Rev Left Radio - Waste Colonialism, Recycling, & Microplastics

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Jesi Taylor joins Breht to discuss waste management, how the racialized, colonial and imperialist world order dictates where certain kinds of trash ends up, the impact of landfills on communities, the hyper-localism of recyclying and its effectiveness, the fear of microplastics, and more! Find Jesi on twitter: https://twitter.com/moontwerk Check out Discard Studies: https://discardstudies.com/ Wired Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUBHyTM3VEg&ab_channel=WIRED  Outro music: 'American Garbage' by AJJ Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on Jesse Taylor to talk about waste management, waste colonialism, what happens to your recycled materials and your recycling bin when it leaves your house, composting, the threat of microplastics, how racial and class divisions in society dictate where trash and waste goes and it doesn't go and so much more. Just a really fascinating, timely issue and topic and a wonderful guest to address these issues with. And so I'm really excited to share this conversation.

The way it happened was I actually watched on YouTube an episode from Wired, where Wired will have professionals or experts in certain fields, answer questions from Twitter about their respective field of expertise. and they had a waste management expert on there. Meredith talking about a lot of these issues. If we can stick around until after the outro music and we'll try to put some of that on, or you can just go on YouTube, search it up and look for it. But that actually inspired me to reach out to Meredith, who pointed me in the direction of Jesse and resulted in this conversation.

So I'm very thankful to Meredith as well. But yeah, so this is my conversation with Jesse Taylor surrounding waste, recycling, microplastics, and everything related to that. issues. So yeah, without further ado, enjoy. My name is Jessica Taylor, very broadly, I guess. I'm a mostly graduate student from my work centers on discard studies and genocide studies. I'm mostly focusing on how waste colonialism and waste inequity disproportionately impact chronically disenfranchised and criminalized communities.

specifically is the language of productliness and franchised instead of poor or low income to really, you know, highlight the fact that this is not something that people just happen to be dealing with. This is the product of structural, institutional, systemic issues that are putting people in these situations of being chronically disenfranchised. Yeah, well, it's an honor to have you on the show. I'm very excited for this conversation. A lot of these issues are things that I've thought about for a long time with no real ability to go out and find these answers. So I'm glad to pick your brain.

So thank you so much for coming on. I guess the first question would be, you know, how did you become interested in the issues of waste management and waste colonialism in general? And why are these issues important for people to understand? Sure. So before I specifically sort of focused on waste, my main focus was on, it's actually on black maternal health and mass incarceration. So it's focusing on experiences of pregnant people in jails, prisons, and just in the police custody general. And it was while teaching at Rikers Island, which is a notorious jail in New York City, but I wanted to learn more about Rikers Island, just its history, how did it develop, where did it come from?

And in doing research about Rikers Island, I learned that it was actually built atop a language fill. and when I started doing more research into the geology and the development of New York City as a place, I learned that about 20% of the landmass of New York City was developed on land-filled spaces. And, I mean, that was just really interesting to me,

specifically with respect to, like, there's an island, if you don't mind, I'll go into that, I'll go a bit. Yeah, absolutely. Once upon a time, like those island was much smaller and when they were kind of running out of space to place trash because once of the time a lot of the trash in New York City was just going into the water

literally just going into the water surrounding the islands they were like you know we had a place to put this trash and so they put it on this island but over time they're like you know this is actually like a kind of this is like a nice little a little chunk of land here. So they started taking not just trash

but other materials as well. Putting them onto the island and long story short, it started to grow a bit more and more until in the early 1900 it was so full of trash, soapful of combustible waste, that it was so

full of explosions and trash that you could see the explosions from the mainland of Manhattan. And long story short, at one point, they literally had to bring in large dogs to maintain and dwindle the population of rats that were taking over the island. Anyways, fast forward. Now this is where they're housing, you know, one of the most notorious trails in the country.

And when I learned about this, you know, jail built on top of a landfell, I started to ask myself, and I wonder, is this something that's happening in other places? Unsurprisingly, it was. And when I started to look into the relationship between waste inequity and mass incarceration, I learned that in this country, I mean, other places as well, but I mostly focus on the United States, but with the U.S. settler state, so many carceral institutions are built on or near toxic waste spaces. And when I learned that, that was on my research and focus in academia change completely. sort of focusing specifically on trash.

And, well, at first it was associated specifically with mass incarceration, I started to expand a bit. And, yeah, from there, that's where my interest in trash kind of took off when I realized that when I started to look at the data and realize, you know, it wasn't just, you know, criminalized populations. It was really just chronically disenfranchised communities that are disproportionately being impacted by this waste and equity. That's where my research changed.

And that's why it's my focus now. Yeah. That's incredibly interesting. I had no idea that Rikers, you know, was previously a landfill. That is incredibly interesting. I'll add this, though. There's about 20% in New York City's landmass generally is also built on landfill. There are a couple of other islands as well that are also built on landfill.

Ellis Island, for instance, is mostly built from the rubble from the excavation of the subway system, for instance, and other islands, as well including Manhattan, like Battery Park City, downtown. That was built mostly from the rubble from the World Trade Center. So, yeah, there's a lot of land-filled landmass. Absolutely, yeah. And I think people in general are completely, you know, ignorant about that reality. That's fascinating. We'll definitely get into waste colonialism and the global infrastructure of waste management in a bit because I know that that's something that you're deeply interested in but kind of starting at the basics you know and starting at like the

household level you know I I am pretty common in that I you know many people probably relate to this but I have two city supplied waste bins one for trash and one for recycling and I'm just always curious you know because I'm sometimes I feel the stuff that I'm throwing in the recycling bin doesn't actually end up getting recycled and I hear you know conflicting things about that so in general, like, where do these items placed in these, you know, separate bins actually go when they leave my house and do the things that I try to recycle, actually get recycled? Sure. So before I answer that, when you say city supplied waste bins, what do you mean by that? Like the, at the county level or the small city, municipal level, they, you know,

they bring you two bins, one blue for trash, one green for recycling. Okay. For your apartment, your specific apartment. A little house, a rental house. Yeah. Awesome. So I will say this. And the number one thing I'll say is that recycling specifically is a municipality-specific thing going on here. So depending on where you live is going to determine what happens when they come to pick up those bins.

