The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens - Sian Sutherland: "Innovating the Business of Plastics"

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

On this episode, Nate is joined by Sian Sutherland, a leader in the movement towards reducing the overconsumption of plastic and its waste. The modern era is dependent on fossil fuels for many reasons - one of the most covertly ubiquitous ones being plastic. Everyday we are surrounded by it - encasing our food, woven in the threads of our clothes, and even permeating into the water that we drink. How do we begin to break off this addiction to the convenience and utility of plastics? How does this connect to the larger implications of a society embedded in a linear, consumption-based system dependent on growth? What role can industry, governments, and individuals each play in creating structural shifts to reduce our reliance on plastic - and ultimately return to a slower, more circular way of life? About Sian Sutherland Sian Sutherland is Co-founder of A Plastic Planet, one of the most recognised and respected organizations tackling the plastic crisis. More recently, she also co-founded PlasticFree, the first materials and systems solutions platform, empowering the 160m global creatives to design waste out at the source. Sian was awarded the Female Marketer of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, and British Inventor of the Year. In 2023 at the UN Plastics Treaty negotiations (INC2), in partnership with Plastic Soup Foundation, A Plastic Planet launched the Plastic Health Council, bringing expert scientists to the negotiating process with the irrefutable proof of plastic chemicals impact on human health. Passionately pro-business and solutions focused, Sian believes the plastic crisis gives mankind a rare gateway to change both materials and systems to create a different future for next generations. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jTs6KejhSg4  More Info & Show Notes: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/89-sian-sutherland 

You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. That's me. On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. In addition to climate change and biodiversity loss, more and more people are understanding that plastic is one of the most important threats to our natural ecosystems and to human health. Today's guest, Sean Sutherland, is a leading industry activist in charge of a plastic planet where they were using a pro-business, pro-solutions approach with an ultimate goal

of helping the world turn off the plastic tap. A plastic planet uses a three-pronged framework of reduce, refill, and replace as a call to action for business, media, and global policymakers to pull the plug on plastic production. Sean and I take a deeper dive on what's going on with the growing awareness and response to our plastics crisis. I'm pleased to introduce Sean Sutherland. Sean Sutherland, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure to be here. Thank you, Nate. We have mutual friends working in the plastics, endocrine-disrupting space, but this is the first time we've ever spoken. I am told you have a long and diverse list of careers in your life before your current invocation.

Can you just introduce yourself by giving a bit of background of who you are and what you've done. Yes, thank you. I'll try and keep it brief because I'm pretty old, so it's actually quite a long history now. So Sean Sutherland, co-founder of a plastic planet and plastic free, what you would probably call a serial entrepreneur. So my very first career was in advertising,

but I left advertising quite young, 25, set up my first business. For some crazy reason, I decided I was going to open a restaurant in Soho in London. Zero experience. Never lifted a plate before in my life. But it was very fortunate and that's a pattern really that happens through my careers of pulling together a very good team that did know what they were doing and then leading them. And we won a Michelin star on our first year, which is amazing and terrible in the same breath. Because then as soon as you get one star, you have to keep it or get a second star.

And everything you've ever seen about kitchen nightmares is absolutely true. I lived that way. But it was also a wonderful experience that I learned a huge amount about business. And then I married my restaurant manager, left that business when I was 30, went back to my marketing routes, set up a design agency, which slightly bizarrely now I look back and think, specialising in packaging. And now, if you know what I do now, you can see the irony of that. And we focused myself, my creative co-founder, focus in the two areas that we loved. because we wanted to work in a small boutique way on stuff that interested us, and it wasn't really cat food. It was things in the beauty world and things in the alcohol drink world. So we did a lot of work in those two areas.

We also went through our baby-making years. And through those years, we realized that there was this massive niche in a very, very saturated market called skincare, where you fall pregnant and there is nothing there for you. In fact, it's the opposite of that. everybody is fearful of the fact that you're pregnant. So we develop products for ourselves in the most truly selfish way. And then years later, recognized this niche was still there, big enough to drive a bus through.

Even though it's a relatively small market, everyone's got a mother. And what does she use when she's putting that 30-inch stretch on her tummy in 40 weeks and hopefully losing it again? So we launched our own brand. And we launched that in the US. So that was our biggest market. and I ran that brand for the next 11 years. So I mentioned that, Nate, because you can imagine, no plastic saints sitting here.

How many millions of plastic bottles, jars, am I personally responsible running that company for pumping out into the environment? Shocking to say this now, was not on my list to think about what happened to them next. But of course, 10 years is a long time in the life of plastic awareness. And then it was at the end of running that skincare brand

that I had my personal epiphany because I was asked to advise the Hong Kong board of the documentary filmmakers who were working on a feature documentary about plastic in the ocean. And so that was a very, very fast learning curve for me, working with the marine biologists and the health scientists. And it was at a time when nobody was interested in the topic of plastic in the ocean. Nobody knew. It was pre the infamous Blue Planet 2 screening where the world really woke up. And it was at a screening that we were hosting of a plastic ocean.

That was the name of the documentary. Luckily, we had David Attenborough coming, so a few people were coming just because he's such a legend. And it was then that we realized we're about to show a documentary that's going to make people feel scared, angry, and guilty. And yet tomorrow, they're going to push their trolleys through the supermarket, and they're going to fill them up with plastic because we have zero choice. And that was the moment that myself, my co-founder, Frederica Magnuson, crazy Danish woman, decided that we could perhaps create a different kind of business model, not a charity, not an NGO, but an organization that could go forward working with governments and industry with this very, very simple goal to ignite and inspire the world to turn off the plastic tap. You said it was kind of uncommon given that you were a plastic sinner with your beauty products. and some of the other things. But maybe it takes someone that's so deep in an industry to recognize and have that epiphany.

