whether it's your clothing, the packaging and your food? And also like, what do you, what do you use a lot? So in our family, I, have a spouse who drinks a lot of orange juice, even though I tell him it's loaded with sugar. So rather than buying orange juice in plastic containers, we buy it in that frozen concentrate, and then we just make it in a glass pitcher, and it's cheaper. So that's important as opposed to we don't use ketchup a lot. We're not condiment people.

So I don't care that my ketchup comes in a plastic bottle because I like it's in my refrigerator for 10 years, but something that we're using a lot, see if you can shift away from plastic, especially for your children. Got it. Okay. So because I wanted to ask you that again, I have a concern when I hear people talk about microplastics that we're going to drive people insane about their personal behavior, that they're going to become overly scrupulous and sort of, you know, almost like orthorexic about their use of plastics.

And I've seen this in my life, like people who like are losing sleep over this kind of thing. When at some level it's an environmental problem that you can't address yourself. And I was going to ask, where do you draw the line? And it sounds like what you're suggesting is find the things that are most in contact with you the most often, most of your clothes like try to buy cotton clothes definitely cotton sheets don't microwave plastic

couple other big ones but then apart from that go to the city council meeting and try to advocate rather than freak out about your personal behavior you have perfectly summarized the book

well that's the point of the show I think is to do that that's what we aim to do on the show And the book is filled with tips that you can take in your own lives, but also policy solutions, model local bills. I mean, what we do in the book is we lay out the problem in, I think, an understandable way, you know, a chapter on climate change, a chapter on environmental justice, a chapter on what we're doing to the ocean. And then we give people, you know, suggestions on what you can do. I lose sleep over climate change. That's something worth losing sleep over.

On plastics, I get up every day. I do what I can. You cannot shop your way out of the problem. If you're pregnant, if you're thinking of getting pregnant, if you have little kids, be extra vigilant. For the rest of us, do the best you can. Gorgeous. Judith, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Of course, if you want to pick up a copy of the book, you can do so at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Where else can people find it? Where else can people find your work on the internet, perhaps? Well, the book is published by The New Press, which we love, a nonprofit, progressive publishing company. So you can get the book anywhere. It's in every bookstore. You can pre-order it.

Thenewpress.org. You know, try to avoid that company that starts with A. I wouldn't order there, but you can order anywhere else you buy it. books on the internet. And then please go to our website beyondplastics.org. We have a free email list. We have local beyond plastic groups all over the country. You just have to be three people or more who want to work together. If you can't get two of your friends or neighbors together, you're not going to be effective. So three or more, you can form a local Beyond Plastics group. It's fun to do it with other people. You meet nice people in your community. And we really, we wrote the book for average

citizens and for policymakers. I teach a class on Zoom on plastic pollution through Bennington College. And what I found was, like, I was driving the students crazy. Most of the students, by the way, are auditors. They're community people from around the country who take the class. And every class has a whole bunch of different PDFs to read. I wanted a book. And so that's one reason we have it all in one place to make it as easy as possible for people who are interested in the topic. Judith, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been wonderful to have you.

And thank you for your advocacy on this and for breaking it down for us. Thanks, Adam. Really enjoyed the conversation. Well, thank you once again to Judith for coming on the show. Again, if you want to pick up a copy of her book, The Problem with Plastic, head to factuallypod.com slash books every single book you purchase there. will support not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you'd like to support the show directly, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month, every episode of the show ad-free.

For 15 bucks a month, I'll read your name in the credits of the show and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week I want to thank Eric Zeger, Robert Irish, Chris Parker, Philip Hannawalt, John McPeek, Chris McKinless, Harmonic, Noah Dowd, and Joker on the Sofa. Thank you so much, Joker on the sofa. if you'd like me to read your name or silly username at the end of the show, once again, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Of course, if you'd like to see me on the road, I'd love to see you there.

I love it when people come to see me do stand-up comedy and then tell me after the show that you listen to the podcast. It means so much to me. I love meeting you folks. Again, pretty soon I'll be in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, Houston, Texas, San Francisco, California, head to Adamconover. dot net for all those tickets and tour dates. I want to thank my producers, Sam Rodman and Tony Wilson,

everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on Factually. hear it. Headgum. So this is just a podcast where we just talk. Yeah. We're best friends. Yeah. We talk. And then we have a segment where we answer questions and queries. So the audience undersc can ask questions about friendships and we can answer them to the best of our abilities. Yes. We are professional friends. We are professional friends. Subscribe to best friends on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Pocketcast, or wherever you get your podcast and watch videos on YouTube. New

episodes drop every Wednesday. That's the middle of a work week I was deeply unhelpful to you during that whole thing I'm really sorry I felt the support I was so okay I was trying to be supportive but I was like I don't know reading seems pretty hard right now It's a lot I think you did good

Thank you so much You're welcome