And when I say where you live, I don't just mean what state you're in. I don't even just mean what city you're in. I mean, this is going to be a block-by-block case. So what a lot of people don't realize is that depending on where you live, that is going to determine what happens when your local sanitation workers, the department, come to pick up your waste and recycling. If you don't mind me, ask me, where do you live? Yeah, I live in Omaha, Nebraska. Ah, okay, so I live in New York City, and the way the waste is handled where we live, and I use waste in scare quotes, too, because it's an interesting concept you should actually get into, but. depending on where you live, that is going to determine what happens when it's actually picked up.

Because the way that recycling has handled, 100% depends on the recycling infrastructure where you live. And depending on what types of buildings, infrastructure, systems, structures, et cetera, exists where you live. That is going to determine what happens when those bins are picked up. So in my specific case, we're not giving city-supplied waste bins. When the Department of Sanitation of New York comes to pick up recycling, there are a lot of factors that determine where it actually ends up. So I guess before I answer your main question, can you tell me when you put your recycling in your regular household trap,

in a bin. What do you do with it? What happens? What is your pickup day like? What does that look like? For me, it would be just, you know, separating them into the proper containers, pulling them to the end of my driveway every Tuesday or Wednesday evening. And then the, you know, the municipal truck comes through in separate trucks for separate bins. So one for the trash bin and then another one for the recycling bin. So it does not work like that in every city. In some cities, there is one truck that comes and picks up both bags and then from there they determine

what happens next and this is not kind of the issue comes in because I feel like there are a lot of conversations about recycling trash generally where sometimes people make these you know kind of universal claims about what to do with your recycling what to do with your trash

that does not work because it is necessarily going to look different depending on where you live where I live for instance we're actually going for something interesting budget-wise where let's say in my personal kitchen i have a trash for non-compostable materials i have a bit for recyclable materials that are not organics and then i have a receptacle for recyclables that are organic those are all going very different places whereas in some cities they may all go to the same place and then they're going to be sorted when they get there

And so it's difficult to answer this question because it's different depending on where you live. And so one thing I always say to people is, what are your specific municipalities website to figure out what the actual laws are regarding where you live? There is no universal answer for that. When you put these items in the bin where you live, their final destination is ultimately going to depend, it's ultimately going to depend on where. you live and what the laws are and what the infrastructure looks like where you live. Yeah.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And I'll absolutely pursue that and try to find out my little answer for my specific locality. In general, I guess to talk about recycling in general, just zooming out, like, what are the different kinds of recycling, you know, what are the most effective types, and what is the importance of accessible recycling infrastructure in all of this?

So before anything, I was going to say the most effective, reliable type of recycling right now that exists is organics recycling. Your yard waste, your food scraps, your new leaves from your yard, stuff like that. That is the most reliable type of recycling that we have right now, where if everybody had access to organics recycling infrastructure, that would probably be the only type of recycling that would be 100% this is necessarily going to be recycled type of system. It gets a little bit trickier when we talk about plastics, aluminum, glass, et cetera, because that depends on the type of infrastructure that exists where you live. Now, one reason why I go harder for organics recycling with anything else. Because as I've ever said, that is the one type that you could actually guarantee this is necessarily going to be recycled.

Now, it gets tricky because it's not just a space issue, it's also a budgeting issue. Depending on where you live, you may not have the infrastructure required to be able to recycle the materials that you have in your home. So when you zoom out, I look at a community level, you know, This is why we have the crisis that we have right now when it comes to recycling. And so when it comes to different types of recycling, it's mostly biometrial. You have your glasses, as I said, you have your aluminums, you have your plastics. And so let's give you an example. So if you look at the bottom of a type of plastic, for instance, just to get into plastics recycling,

just as an example for a moment, sometimes you'll see that recycling symbol with the arrows with a number in the middle of it when you see that symbol on the bottom of something that doesn't necessarily mean that something it's recyclable those numbers actually represent the type of plastic that the bottle is made out of and one thing that frustrates me is you know when people refer to plastics they usually say plastic singular but it's really plastics there are so many different types of plastics what's interesting is that the different types of plastics they require different types of infrastructure to recycle them. And one of the things I worry about when the COVID pandemic started was types of recycling for plexiglass, for instance. That was a really difficult type of plastic to recycle. And most

cities around the world, I mean, do not have the infrastructure to be able to recycle that safely and effectively and properly. And so you have that as a thing to worry about. And one thing I'm going to drive home the most is that, as I said, this is a municipality issue that depends on the type of infrastructure that exists. It's really difficult to make universal statements about not only types of recycling, but what is accessible and available to people, because what really comes down to it depends on where you live. So I'm trying to be very careful with how I answer some of your questions, because my answer here and what is not as New York City is not going to look the same for somebody who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, or somewhere else in the country.

Yeah, absolutely. That makes total sense. I do have to ask, you mentioned earlier that the term waste and some of the complications or complexities around that term. Would you like to kind of talk about that before we move on to the next one? Sure. So it's actually something I'm really, really interested in which is my own work that I do, where it's, you know, terms like waste, trash, rubbish, refuse, These are common terms that we use to describe these things that we throw quote-un-foot away. And that only is there no such thing as away, even the concept of waste itself is a bit complicated. Because when we look at a waste stream, which very simply just means, you know, when we, as a community, put all of our quote-un-foot trash together and it gets picked up and goes to a place, that's a waste stream. and about 30% of the materials in quote-unquote waste streams is actually compostable. It will be turned into soil amendment, but waste itself is complicated to talk about because it's not all trash.

That only can a large percent of it be repurposed or turned into something else that can actually be used. The main issue is that every single material that we handle, that we bring into our homes, that we purchase, that we deal with in any type of way, it has a life cycle of its own. And while a lot of the things that we put in the trash can, you know, we're putting it away because we think that it's done. So much of it could actually continue on in terms of a life cycle, whether it's glass jars, whether it's pieces of a whole. of fabric of different types of fibers. It doesn't necessarily belong in the trash. And one issue is that sometimes people

will put things in a trash can headed to landfill, that could have had a much longer life cycle. And part of the problem here is messaging. We, you know, in the West, in general, we live in a very

disposability-centric society where you know once it's broken, once it's sprayed, you know, it's trash now, that's something to put in the garbage can. Whereas other materials, depending on the culture that you live in, you may realize just because I'm done with it doesn't mean that this material itself is done with its life. And so when I say that, you know, waste itself is a concept you need to really interrogate and be honest about just because we're done with something doesn't mean that it is done. And that that's

That's something that we really need to think about more. And that's not just in terms of things like plastics, glass, aluminum fabrics. It's all the things like organics. It's quite a shame that there's a large percentage of materials that end up in landfills that are compostable, just to give an example. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and so by using terms like waste, sometimes it can just be a catch-all term for a bunch of materials, many of which could be recyclable. their life span could be, you know, elongated with some thoughtful, yeah, thoughtful management.