Because I worked on Wall Street in finance. And so I saw the belly of the beast per se. So maybe it's almost a necessity for people to really be swinging for the fences on the issues of our day, to have those people come from the deep experience of the industry that they're now trying to ship. I think it does give you a different kind of credibility when you're dealing with business. You know, when we work with other beauty brands or consumer goods companies like Unilever, and I can say to them, you know, I co-founded and ran a skincare brand in their market, I know how hard it is to change.

I also now know the imperative to change, but I do recognise it's difficult. And so I think you're right. There's very different kinds of activism. And in some ways, I think of us as, you know, you need the Greenpeace kind of activist. You need the people who are going to board the boat and hold people to account in a very aggressive way. You need those kind of extremists. And in some ways, they are a huge benefit to us because we are the safe option.

So people will sit at the table with us because we understand and we welcome the fact that business is the tool of change. So you're the externality diplomat. In some ways, yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Or as somebody from Unilever said to me, in some ways you're a critical friend. And they didn't mean that I was essential. But I understood what they meant,

that I understand how difficult it is for them, but I'm really going to hold their toes to the fire now. This has been on my mind a lot lately because more and more people are paying, attention to the meta crisis and how everything fits together. But they're very tribal and single issue. And if we have a huge amount of humans that deeply care about the environment and plastics and biodiversity and climate change, but then a huge amount of business leaders that are trying to develop and sell products demanded by humans around the world, they're often not really

talking to each other. They're very firm in their objectives and their plans and their values, but there isn't a whole lot of overlap, which is a problem. A serious problem. And it's extraordinary to me just in the world of plastic. It's now five and a half years since Blue Planet was screened. The world woke up to the problem of plastic in the ocean. Every consumer goods company came out with some kind of plastic commitment and pledge. Most of them, had a 2025 deadline for that. Not a single one of them is succeeding. And there is so little real collaboration between industry. And every industry will say to me, we can't fix this alone. And I'll say, great, but are you actually talking to your competition? You're right. Because

we have to change the entire system, not just the material here. Plastic is an extraordinary gateway to systems change. And yet people are still not ready to shift away from their competitive mindset. And that's what's really got to change. So we're going to get into that in this conversation. But first,

I have had several guests on Martin Scheringer, Shauna Swan, and others who have talked specifically about the impacts from plastic pollution on humans and on wild creatures and ecosystems. Can you give

like a whirlwind, a brief recap for those might not be familiar with the serious damage that plastic and the plastic ecosystem can cause on our economy and our planet. It's very easy for us to think of plastic as something that is a material in itself, like aluminium or copper or cobalt. You know, plastic is not on the periodic table. Plastic is a mixture of chemicals. Many of them are toxic, known toxic. And yet when we look at, when we talk about plastic, we always treat it like it's a material in itself rather than what does it actually comprise of. And you look at the amount of chemicals that are used within plastic. 13,000 chemicals

are used to make plastic to give it its extraordinary qualities of being rigid and shiny or being stretchy like saran wrap, cling film. So in order to, you know, or to use it in your yoga pants. So to give plastic all these extraordinary qualities, we add a huge amount of chemicals to them. Half of those 13,000 chemicals have never been tested on the impact for human health. So this is where the problem lies.

And we are in total denial of the impact on human health. And I know many of the scientists that you just referred to and people like Professor Pete Myers and obviously Professor Terry Collins from Carnegie Mellon, who are part of our plastic health council where we are trying to give them a more global stage more mic share to really get this message out because their message is very clear

it is five past midnight we cannot ring the bell any louder than we are all you will ever hear is we need more research yeah I wonder if plastic I wonder if this credit card size worth of plastic that we're consuming every week I wonder if it has an impact on us I wonder if the fact that there is plastic in placentine

now. I wonder the fact that there is microplastics twice as much in a baby poop as there is in an adult poop. There's plastic in blood. We know that plastic is a mixture of chemicals. So all of these, the merchants of doubt that you will hear, largely the fossil fuel industry, who will continue to purport this rumor that we need more research. We will always need more research, but we have so much research already. We're just not listening to it. So these scientists, these health scientists who have been doing this very deep research for many, many years and who are very concerned about the impact on cognitive disorders, autoimmune disease, things like autism, Aschburgers, all of those conditions that we've seen a massive rise.

The huge impact on fertility on heart disease, cancer, all of these things are caused through some of the chemicals that we use within plastic. and a lot of those chemicals you know already are called endocrine disrupting chemicals. Our endocrine system is vital to how our entire body operates. And when we disrupt it, we disrupt many, many health systems. And we are doing this now knowingly. And this is the problem. So when we look at a plastic planet and we look, what are the levers of change?

What are those tipping points where we can actually persuade industry that this is not a, nice to because of a bit of pollution or a turtle with a straw up its nose. But this is an imperative of a have-to that we can take to our shareholders, our stakeholders, that we have to move away from plastic. One of those tipping points for us is the impact on human health and this mounting body of science and we need to give it a lot more airtime. So the person that introduced us, a mutual friend, has told me over a beer that he could make a strong argument that he could make a strong argument while why plastics endocrine disrupting chemicals are a greater threat to our future than climate change, which was quite a strong statement.

I think there's a multiple, we've got multiple threats right now. You know, we talk about this, the multiple crises that we all face. And we talk about artificial intelligence and what that might mean. Obviously, the climate crisis, the endocrine disrupting chemists, the amount of chemicals that we're using in everything, the destruction to our soil, the fundament that we grow our food in. We know the damage that we cause in the ocean, the biodiversity of the ocean. And chemicals are really need to take a fair share of the blame here. I was talking to a scientist the other day and he said, what's amazing is he used to work at Dow Chemical and he's now a professor

of green chemistry. And he said, it just suddenly dawned on me one day that we work in these labs and we're incredibly good at hazmat gear and we can protect ourselves and we work on all these really powerful chemicals and then we release them onto the market. We release them into the environment. What are we thinking that we should do this? When nature, as we know,

when you give something back to nature, there is no waste in nature. Nature is the most, of course, the perfect circle. Everything is the nutrient for the next stage of growth. But nature is binary. And what we give back to nature is either a food, a nutrient, or it's a toxin, a poison. And we think there's this gray area where it's maybe a little less bad, maybe bioplastic's a little less bad. But actually nature's very simple.

It's either a toxin or it's a nutrient. And a lot of the chemicals that we are pumping out daily, I think I read somewhere, we make a new chemical every 10 minutes. So we're pumping out all of these chemicals with no really. regard for the impact on nature, as if nature can just handle it, and clearly she can't. So I have lots of questions for you, Sean, but let me just ask, how do you even frame this problem in your mind? Is it that we need to reduce the scale of human consumption, or we need to reduce the scale of things containing plastics, or we need to find alternatives, uh, that are not toxins, but either inert or nutrients to the system?

Or how do we even create a framework to think about what we face with respect to plastics and the human economy? The reason that I am so obsessed by plastic is I think it's the perfect gateway to the climate crisis, to the biodiversity crisis, to many of the things that we are facing right now. And it is that because the invention of plastic broke the system. And it's such a recent problem. It's our generation. It's my generation that has caused this mess. This is not something that has evolved over hundreds of years.

And if you think of the way that we used to consume and the amount of waste that we used to individually, it's not just about a growing population. You know, I remember I grew up in a family of six. We had one metal bin. We dragged it out into the street every week. It was rarely full. My boys have left home now. I live in an apartment with my husband.

We fill a bin every two days with packaging materials, with all of this stuff that we just use momentarily and then throw away. So for me, the invention of plastic broke that system of repair, refill, renew, rent, share, all of those things that used to be just standard practice. for us. And it broke the system so simply that we could actually, it's amazingly cheap for us to make these things now that we can use them once and we can chuck them in a bin for some mythical, magical recycling ferry to supposedly recycle. And in the world of plastic, that is simply not happening. So I think when you look at the climate crisis and you look at what has allowed us to get to these giddy levels of hyperconsumption, obviously in the rich West, and what that has caused with the climate crisis.

Why are those coal-fired factories in China? Why, over the recent decades, have they been pumping out more and more stuff to export to us for us to use ones to throw into a bin? Plastic is the material that we can lay a huge amount of blame at because it broke the system. And on the same note, by divesting from plastic, by weaning ourselves from plastic,

which we are so addicted to now, the new systems that we are going to have to invent, not just systems, but the new materials that we will adopt, I think give us a very exciting glimpse into a different future. So that's why I think of it as a gateway. And it's also, there are no plastic deniers out there. It's not like carbon. I don't know. I can't see it. I can't feel it.

I can touch it. How can me? How can I impact the carbon crisis? Plastic? I feel bad about it every single day. I'm complicit in the problem. every time I buy something, and I don't want it anymore. But what we need is to push governments to create laws that then create this level playing field for industry

to be able to wean themselves off fossil fuel plastic and change the system. We used more material, more natural resource in the last six years than we did in the entire 20th century. And part of this is because we've got this culture of single use. and that's what plastic gave us. And the amount of plastic that exists today is greater than the weight of all the animals on the earth. Bonkers, they? Yeah, and it's never going away.

Every piece of plastic ever made, and less burnt, which is simply burning of fossil fuel, and we know where that's got us today, every piece of plastic still exists on the planet. And I read, like, a plastic milk jug will degrade only after 800 years, but when it degrades, it'll degrade into microplastics. Is that correct?

Correct. So it doesn't actually degrade down to nothing. Plastic simply breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces. And microplastics, as you say, but then also nanoplastics. So because plastic is so omnipresent in our lives, and it isn't just about packaging, it isn't about the plastic products, it's paint on the wall, it's, It's all of our furniture. So we're inhaling it as well.

So I'm going to have to amend one of my taglines that our modern economic system is turning billions of barrels of ancient sunlight into micro-leaders of dopamine plus CO2 and microplastics. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So go ahead. No, I was going to say, I love the dopamine expression because for me it is. You know, our hyperconsumption, it just, if you step back, I don't know, did you ever, Nate, did you ever watch that film Minimalism?

No. It was a documentary on Netflix, maybe 10 years ago now. And I remember watching it was one of my sons. And it showed this whole rise in hyperconsumption and how it really kicked off in the late 70s, early 80s. And for him, it was shocking, thinking, wow, I thought it had always been this way. I've only ever lived in the world where we buy like we do now. But it's a fantastic documentary about these two maybe people that you even knew, Wall Street guys who decided, you know, having all this stuff was really weighing them down. So they're divested, they got rid of all their stuff and they traveled around America with very, very few things.