And I started this year, my first year, composting. And so that has been very interesting. And I just built my garden and used that compost just last week. And so getting into that has been very interesting. Yeah. It makes you think twice, you know, it makes you think twice about what you're throwing away and where you're putting in and what it actually is. And I think that's helpful.

Exactly. Do you have a compost bin that you have in your own backyard? Do you have a service in your city that comes to pick it up? Oh, just a compost bin in my backyard. I did myself. Awesome. That's the dream for me anyway. Well, you know, so we're talking about recycling.

We're talking about how municipal-specific it is and that people interested in where their recycled material go should pursue their own municipal and local websites and whatnot to figure out that answer for themselves. But I want to talk also about landfills. So can you kind of talk about landfills, importantly, where they are. and are not located, and what their impact is on nearby communities and ecosystems? Sure. The first thing I'll say is that, one, there are different types of landfills.

You have your basic municipal, solid waste landfill. You know, if you're like your household, quote-unquote, waste. Where if you live in a place that has a departmental sanitation or something like it, you know, a couple days a week where they come, you put your bin from outside and it goes to a place. It's usually your municipal solid waste landfills. You also have other kinds. There are some landfills that are specifically for organic waste. You have some landfills that are specifically for institutional waste from schools, hospitals, et cetera.

But then you even have landfills that are specifically for construction waste, demolition waste, coal waste, nuclear waste, etc. but ultimately it's a space on a piece of land where you place the materials in such a way that it's interacting with the environment that it's going to even if it's where it's tricky because you have your land landfills are regulated in different ways

depending on where you live and regardless of what type of landfill it is there are going to be certain chemicals that are not only going to be produced and created within the landfill itself, but that they're going to be omitted. And I just wanted to quickly go back to my main point, that this is a municipality issue, depending on where you live in the world,

your landfills are going to look different, and they're going to be different. And it really depends a lot on regulation and different laws and policies that exist in your specific municipality. I see. Is there, there's like, as you were talking earlier about Rikers Island, for example, a lot of, I mean, not even just landfills, but, you know, chemical factories or things that have broader impacts on the areas around them tend to be pushed into lower income or, you know, minority communities or adjacent to them as opposed to wealthier, wider communities. Can you talk a little bit about that? Is that a legitimate, you know, thought to have about this? Absolutely. So that is a legitimate thing to think about. And so in the U.S. specifically, there have been some incredible books of Camel. I recommend toxic communities specifically to read for that. But it has been shown decades of research that when we look throughout the U.S. settler state specifically and we look at things like landfills and we look at incinerators and other pieces of waste infrastructure, which is, basically just different types of structures, buildings, spaces that exist in our communities that are specifically meant to, you know, handle our, quote, unquote, waste.

That's what I'm talking about when I mean waste infrastructure. So I would also include our waste baskets that we have in our own homes. But generally, if we look at a map, we're actually pulled the map, which I will provide and we'll give you links to that you can show listeners. If you look at these maps and you look at where they're located, the vast majority of them are in communities where they're chronically disenfranchised people living in them. Now in the United States, this is mostly people that are in black communities

or native communities, but the majority of them are home to people of color. But if you look at a more global perspective, ultimately the majority of them are going to be in communities that are not where white people are living and not where people that are wealthy are living. And this is on purpose. This is a strategic thing. When you look into the data, you see that when they are

citing these things, this is stuff that actually comes into play here. And if you look at, you know, movements like quote unquote, NIMBY, not in my backyard, because they push back against stuff like this. There are actual communities of, people that do have a bit more power who are specifically fighting to ensure that waste infrastructure is not something that is in their community. And when you look at this globally, this is the trend across nations. That makes sense. Yeah. So both within the United States, the racial and

class divisions in our society's structure where the waste goes. And then when you zoom out globally, the racial and class divisions of the global order shape where the waste goes. And you know, you probably touched on it quite well in that last answer, but maybe we could flesh out a little bit more if you have anything more to say, which is to talk specifically about waste colonialism and how the colonialist and imperialist world order shape the global infrastructure for waste management. So this is a big conversation, but one thing I will say, I'm incredibly indebted to a scholar named Max the Moran in my own work and research when I talk about a lot of these things because of most of what I've learned, a lot of the points of departure that I turn to are from Maxi-La-Rong, and I'm going to borrow some of their language now when I say that specifically colonialism, as I'm sure a lot of our listeners know, it's about access to land. When we bring waste into it, we're talking about the transnational

movement of waste from spaces in the north to spaces in the global south where we have communities that globally

geopolitically speaking do not have as much power and this is where a lot of this quote unquote waste is ending up now it's complicated because this isn't just a global when we're talking about a global issue

we can zoom in a bit you know so just to bring it back to the U.S. Settler states specifically we're talking about dispossession now even if we take waste out of the equation here everything at least 90% of what's going on

in the United States is colonial actions on stolen land right and so one thing I do want say is just to kind of illustrate this a bit and this is difficult just in my own field, my own line of work

is that there are even good examples of I guess quote unquote environmentalism, quote unquote justice activities that are happening that have to do with waste that are still on stolen land

and that's why in the work that I do I really like to center how colonialism plays a role here because no matter of work, composting, recycling, doing beach cleanups, chances are we're doing it on stolen land. We're not honest about that. We are perpetuating settler colonialism, even in the quote-unquote, benevolent environmental justice work that we're doing here. And so when we're talking about domination, we're talking about granting settlers' access to stolen land for settler goals, ultimately, we've had to capitalism. That's what the problem comes in here. Yeah, absolutely. Well said. What was the scholar's name that influenced you in this regard?

Can you say that again? Yeah, Dr. Max Leveron. Wonderful. And they actually came out with some incredible book, was it April of this year or was it April of last year? Sorry, time is just like a non-concept to me now. But they actually came up with this incredible book called Pollution is Colonialism. I'm pretty sure it was Duke University Press. There's actually a free sample of the introduction to the book on that website that I highly recommend people look up.