And they interviewed many people and they wrote this book called Minimalism. And there was a quote in there that I'll never forget, which was that whole thing about the dopamine hit of the buy now, buy now. And, you know, I just need more stuff because this makes me feel safe and successful. and secure and it'll make me happy. And this line was, we will never have enough of something we don't actually need. And that is so true, isn't it? And again, it comes back to fast fashion, for example, the amount of clothes that we wear. We have enough clothing on the planet to clothes six future generations already.

And yet still, the stores are full of the latest best things that we should be buying for that dopamine here. So fashion and clothes is a microcosm of our overconsumption because there's dopamine and unexpected reward there. I like this shirt. It's one of my favorite shirts, but I've been wearing it for five years now. Maybe I need something different, even though this one is fully functional. That is a driver of many of our consumption decisions, yes? Totally. And the fact that fashion, it makes me very sad.

I love clothes. I love fashion. And yet fashion is fashion. gone from something which was about beauty and craft and enhancement and I don't know, maybe self-esteem. It's gone from that to being one of the most depleted, pollutive, exploitative industries on the planet. And that's happened in a very short space of time. Fast fashion couldn't exist without fossil fuels. So is there a lot of plastics or chemicals involved in clothes and fashion? I'm not aware. Yeah. And most people don't. If you go to your wardrobe,

today, maybe yours is different to most, but anybody's wardrobe, 70% of that wardrobe is plastic bags just hanging there, because 70% of all our textiles globally are now made out of fossil fuel plastic. Polyester, anything beginning with a poly, is definitely going to be plastic. Every bit of thread, even if you're wearing, if your shirt is made out of cotton there, I guarantee it's held together with polyester. So that entire fashion industry, it's very, very difficult now to make things that are entirely plastic-free. And the other interesting thing that's happened in the world of clothing is that we think performance, technical garments, the North Faces, the Patagonas of the world, you know, the Lulu lemons of the world, we think that we can only

get performance by using synthetics. And actually, if you look at how do you get true breathability, true flexibility, true comfort, nothing feels as good as a natural fiber. So we've gone this slightly strange direction thinking technical equals plastic, that's the only way. And one of the brands that we work with is very interesting because they are trying to fight that system in a very David and Goliath way of saying, we're going to be the very first brand to uncompromisingly bring out a range of outdoor wear, of sportswear that is going to be entirely plastic-free. And having worked with them, I recognize, wow, it is so hard to do. It isn't just the threads. It's the coatings. It's the dyes. It's everything is based on plastic.

So is it the same way as fossil fuels have subsidized and built a metabolic global, just-in-time delivery system for products? Because it's now cheaper to do that than have your local hardware store be an expert on things. You have Amazon and Walmart because of the fossil transportation subsidy. Is clothing the same way? Like if you were to make natural fiber clothing, it might be better for the breathability and the other things you mentioned, but would it be significantly more expensive? It depends what you're buying, because the same really with anything that's made out of synthetics. I mean, how much is a Patagonia jacket? It's it's not cheap and a lot of it is going to be made out of plastic.

So it really depends what you're buying, but fundamentally what we've got a question is how much do we need? So would you rather buy things that fall apart in a year's time or would you rather buy things that you genuinely love that you repair and you have for generations? And it's funny how somebody like King Charles is now known for the fact that he still wears the same shoes he's been wearing for 30 years. they've just been incredibly well looked after. And the same suits and all of those things.

And he's gone from being somebody that we all thought was a little bit of a fuddy-duddy tree hugger to somebody who is actually the epitome of living a sustainable life. I think to answer your question, I would prefer to buy something that would last a long time, even if it was more costly and it was available. but that's the thing. I don't think people have the options. Our stores are filled with the planned obsolescence sort of gadgets and things that are cheap and easy. So I think a lot of people would answer your question and the affirmative they would want things that would last a lot longer, but they're not available. It's also, they're not available in abundance. And that's what

we need. And it's also, it's not the norm anymore. What is considered normal now is to pop into a prime mark or a target and pick something up that's cheap. And actually look at that. If I buy one, I get another one half price. So we are bred, you know, we're bred to consume. And that is the problem now is everything is about more. And we have to recognize that actually how much lighter we would feel. That's why, you know, the Maricondo whole thing of tidiness and holding things, and do they spark you with joy. That's why it had such a massive impact, I think, on many people because they recognised they're just weighed down by all of this stuff. And how is better to have a few things that you really, really love that create the core of your wardrobe or, you know,

your home furnishings and all of those things, that you can then just accentuate every now and then. You know what the the key is to getting to that place? I don't know that people have the fortitude or the mental shortcuts to do that by themselves. But if you surround yourself with three or four or five

people who are more minimalist and they care about simple things and valuing these five things, that cultural evolution can happen really fast. Like I want to live like they do. Yeah, I agree. We were talking today actually about that saying that you are the some part of the five people that you spend most time with. And so choose those people wisely. Don't make them the hyperconsumptive people who are just on Instagram the whole time.

Buy, bye, buy, by, getting that little dopamine here. That's not good for you. It's why I'm one-fifth duck and one-fifth dog. I won't on switch fifth. You mentioned earlier, Sean, that recycling has culturally gotten a name for being a popular option to reuse plastic and therefore keep it from polluting. Yet you and your colleagues, from what I understand at Plastic Planet, argue that it's not a solution at all and that actually it may exacerbate the problem. Can you unpack this and explain why you think that? I think recycling is the fig leaf of consumerism. It appeases our guilt.