Not only is an incredible introduction, but it really gives you a nice stage setting for not only learning about what colonialism means. what waste colonialism means, but why it's important to have an anti-colonial approach when we're talking about environmentalism. I hate the term sustainability now, but sustainability and related concepts. Yeah, so the two recommendations made so far is toxic communities and pollution as colonialism. Be sure to do my best to put those in the show notes as well, so people can find them easier um so i'll send you leaks too okay awesome do links perfect perfect so what with all this in mind before we turn to our next issue of microplastics just focusing on this little bit longer what are some of the best and worst approaches to reforming waste management and what actually works in your

opinion like what would you you know advocate for as one of the approaches to reforming this system um so before i get into what works is what's a complicated question i'd say a wrong way to go about this is ignoring colonialism. The majority of us are settlers on stolen land. And I feel like approaching any of these questions, any of these topics while ignoring

colonialism is an act of violence. So the first thing that I would recommend people to do is not only find out the details about the native people that live on the land on which you work

and live and seeing that there's a way to get in contact to them, learn from them, talk to them, and elevate them and their ways to address some of the crises that we're dealing with. That's the number one thing I would recommend. But two, in terms of, you know, what works, it's complicated because, quote-unquote, solutions in one area are not solutions. If you zoom out and look at a global perspective, it's still happening somewhere else. So when, you know, people ask, you know, like what works,

what can we do to make sure that it works? It's really complicated because, in my personal opinion, finding a way to figure out what works in one place, like one municipality, one city, one country even, it's actually figuring out what works. If there any other place on the planet, it's not working. It's very specific, yeah, absolutely. In our conversations before we recorded this,

Before we, another question before we move on to the next one, which is you brought up this idea of sanitation work as, I think you said care work. Could you flesh that out a little bit? Because I like that idea. Absolutely can. And just to give a little bit of background, if it's okay, I guess give a little background. So last summer, I worked with the Department of Sanitation in New York to create a digital museum honoring the sanitation workers in New York who were responsible for clean on. after the September 11 attacks in New York City. It's something that a lot of people don't know about, a lot of people don't think about,

but if not for the Department of Sanitation in New York, the cleanup of the September 11 attacks in New York would not have been possible. And doing work with the Department of Sanitation, listening to people who were, you know, commissioners, workers during that time, I really started to realize, you know, not just during times of disaster, but in our daily lives, sanitation workers are behind the scenes. People say they're throwing things away. One, they're not going away, they're going somewhere, but there are actual people on the other side of our trash bags being picked up part of the way and brought to some,

space where there is a waste infrastructure building there. Now, when I say that what they're doing is care work, I'm going to back up a little bit and talk about how sanitation work is actually something that we need to talk about in terms of public health. It's not something, I'm sure, is on people's minds often, but if not for sanitation workers, public health would be an absolute disaster. when we're talking about living through a global pandemic and when we're just talking about living food life

generally, even if we weren't dealing with a global pandemic. Disease spread, contaminants, poisons, chemicals, etc. All of these things would be in much greater abundance, if not for the work of sanitation workers. And so when I say that sanitation workers are doing hair work, What I mean is that they are doing labor that is necessarily exponentially decreasing the risk of all of us dying from fatal illness that is made possible by trash, by these materials that end up in our trash canons. And so one thing that's really wild to me is not only that sanitation, but, are embarrassingly low, but there are so much stigma against people that work with sanitation

apartments. When it comes down to it, they're literally saving our lives on a daily basis. And the work that they're doing is literally keeping us safe from so many harms that we don't even realize our harms. And so one thing I'm really, really passionate about is whenever I can, I talk about how sanitation workers care work. Yeah, I absolutely love that and is really well said on your part. And there is this stigma, you know, there's like this looking down on people, just like a cultural idea that like, you know, sanitation workers are somehow at the lower end of the dignity of work when their work is not only essential for the functioning of society

and basic health, as you said, but also is much more essential than a lot of the jobs that get a lot of the status and praise in our society, like hedge fund managers, people making money off money, doing nothing at all to help other people. Even hospitals, if we're honest, imagine if there were no sanitation workers to handle the quote-unquote waste that comes from hospitals. Yeah, the health care system was shut down.

Exactly. It was shut down completely. It would be a disaster. Exactly. 100% disaster. Totally. All right, so let's turn to microplastics now, And this is a topic that is very much on people's news feeds and is causing some level of anxiety among people. Looking back, for instance, we know, like in the 70s, for example, it was a large time of unregulated lead exposure.

And, you know, we look back and say, well, thankfully we're past that and we've done the regulations to make it not so ubiquitous. But microplastics in a lot of ways are emerging as the lead of our era, if you will. And there's been a lot of horrifying news in the last several years about the ubiquity of microplastics that really are freaking people out. I think one thing that a lot of people have heard, true or not, when we were young kids, it was you eat seven or eight spiders a year when you're sleeping. But now you eat a credit card worth of plastic every week, which is absolutely horrifying to think about. So what are microplastics? How big of a problem are they for our health as well as for the environment? How should we think about them?

So if I would go just off of some popular scientific research right now, I'd say, you know, maybe we don't have to worry about microplastics that much. But part of the problem is that a lot of these claims that some scientists are making that we shouldn't worry about microplastics is that there isn't much research being done on microplastics because it is. I mean, in the terms of human society, it's relatively a new area of study, even if it's been, you know, a couple of decades now. But just to be very specific, microplastics are very small pieces of plastic that are less than five millimeters long. And a lot of them end up in marine spaces. This might be shocking to some people, but the vast majority of them end up in marine spaces. but the vast majority of plastic pollution that is in our aquatic environments are microplastics. And it's actually quite shocking and in a way unfathomable when you think about plastic pollution in this way,

when you realize, you know, it's not just plastic bottles and frisbee's and cans and these other things that are floating in the ocean. It's these incredibly tiny pieces of plastic that are about the size of a grain of sand or even smaller that are in such big volumes of put together that they're causing this much of a problem. And one main in here, I'll let me rewind a little bit. The first microplastic research that I personally looked into was when I learned that, and as I said, this is research that is still being done now. So I will, of course, provide, you know, some data to back up what I'm saying. But when I learned that we are all excreting microplastics in our feces, that was when I started to take the pop of microplastics a bit more seriously.

The fact that, of course, there are new studies being done now where there are microplastics being discovered in people's blood. That is one issue. But honestly, to me, just knowing that whenever, I mean, I'm sorry if I'm being too explicit, the fact that when we are pooping, we are pooping out microblastics, like that's wild actually wild um and when i learned that fact that was when i started doing a lot more research into microplastics because that's just i mean even thinking about it yeah i think about the next time that you poop there is a large percentage that you are pooping out

plastic when you poop and that to me is enough to be concerned absolutely Yeah. Absolutely. Are there any, you know, let's say that we accept that this is a problem, that some of the attempts to make this alarmist are not necessarily fully scientifically backed, and this is a real problem to wrestle with. What are the actual solutions? I mean, is the only real solution, the eradication of plastic altogether,

or is there something else that I don't know about? I'll also say this, just to borrow, and again, this is directly inspired by Dr. Maxwell Long. It's not just about eradicating. And this is, again, I just want to, I'm so indebted to Dr. Ligarong's work when I speak about this, you know. When we talk about getting rid of, obliterating, destroying microplastics, we're really using the language and logics of colonialism to even talk about plastics. And there are some instances where plastics are necessary. I mean, let's think about, you know, the health care environment, plastic gloves and different plastic materials that are used to ensure that we can quickly, you know, handle different health-related things that people and animals go through, you know?

So it's not just about eradicating plasters. It's about strategically and carefully eliminating the conditions of possibility for plastics collusion. And so I feel like when we focus more on preventing more plastic pollution and harm to different ecosystems and environments, as opposed to focusing on just eradicating plastics, I think that's the path that we need to take. Because, of course, there are some instances where plastics actually come in handy and where those actually are our only options. So it's not so much about eradicating plastics. It's about thinking, how do we eliminate the conditions of possibility for the violence that plastics pollution has done to our environments and ecosystems that are impacting different living species? Yeah. Yeah, well said, that makes a lot of sense to me.

There is like, yeah, there's absolutely essential plastics, but then there's like the over plasticification. like a flication of everything where you go to a gas station and a banana is wrapped in plastic it just drives me. Exactly. See, but then that gets tricky too. Okay. Because like let's say it's a banana that has already been peeled

and it's in plastic, right? One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that some of these are actually innovations. There are disabled people who cannot peel a banana, who cannot peel an orange, who cannot cut into an apple. So they actually

rely on some of these types of plastics packaging to be able to consume the things that they need to survive. And so that's why just eradicating plastics isn't the answer when plastics are necessary in certain sectors of society to ensure that certain individuals can survive and thrive in and outside of the biomedical industry. So it's complicated. Yeah. It is. It is. yeah i guess i never thought about that that's that's a that's an important point to make for sure um yeah so hopefully you know some of this science and some of the anxiety around this can be turned into public pressure to you know instantiate the right regulations to deal with this problem in an equal-handed and egalitarian way yeah so zooming out of all of this you know this is certainly a structural

collective problem um yeah and you don't want to put all the burden on individuals with huge collective issues like this, but that said, there are still things ideally, I'd hope, that individuals or local organizations could do on this front. So what can individuals or organizations do to reduce their waste, reduce what they put in landfills, and generally kind of contribute to the solutions instead of the problems? Yeah. So the first thing I'll say is that I'm an issue about solution language. And this just goes back to what I said about, you know, what works. If it's not a universal solution it's not a solution you know what i mean um but the first number one thing that i recommend specifically like businesses and organizations to do is get a waste on it one thing a lot

of i mean you can also do a waste on it in your own home i'll also make sure that i provide links so that people can learn how to do that themselves but one thing that a lot of people don't realize is how much they're wasting and why they're wasting it And when you get a waste audit, you get a team of experts to come in, then monitor the habits of the people that are adding things to different waste bins, where you are, where you live, where you work, et cetera. And they're determining these are the action steps you can take to ensure that you're not wasting as much.

Because one issue is that a lot of waste, that's just resource mismanagement. And that's a big part of the problem is that people are just misdemeanor. Managing the materials that they have don't know how much of it to even use, and so it's going to waste. And so getting a waste audit is what I would recommend first step for anybody, just to even get the metrics, the data on how much of what they're bringing in is being wasted, and where they can make some changes in their operations and their logistics to prevent materials from even going to waste, period. That's just my general answer to the question. But for individuals, it's tricky. One, I'll go back to the municipality issue. If you don't have the waste infrastructure in place to recycle,

to ensure that these materials aren't going to landfill, what can you actually do? Unless you yourself have, you know, machines in your apartment where you yourself can melt or shred plastic to repurpose. it into something else, what are you going to do? If you don't have a compost. Exactly. They won't like that.

If you don't have a compost bin in your living room, what are you going to do when you have all of these materials that could be recycled or could be composted, but you actually, seriously, cannot do anything about it. It gets really tricky. And so one thing I also do like to throw up home

is that, you know, none of this is our fault. We inherited these systems. We inherited these structures. We inherited these institutions. None of this is our fault. And while we have a responsibility to do what we can, we have to be very honest with ourselves about what we actually equitably have access to,

to be able to navigate this waste crisis. And so what I do recommend is, you know, what do you have access to? Can you make use of a resource like share waste, for instance, which is a really awesome tool where you can go to share waste, find out where you live, see if there's somebody near you who accepts organics, that they will compost and then use.

Do you have access to somebody near you who is a part of the precious plastics network? It is an incredible resource where there are people throughout the world who actually do have these machines. where they can melt plastic and shed plastic and turn it into materials that can be used. And so it's tricky to answer your question because it ultimately comes down to equity and access. It depends on what you have access to to answer your question.

And so the number one thing is, you know, consume less, be a bit more mindful about what you're even bringing into your home. think very seriously and honestly about the life cycle of all the materials and products you bring into your home that you purchase that you consume when you're cooking do you are you able to say you know instead of just tossing the ends of all of my vegetables into the trash can I actually put a bit inside to put all of my food scraps and then find a way to compost it later it really ultimately depends on you another real thing is you know Even having things like food scraps is a privilege.