It makes us feel that perhaps it's going in to have a useful second life. And with many materials, that is true. With metals, particularly aluminium, you know, 71% of every can you pick up is recycled aluminium. It is infinitely recyclable. It doesn't downgrade every time you do it. Glass, very good. We're not very good at recycling. it, but it is recyclable in the right way.

Paper, pulp, all of those things. Those are the materials that fit into a recycling stream. Plastic does not. And the reason for that is you only ever downcycle plastic. It was never invented to be a material that would ever be recycled. So you downgrade it every single time. You can never recycle it more than once, maybe twice, if you're lucky. And so, but it's a little placebo pill that we have been swallowing for decades.

because when the plastics industry say, we don't have a plastic pollution problem, we've got a recycling problem, we need to really invest in recycling. And when you get the likes of, forgive me for mentioning a name, but when we get the likes of Coca-Cola, saying, if only we could persuade this lazy consumer

to put the bottle in the right bin, then suddenly it's our problem. And we feel like we're the reason, the recycling system isn't quite working, and we're not using the bins, right? everybody is suddenly obsessed about being a good recycler. And the reality is most of that plastic that you put in the recycling bin, 91% of it has never and will never get recycled globally

because only 9% of any plastics being recycled. The US, particularly less than 5% last year was recycled in the US. And in the UK, we are not... What happens to the other 95%? It is landfill or it's exported. So the US are the biggest per capita producers of plastic waste. The UK are number two in that sorry league. And we are both massive exporters of our plastic waste to other countries offshoring our dirt.

That's why I talk about waste imperialism of thinking other people can deal with our trash. So we have to stop pretending that recycling is the answer because all it's allowed the plastics industry, the fossil fuel industry, to do, it's continued to pump it out at the tap and have our eye on the wrong end of the pipe thinking we need to recycle more. It's a complete myth. So I heard on one of your prior talks in researching this,

you mentioned waste imperialism. So I'm obviously familiar with resource imperialism where the global north finds energy and rare earth materials in countries in the global south and, you know, takes advantage, et cetera, but what is waste imperialism? Could you unpack that a bit? The sheer fact that we do not deal with our own dirt in our own country.

And one of the things that we really push governments for is that we need to ban the export of plastic waste. And until very recently, export of plastic, and if you've seen some of the containers and what they're filled with, used nappies, coat hangers, We're not talking about clean PUT bottles here that are shipped to countries like historically to Malaysia, to Myanmar, to Mozambique, to countries that have no infrastructure for handling their waste. That's why it's an imperialist attitude. I've seen some pictures of Malaysia and Indonesia, of the lakes and the rivers and the oceans are just, it looks like there's more plastic and dirty nappies or whatever than water in some cases.

maybe those are unique photos that were placed that way. But it's, you know, when I see those photos, I think they use a lot of plastic in Malaysia, but you're suggesting that some of that is imported from the UK and the US. Definitely. You know, we export, I think I was just looking at a report earlier today. 31% of our exports from the UK go to Turkey. So that's us in a very developed, rich country like the UK, sending it to Turkey, where many reports have proven it is being burnt on the roadsides of Turkish villages. So that's the plastic waste.

That's the rubbish that we put in our bin. The other side of waste imperialism, sorry, do you want to say something? No, I just wanted to grimace. Keep going. The other side of it is when we talk about textiles and clothing. And I don't know, Nate, if you have seen some of those images of the pristine, beautiful Atacama Desert. And that Atacama Desert now, it is like a graveyard of fast fashion. And you can see, as far as the eye can see, mountains and mountains of discarded clothing. What?

Wait, what country is this? In Chile. In Chile. Yeah. And if you look at, if you look at, there was a country. There's one town in Ghana, in North Africa, that receives 15 million items of discarded clothing every single week. 40% of them are considered waste immediately and burnt.

You can imagine how much plastic that is. So all of these loopholes of us thinking that we're giving stuff away or we're popping things into a recycling stream that exists, we have to wake up. We are creating billions of tons of waste. So this is where we have to go back to can plastic and the problem of plastic be that catalyst for us to rethink how we use resources in every way. I thought I knew kind of what you were going to talk about, but this is that deja vu feeling that when I get when I have a guest that I've never spoken to before, that I have this little pit in my stomach that I'm learning something new that's horrible about the world that I didn't know an hour ago. but moving on to your work that's addressing the problem. Okay, so how do you think about as your organization, a plastic planet?

How do you begin to think about a response to this issue that incorporates multiple aspects of society? Because it's not only the individuals and it's not only the governments and it's not only the corporations, right? I mean, how do you even begin to structure the problem before you and your organization and aligned organizations tackle it? As you can imagine, as an entrepreneur, I believe in the power of business and business is the tool of change. And much as we should have much stronger leadership from our governments, it's not happening and we can't wait for it to happen. And ultimately, governments do what industry wants. So we need to look at industry as being that tool of change. And I almost think of it as like a burger.