There are some people who are too busy trying to find food to care about whether or not they can compost. And so a lot of this is a really, you know, community municipality-specific issue. It always comes back to that. What you have access to, equitable access to that's going to impact what you can do and what you should try to do given your circumstances and background. condition. Yeah. Yeah, very, very thoughtful and insightful. And of course, I think we'd both agree that, you know, more broadly speaking, like political organizing is essential, putting pressure on, you know, local governments, racial and environmental justice movements, thinking about waste

management more deeply and centering that as one of the issues that they're trying to tackle. And then just broadly, as you say, that the struggle against colonialism, against settler colonialism, and for indigenous self-determination and indigenous ways of, of, of, stewarding the land are all essential components of this broader issue. Yeah, essential land. Sometimes I get a little bit nervous talking about anti-colonialism. Colonialism generally because my personal relationship to the land, you know, I mean, I'm a descendant of people that were stolen from Western Africa, brought to the US settler state forced to work the land. And when I do have one ancestor who was Afro-Indigenous, when it really

comes down to it. Sometimes I get nervous talking about this because all things consider, I mean, I'm ultimately a settler. You know what I mean? Even if I do have this connection to indigenous ancestry, so it gets a little bit complicated. But luckily, there are resources for people to turn to where they live, to find out, you know, who are the descendants of the native peoples on the land on which they live in work that they can turn to. Is there an email address, a website, a club, a community, anything, any place, yes, there is a place you can turn to, you just have to look for it to see. And honestly, I would center anti-colonialism and all of this. And I specifically say anti-colonialism instead of decolonialism, because

when it comes to decolonization, you know, one resource I turn to immediately is this paper called them decolonization is not a metaphor. by Eftac and K. Wayne Yang, that's, you know, basically like a lot of institutions and academics and people in positions of power, they've taken up this language of, you know,

decolonize this. But if it's not rematreating land and life, you're not decolonizing anything. So we really cannot keep using decolonization as a metaphor, but what we can do, and again, this is borrowed from Dr.

Maxley before on, we can take an anti-colonial approach to looking at these issues, and we can actively combat colonial logics and colonial mindsets in the way that we're trying to even start to answer some of these questions that we have. And so one thing that I always say is first, find the native peoples where you live, look to indigenous scholars who have experienced looking in your specific bio-region, you know, the region you live in and the specific biological facts of the land on which you live and see what you can do from there. And that's one thing I'll say before anything else.

But after that, you know, because if you do live in the U.S. settler state, there are these overarching systems and structures that are directly impacting the quote-unquote choices we make on a regular basis, whether it's only buy, the stores we go to, there's this overarching issue of consumption and disposability that is directly impacting these political choices that we make.

And so I think being honest with ourselves about those truths, and then doing as much as we possibly can, given our personal access and ability, realities to address those and then responding accordingly, you know, can I be more mindful about when I'm buying produce from the store? Can I do research to see, am I even storing my produce properly so that it doesn't go to waste? Am I looking up to see, are there local

community gardens, farms, state infrastructure that is a place that I can turn to to compost my organics? Is there a place I can turn to where I can look at the precious plastics network for instance and see can I turn all these plastics that I have into some other type of material that could be used? And so a lot of it is really creativity, but a lot of it is just being really

honest about access and equity what we can actually do. Yeah, absolutely well said. And, you know, the consumerist mindset grows out of capitalism, which grows out of colonialism. So these fights are definitely intertwined on our sister podcast, Red Menace. We actually covered that text, decolonization is not a metaphor by Tuck and Yang in depth. Yeah. So if people want more on that, you can go check out our sister show in that episode. Jesse, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. This is a really fascinating conversation. I learned a lot. I know my audience did. Before I let you go, can you let us maybe some more recommendations that you didn't get to mention throughout

this episode for people that want to learn more and then just let listeners know where they can find you and your work online. Absolutely. Well, I guess just quickly it's the easiest thing. If you want to follow me on any social media, my information is at Moon-Twerk. Like, the Moon-Twerk.

Find me there. Very soon, I'll be launching a website where I'm going to be posting some stuff. If you want to email me about that, it's J-E-S-I at Soiled Archives. dot com you can email me there the website is also going to be soiled archives.com to move beyond that um i highly recommend looking up discard studies dot com i'm actually an editor a co-editor there

and discard studies is actually field of study that was developed oh goodness what i don't know what year it is a while ago and it's basically this critical framework where we answer questions about waste and labor, ideology, infrastructure, and power as it relates to, you know, topics that we've been talking about. And moving on from there, say at discard studies.com, we have so many bibliographies, articles, essays, links to people's dissertations, feces, et cetera. So like the one-stop shop for learning more about everything I just talked about is discardstudies. dot com.

So that's one thing I'll say immediately. Aside from that, I don't know if this would be helpful. Could I just start naming some books that I love? Yeah, absolutely. People should read. Please do. Yeah.

One of my favorite books to recommend to people is actually written by the developer and founder of Discard Studies of the Discipline, Dr. Robin Navel, who's at NYU. you. And she wrote this incredible book called Picking Up where she specifically focuses on the Department of Sanitation of New York, but it's ultimately just the central discard studies text. And I recommend that. I recommend I mentioned before. Toxic Communities is another incredible book called Gone Tomorrow that I highly recommend. Waste is information. Waste Siege, which is actually One of my favorite books, and this covers waste colonialism specifically in Palestine and occupied territories that I highly recommend. And that one I specifically recommend because it gets to how waste can be used as a weapon by state forces in a way that people, you know, don't even realize.

We talked about it a bit earlier with, you know, the siting of land hills, the siding of incinerators, and how. how it's disproportionately impacting chronically and the franchise communities. But again, if we go more globally and just look at colonized populations and how they are being impacted, waste as a weapon is the way that this is happening. And the book, Waste Siege is a great point of departure

for learning about that. And actually on the Discard Studies website, we have a reading list called Waste Colonialism and Palestine. where we go into detail about some other sources you can look into for that. But another just really basic recommendation that I have is for people to go to their municipality's recycling and sanitation websites. Learn about the waste infrastructure where you live. You know, what happens when you flush? What happens when sanitation departments come to your community and pick up your trash bins?