You know, when we talk about where's the burden of responsibility here? I flip it into a burger. And at the bottom of the burger, you've got the consumer. You've got you and me, the shopper. This is not our problem. And I think for too long, the onus of guilt has been put upon us to feel bad about the plastic crisis, all of these problems. Ultimately, we buy what we are sold. It's industry's job to sell us something.

different and it's government's job to mandate the industry do that faster. So the top of that CD bun is of course governments who need to create stronger legislation, better fiscal policy, create a framework that give business certainty because the juicy burger, maybe it's vegan, whatever, in the middle, that juicy bit is industry and this is where we get really excited because this is where we can make change happen. But we need governments to give industry certainty so that they know which path should they tread. Because right now, globally, it's very difficult for industry to know. I don't know, you know, is there going to be a more onerous plastic tax?

Will extend it produce a responsibility mean that plastic is no longer the cheaper option? Is this UN Global Plastics Treaty actually going to force me to change? And governments aren't helping industry in any way. So kind of understandably, if you run an organisation like Mondalese or Unilever or P&G a lot of people are trading water, kind of doggie paddle, you know, in the shallows, waiting to either have certainty or for something to happen that means that they have to, not. It's a nice to. And a lot of the work that we do is how can we create the threat of legislation, the liability of the impact on human health. So all of these things will motivate business to change faster. and that's say 30% of our work and then the 70% is and then how do we help them with solutions?

Because I don't think it's good enough as an entrepreneur to call for a ban as we have in Europe on the little packets, sachets, a trillion of those pumped out every single year. They go something like 11 times to the moon and back. Every single one still exists on the planet. It is the way that big brands penetrate developing markets because it's an affordability issue. anyone who's been to Indonesia or Thailand will see the amount of those little sachets that are sold by Western brands. So to call for a ban on those, because that's a pernicious use of plastic and we have to stop, we will also, in this twin track approach, work with some of the biggest users of sachets, and that is Unilever and Kraft Heinz, you know, the little ketchup sachets.

How can we work with them and help them solve the problem quicker? So here's a hypothetical situation that I often think about that would work, except socially it wouldn't. But mechanically, it would work that if we told industry and consumers, but specifically business, that oil would be $500 a barrel in 2033. So, you know, eight to ten times more expensive for energy for non-eastern. renewable energy. You have 10 years to prepare for that. But when that happens, oil is going to be 10 times more expensive than it is today, that that would create innovation and people would use non-renewable inputs to come up with products. And I think business would adapt to that if they really believed it would happen. I wonder if the same sort of thing could happen.

Of course, we understand the social and political hurdles to what I just said. But in the in the plastics industry, if there would be some massive tax or penalty by using plastics 10 years from now, could industry design ways around that, even if it ended up costing the consumer more, there would be more options and there would be more non-fossil chemical inputs into products. Any comments on that? I'm going to vote for you and try and get you into power so that you can make that happen. If I was in power, though, if I was in power, what would happen is nine years from now I would no longer be in power and whoever replaced me would repeal my idea. But go on.

Yeah, you're right. That's a sorry state of the political system that we have globally. I think you're absolutely right. Imagine, I mean, if you think man invented a material that lasts forever, how extraordinary is that? Who knew that we could do that? Did we put it on a pedestal? Do we price it like gold? Do we use it for things that we need it, need to last forever? Do we respect it? No, we treat it like rubbish. Literally, throw it in the bin, throw it in the street, use it for things that we need for moments, even though we know it lasts forever. So that's the madness that. of how we use plastic. Imagine if we did. Yeah, it's so bonkers, isn't it, when you step back, and we will look back, generations will look back, and they'll think a couple, many things.

One of them will be, why did we have a market which is about selling water in plastic bottles? In countries that have a tap and could filter their water very easily, we will just think that was mad. Plastic itself, the misuse of plastic, we will definitely rue the day Future generations will not thank us for what we've done with plastic.

But imagine if we did price it like gold, exactly as you said. Because what's happened is because it's so cheap, so incredible, it is a miracle material, albeit toxic and indestructible, we haven't bothered to invent any other materials. So for the last 50 years, imagine if technology had not even bothered. Hey, we've got a telephone, it's connected to the wall, it's amazing. I mean, why would we even need anything that's better than that? And so in many ways I look at, you know, technology has served us incredibly, but also it's failed us because it's just given me a massive amount of power that makes me buy more and more stuff and 147 carat is in that little handheld device. But what technology hasn't done is take us to a better future.

It hasn't taken us to a world of materials that can fit into nature's true circularity of growth in nutrients, growth in nutrients. And that's where we need the investment now is in that new world of materials. The new world of let's reuse things more. One of the projects we're working on here that I'm so excited about is creating the first standardized packaging that will be used by competitive brands and businesses that go into a circular system. So if you're buying a three-ounce bottle of shampoo, then that three-ounce bottle of shampoo is the same bottle that will be called Dove one day and be called, I don't know, Trezame the next day, trying to think of U.S. brands, the next day, because it's the same model. And you and I are not buying the bottle, we're buying the stuff inside the bottle.

And as soon as we can change that thinking and create this true circular system where packaging is a service, not the thing that you buy and then throw in the bin, making us complicit in the problem, then that's a true system change that I think if we could make that happen fast, and normalize it, that's the nirvana. Less natural resource, less energy needed, no waste. So in that scenario, I use the three-ounce shampoo bottle, and I'm done with the shampoo, which is what I wanted. What do I do with the bottle if this all fans out? Yep. So that bottle, because what will never wean ourselves off is convenience,

because we have been, you know, we've got very addicted to convenience. And there is not, time is money. And I don't want to take loads of bottles back to the supermarket and refill them and take time at a machine to refill them. And God bless the lovely little refill stores, but there is not a viable, a financially successful, scalable refill model on the planet. They're all, when big brands do them, they're all marketing. What we have to have instead is systems that are massive scale. with thousands of drop-off points where your three-ounce bottle of shampoo,

sorry, three-ounce is probably a bit little for the US, but let's call it the three-ounce bottle of shampoo, you then can drop back at a Starbucks. And you are rewarded for dropping it because it's all about a reward system. So if you can take it back to Starbucks or in time, in your kitchen, you will have a reusable bin. Because why is your bin simply about waste?

It's the same people. come in to collect your domestic waste or a commercial waste that could just collect the reusable put them into a centralized system of washing and redistribution bobs your uncle so those little bottles um you're right i don't have anything that's three ounce probably 10 ounce but those little bottles then they're not melted and and and reformed they're actually uh hygienically washed and then maybe even a new label on it. It might be a different company or something. Exactly right.

See, that makes total sense. So are you finding success? Is this something exciting that's happening? The good news is that a lot of the big brands that I've mentioned already, all of them have signed up to say we know that this has to be the future. We don't know quite how to get there. We know that somebody has to build the system. So we are working with the organization that's building the system.

which is the cooperative that is responsible for that logistics of collection, washing, redistribution. And then the brands simply lease their packaging. They don't even need to own it anymore. They lease the packaging from the centralised system. And then as a shopper, all I get is reward. I get an enhanced, elevated experience. I've now got a beautiful aluminium or a stainless steel bottle that I know I'm not having to put into a waste bin and be part of the problem anymore. So I've got something that feels better, more substantial.

So I've got the products that I love. So nothing, no compromise for me, it was pre-filled. I didn't have to go and fill it anywhere. All I need to do is drop it off at a number of many, many places. And for doing that, I get rewarded. So we have to make it a win-win. And I could see how global education and environmental consciousness of what is happening with the natural world and plastic pollution would help.

But it's not essential for this model to work because even people that don't necessarily hold the environment prominent in their values would get the reward and get some economic benefit from a new cultural model of using containers for the things that they use. Yeah. And we have to do it at scale. and it has to be with the mass brands, not just the niche expensive brands, because we have to make it the new normal. So that has to happen super fast.

In France, for example, they are mandating that 20% of supermarkets over a certain size, 20% of those supermarket floor space has to be given over to refill, because they know that if they don't make that happen, it won't become normal. It'll be niche, and that won't work. So I understand the consumer's role here, and the role of industry, what does government have to do with plans such as this? Why are they essential as well?

Because they need to create the framework of fiscal policy and legislation that mandate that these things happen. And we vote governments in to protect us, to run our countries, to keep us safe. I think that they are failing in this. They are failing in this because generally the climate pledges I'm not saying any governments hitting the climate pledges.

We all know that that one and a half degree threshold, we're already at 1.4 degrees. Now we talk, we don't talk about stopping this. We now talk about resilience. The language has changed. So I think governments are absolutely failing us because they haven't created the framework the industry to have to change. And that's what our governments need to do now. And again, I come back to plastic because it's popular.

There is no one out there that doesn't feel a little bit bad about what we've done with plastic. And so if you want a gateway in order to start to drive systemic change that is going to be better, less energy, all the rest of it, then plastics are really great place to start. I'm down with that. I can't wait to bring my bottles to Starbucks and get rewarded because I do feel bad and I see the things, but I don't have an alternative. So what else is going on at a plastic planet? Do you have any other signs of progress on this massive issue that a lot of people don't know details, but they're clearly aware that we do have a plastic problem? One of the things that we've been working on for the last couple of years, been a very big project for us. We recognize in all this work with industry, and we work a lot with creative agencies, that there is this massive gap and knowledge gap between the creative. industry and if you think about it, Nate, everything is designed.

Everything in our life, our street, what we're wearing, you know, the cup I'm drinking out of now, the computer that we're talking to, everything, everything is designed, even if it's a bad design. And there is 160 million creatives globally. And there's this knowledge gap because they have not been trained for the job of the future, understandably. So the plastic-free materials makers, the system changes, the proof-pocket. points, the case studies, what questions should they even be asking? How can they push back against that brief that says, just use a recycled plastic? How can we inspire, empower, educate,

ignite that community of 160 million global creatives so that we can redesign a different future? Because I feel very passionately about the role of the creative here. Go back in history. Tell me one moment where a banker or an economist changed the course of history. It's always been the Mavericks, those engineers, the architects, the radicals of the world who can envisage something completely different to how we live today. And we need the creative industry more than ever to do that right now. So what we've been working on for the last couple of years is we've developed a platform which is hosted on plastic free.com, which is that solutions platform, which is an education platform for the 160 million global

creatives to help them feel ignited, inspired, and educated and all of those things so that they can push back, change the brief, and redesign everything. Because if we change it at the beginning, we will have no waste at the end. I hadn't heard of this creatives demographic, 160 million. Are these marketing advertising people, or is it beyond that? What do you mean by 160 million creatives? So for me, I would actually envisage it's much, much more than 160 million because I think entrepreneurs are the most creative people on the planet and they're probably not even included in that number. But if you create a business out of nothing, you know how creative, you have to be for that. But it's everything. It's the architects.

It's the designers. It's the people who work in, you know, in clothing, in packaging, in product. there's a lot of people out there who have the ability to envisage a different way to make stuff of how we're going to live. Even podcast hosts, perhaps. Even podcast hosts, I mean media, massively influential and highly creative. Yeah. So this is such a huge, huge topic.