I think a lot of people don't realize that when they come to pick it up, in a lot of cases, especially if you live in a bigger city, chances are your quote-unquote trash isn't even ending up where you live. It's something up in other places, like in New York City, for instance. A lot of our trash ends up in places like South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio. And so just looking into those things, seeing what resources are available in your municipalities' websites that tell you, where is this trash going? What is the budget looking like? Are the sanitation workers

in my community being treated equitably or not? So just really starting local and then going global. Yeah. All wonderful, wonderful recommendations. I'll link to as much of that in the show notes as possible. And it's also worth noting that on your Twitter, your pinned tweet is about waste colonialism and inequality in Palestine in particular, which I found to be fascinating. So people interested in that can definitely go check that out. But yeah, thank you. again so much for coming on. I would love to have you back on the show to talk more. I mean, we have other areas of shared interest that we can certainly talk about together. So thank you so much for coming on. I look forward to having you on again. Thank you for having me. I'd love to

come back. Absolutely. I would be Shoshana If I were one of the girls I would be Shoshana Confused and rude Such a special kind of way to be cruel Confused and rude Confused and rude

Confused and rude Karma Camillionaire Chasing the side glowed down Karma chameleonair chasing the side glowed down Confused and rude The owner of a bad attitude

Confused and rude Confused and rude Confused and rude Confused and rude Confused and rude Such a special kind of way to be cool The piranha found their way to the pool Confused and rude

Confused and rude If I were one of the things I'd be American garbage The most beautiful thing The most beautiful American garbage you have ever seen Brand new and bruised Oh, the way to building a better you Brand new and bruised

Confused and bruised and bruised and rude If I were one are the girls I would be so shyna Confused and rude, confused and rude, confused. Hey, I'm Meredith Danberg Ficcarelli. I'm a waste expert and garbage nerd. Today I'll be answering your questions from Twitter. This is waste support. All right. First up, Gold Peril asks, WTF is zero waste, bruh. Zero waste is an approach to resource conservation that recognizes. every step of the supply chain. Everything is made of something. And the point in a zero-waste approach is that there is no burning, so no incineration, and no discharge. So that includes no landfilling,

no materials ending up in the ocean, and no particulate matter or any other impacts from disposal ending up in the air. The term zero-waste comes from the Zero Waste International Alliance. We, as waste experts, garbage nerds, recognize that we need to restructure the entire economy in order to get there, but we're working on it. From Danny Wanny Fo Fannie, Why are landfills slash dumps still a thing? Shouldn't we be able to just launch all our shit into space now? Have you ever seen a rocket launch? There's like fire underneath it because it takes a lot of energy to shoot things into space.

It would be really ill-advised to waste energy to shoot our waste into space when everything's made of something potentially valuable. So this is a bad idea. Don't do this. Lemonhead. Why don't we use volcanoes as waste incinerators? The Zero Waste International Alliance says that we can't use burning to dispose of material. Volcanoes would burn stuff. If we're making something to be able to use it, to be able to just get rid of it by burning it, you're disrespecting all of that value that went into the thing. That includes the human labor,

and it includes all of the natural resources and everything else, the time that went into making the thing. We want to be able to use that value over and over and over. over again. Another reason is that burning waste in incineration facilities can be incredibly dangerous. Harmful toxins are referred to as dioxins and lots of other potential chemicals can be released into the atmosphere. And the communities that live around those incineration facilities can end up with higher levels of cancer, higher levels of asthma. So aside from this recognition that materials have value, we don't want to burn things because it ends up endangering the lives of people and everything else that's alive on the planet.

Yes, but why, though, says, does recycling matter? Tell me it does. Recycling totally matters. Everything is made from something. And so by recycling and by participating in a recycling economy, we are respecting all of the nutrients, all of the labor, all of the emissions that went into producing those things that we hold. And in order to make a new thing, if we use a can as an example,

we have to use many, many, many more resources to make a brand new can out of brand new virgin materials than if we're taking a can that already exists, sending it through a recycling system, and making a new can out of it. And the main thing that we really need to do as part of building a circular economy and moving towards zero waste is to increase access to the ability for people to recycle things, improve infrastructure to make it easier and more affordable to recycle things, and hopefully reduce the travel distance that we need to send things in order for them to get recycled. And also to recognize that some things probably just shouldn't be made. Britain Mays says, why is it so hard to recycle? You are 20 and can't put a plastic bottle in a separate bag from the regular trash,

make it make sense, or putting regular trash in the recycle. You're not alone. Recycling is confusing, and it's not your fault. So I've actually got a couple bins here. a trash bin with a clear bag, recycling bin with a black bag. So this is one of my favorites. We have four different material types here. We've got a wooden stir stick that should be put in the compost, ideally. Anything that was once alive can be composted. The lid is plastic. It's number six. The little triangle that's on plastics that has a number in it, that number is a

resin identification code. So six is a polystyrene plastic. Depending on where you are, different numbers of those recycling codes might be accepted or might not be accepted in your recycling program. This like brown part here is paper, so it should go into the paper recycling. And then the cup is made of paper, but it has a plastic lining to make it watertight. That plastic lining makes this cup really hard to recycle in most recycling programs. So the cup actually belongs in the trash. This cup also actually says this cup is made with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber. That's awesome because post-consumer recycled content.

supports a recycling economy by making products out of recovered materials in waste and in waste lingo and when I'm educating people about waste, I talk about materials literacy, which is the idea of recognizing what the thing you're holding is made of. So if we use this glass jar as an example, glass metal. So two material types. In New York City, the waste stream that I would put this into is a glass metal plastic waste structure. So even though these are different materials, they actually end up in the same place in New York City. Waste streams are different depending on where you are because recycling is municipal. One thing to think about is don't put anything that's soiled with food in the recycling. And then take baby steps as you're working towards zero waste. You're not going to learn it all in the day and that's okay. So Max Black Sales says, question of the day, just how does compost work? I love this question.

Composting is the recycling of organic matter in a controlled environment. So you're taking food scraps and yard waste and mixing them together with air over time, and you're making compost. You don't always have to have food scraps in compost. It can also just be yard waste, but the point is that it's organic matter. And I've got some samples here. So this is a jar, and you can see that this stuff is like moving pretty freely. It smells pretty neutral, smells like earth. I'm looking in here and I can see like a little bit of kind of woody material because my brother is a woodworker and he brings his wood shavings home.

So this is my carbon source and my greens or my nitrogen source are my food scraps. There are micro and macroorganisms that are eating the stuff that I'm mixing together over time. And just like we as people exhale carbon dioxide. So do the microorganisms that are making compost work. Over time, those microorganisms generate heat. And we have a compost thermometer here. This is like a laughably large thermometer. You would not need one this big for a backyard compost bin, but I'm a compost nerd, so I got the big one.

This is used to measure the temperature of the compost, because as those micro and macroorganisms are eating the food scraps, they're creating a parabolic temperature curve. So the temperature starts low and then it starts to increase. the peak, you're reaching what compost people call PFRP or the process to further reduce pathogens. So anything that we discard that was once, you know, alive, whether it's food that might have salmonella or E. coli, potentially harmful bacteria, or even plant pathogens or other pathogens, part of composting is actually like sanitizing the organic matter. And so we measure temperature so that we can make sure that we are reaching this PFRP, 131 degrees Fahrenheit or 55 degrees Celsius, for a minimum of three days or up to 15 days, depending on the type of composting

that you're doing. And then this last example, this is a way more recent sample. I pulled this out just the other day. You can see it's a lot more wet. When your compost has been in the bin for a while or when it's kind of nearing the end of that parabolic temperature curve, nearing the end of its cycle, it should be the consistency of a rung-out sponge. So like if you squeeze it, there shouldn't be drops of water. I'm pretty sure if I squeeze this, some water would fall. But this jar has been closed for a bit. And one of the tests

is if you smell it and it smells like ammonia, it's not ready yet. This smells lovely. So my compost is fine. It's just a little wet. So I would want to add more carbon through the process so that it can absorb some of that moisture. Compost is magic. And by participating in composting, you are also participating in making magic. Ms. Gean-D says people who swim in Lake Ontario will grow a third eye and an extra limb. I do wonder what body of work this person is citing here. It can certainly be dangerous to swim in polluted water bodies.

Bodies of water can be polluted by a lot of different things. In New York City, one of the most common sources of pollution for our water is sewage because of combined sewage overflow, which has to do with the way that our wastewater infrastructure was built hundreds of years ago for a city with far fewer people in it. Now that wastewater infrastructure doesn't have the capacity for the amount of water that we're sending through it. And so anytime it rains, out of I think it's more than 240 combined sewage overflow points, raw sewage just spills into New York City's waterways. BF99 Floyd asks, does biodegradable mean the remains are earth-friendly? Bev, this is a super good question.

Short answer is no. Biodegradable does not automatically mean something is earth-friendly. An orange peel is biodegradable, but you might also get like a piece of packaging that says that it's biodegradable. That could just mean that that piece of packaging is made of some combination of plant-based materials and non-plant-based, like plastic fossil fuel-based materials, and that over time it might break down so that you can't see it anymore. But the plastic kind of polymers, the bonds that are in there at a microscopic level, will just contaminate the soil as micropastics and be there on a human time scale forever. So what you want to look for is certified compostable. That's the language that we're looking for when it comes to packaging

and knowing whether or not it can be composted. Pikesley says, WTF does this mean at BBC News, is a microplastic, a unit of measurement now? Scientists have estimated that 94,000 microplastics per second flow down the river. Microplastic is a term that refers to plastics that are less than 5 millimeters in size. When plastic is in the environment or really anywhere and comes in contact with UV rays, the plastic starts to degrade. It ends up like flaking, like turning into smaller and smaller pieces. There's microplastic everywhere.

Honestly, our clothes, unless they're made of 100% natural fibers, like silk or wool or cotton, they are producing microplastics like whenever you move. One of the solutions is to reuse things that aren't made of plastic because plastic degrades over time. We do need to work systemically to make it so that it's easier for people to not do things that produce microplastics. Yala Wael says, where will the trash go when all the landfills are full? If we continue with the way things are going now, which is that a lot of very large companies are buying up land and building more landfills and charging a lot of money to be able to collect waste. When the landfills are full, if we continue on this trend, we'll just have

more landfills. And eventually the whole world will be a landfill. Won't that be fun? Kevin Creachie, how can Amazon do a better job of packing shipments? So one of the things that Amazon can do is certainly improve the amount of space that they're using, maybe resize some of their packaging to be more efficient. I would love if every packaging item that Amazon used was made of 100% post-consumer recycled content. That would be huge because it would mean that Amazon, this massive behemoth who has incredible purchasing power, would be demanding from the global recycling economy an incredible amount of recovered material. So like bales and bales and bales of recovered cardboard, recovered plastic. If we could like just start there, that would be awesome.

I actually brought a prop along that's perfect for this. Zip, zip. This is a zippy pouch that I made out of Amazon Fresh packaging, and actually, the liner is made of those airpack thingies. This is from Tamar Haspel. How do I responsibly dispose of my ridiculous collection of defunct slash obsolete electronics? Good job hoarding, and I'm glad that you didn't put these right in your waste bin.

This is going to depend on where you live, so you should look up where you live and then electronics recycling. Some places will have electronics recycling drop-offs or depots where you can bring these things. Sometimes it's an event that's hosted maybe quarterly or maybe annually that is also for hazardous materials. Sometimes municipalities and organizations will lump those things together to make it easier for people. For some of these things, you might be able to look up whether a local big box store or store that sells electronics might accept some of these things. Recognize also lithium ion batteries can be dangerous and can spontaneously combust if they're not stored correctly. So everyone should kind of like check the random drawer that has their

random electronics in it. Remove the batteries and get those recycled if you're going to kind of hold on the rest of the stuff because you don't want to catch things on fire. Beppywop says, what's the proper way to recycle Nickelodeon slime? I have no idea what Nickelodeon slime is made of. Maybe flushing it down the toilet, assuming that it's food safe, just don't put it in your recycling bin. It doesn't belong there. So when is flushing something down the toilet appropriate? If I have made food and forgot about it in the fridge, flushing it down the toilet's a pretty good option. If you don't have access to composting, I put an asterisk there because, you know, you don't want to flush like a loaf of bread down the toilet. Bad idea.

But if it's chilly, for example, it's probably okay. Infrastructure is local. So depending on where you are, your wastewater infrastructure might not be able to handle the additional input. So I'm not suggesting that everyone go and flush all their food scraps down the toilet. That's not the thing to do. Use the websites of your municipal entities is going to be different depending on where you are. Danny IWall 16 says I really, really, really want to start a recycling program at work, but I've no idea where to start. Generally, buildings have waste collection.

So that's the first step, is figuring out who's picking up the waste from where you are, making sure that you have bins to collect the recycling in. Of course, understanding what should go into those bins. so that might be looking at your municipality's website or talking to your property manager, ideally getting some signage and doing some education. So teaching everyone else how to participate, those are some of the foundational steps. All right, that's it. That's all the questions. I hope you learned something.

Till next time.