And there's so many aspects of our live. I mean, I just look around my office. I have so many things made from plastic. So what areas of life do you think where we currently use plastic exclusively? Do you anticipate are going to be the most difficult to change? Are there some areas that we will always need plastic? We need to start with the innovation first. So a lot of people say to me, yeah, but Sean, if you were ill and you went to hospital,

you'd be so glad that the plasma bag is made out of plastic and the amount of plastic that is used in healthcare is phenomenal. We've got many professors in the NHS here and in the American health system who are saying we need to take plastic out of healthcare. It is not good for us and it is everywhere. So I'm not sure that even healthcare is where we will end up still having plastic. But what we need is the innovation.

And if we start with the easy bits, so what is the most ridiculous use of plastic, as we've discussed already, packaging. 40% of all plastic is used for packaging alone, used for minutes, chucked in a bin. We don't even want it. We didn't buy it. It wasn't part of the product. So that would be a very great place to start because if we can crack packaging and then obviously we should move on to textiles because I think the removal of plastic and

out of Texas, 35% of all ocean microfibers are from us simply washing our clothes. So that's an imperative. We have to take it out of clothing. And the shift in in that as well, because of course, fast fashion cannot exist without plastic. So therefore, we will have to rethink the entire fashion industry in a much healthier, fairer, less depleted, less pollutive way. And then the final one for us will be the built environment, because we live in plastic tinderbom. The paint, every time we paint a building, we plasticize a building. All right, I have a bunch of questions. So what did you say about microplastics?

The microplastics in the ocean come from us doing our laundry? Yep. Every time you wash your clothes, then your polyester clothing, you know, your gap fleece. Because they're not natural fiber. There's a lot of poly-something in my clothing. Yes. Everything sheds. Even natural fibers will shed. will shed, but they are not harmful in the same way.

And those, of course, just go straight into the drain. We do not have filters on washing machines, kind of bonkers. Why is that not mandated to start with? They flood into the water system, flood out into the rivers. No filter will ever capture them. They are invisible to the human eye. And then they flood out into the ocean. So it's the equivalent of a family of four every single week,

going to the beach and throwing in a plastic bag. That's the amount of microfiber pollution that we're talking about with washing your clothes. The oceans are really the bottom of the barrel of our waste dump of this economic system, aren't they? In so many ways. They're invisible and just the solution to pollution is dilution, but the oceans are not unlimited in size and health and clarity, you know? I mean, there are really a lot of stuff going into the oceans. Yeah, it's really terrible.

And again, we come back to chemicals, the amount of chemicals that we pour into the ocean that we think the oceans can handle. It's really shocking. So let me get back to the other question I had from what you said. So if we change the packaging, there's two aspects to that. One reason we need so much packaging is because things get shipped all over the world and there needs to be a packaged thing. So part of it is maybe localizing and shortening supply chains. So not as a high percentage of the things that we use come from around the world and need to be packaged, like maybe more local things and they wouldn't need all that packaging. And then the second component is what is that packaging made from and we would like it to be less chemical in origin.

Is that correct? Totally correct. So that's when I say, if we fix the plastic crisis, we would directly and indirectly fix so much else because you're right. You know, why are we shipping stuff around the world in the way that we are? You know, we know how carbon intensive the shipping industry is. So is this really necessary? I know there's a big push at the moment in the U.S. for invented here, manufactured here. We need more of that.

So there are many activists, and I know quite a few of them, especially. an environmental movement who are fundamentally anti-corporations, especially large corporations, with respect to the chemical pollution and plastics situation, what are your thoughts on that stance? We're never going to get away from big business. And small brands, little indie brands, well-meaning as they are, and many of them are doing the right thing from the get-go, they will not move the dial. We need the big brands to create a different normal for all of us. But I'm realistic that there are going to be casualties.

And I think things are starting to accelerate. And the pace of change from industry is not keeping up. And there are many that will step over that line of change and they will reimagine and reinvent themselves in a positive way. And they will become less commoditized, less wasteful, less resource intensive. they will think of themselves as service industries rather than consumer goods industries. All of those things are really positive. And then there'll be some that don't. And everybody's got a Kodak story.

And I think we're going to see a lot of casualties going forward, and it's going to happen much, much faster than we ever thought. What do you, I mean, you had a successful career, multiple careers, and now you're an advocate for an important part of our environmental and human health. So in many ways you are an industry person turned activists. What do you think makes for good activism, meaning activism and behavior that actually leads to real and lasting change? And do you think the majority of what we consider activism today is aligned with this? There's a saying that if you're not an activist today, you're part of the problem.

And I think that is increasingly true. and I really I love to see this next generation rise up and the anger that they have the understandable anger of the cluster that we are leaving them after how we have raped the planet and done everything that we're done

and giving it back a whole load of nothing but rubbish and very toxic chemicals so activism I think can take a number of different forms I'm not for me personally as an entrepreneur you have to be a born optimist and I'm very optimistic about where we are right now and the ability of mankind to innovate our way out of this and to wake up in time because otherwise you just couldn't get up in the morning. We have to focus on solutions.

We have to stop talking about the problem. We have to stop carbon counting as if that's actually going to make any kind of impact. But key to it all for me is we've got to stop with Gilton Blaine. because those are not, they do not help us move forward. And if you are working in a big industry right now, you are still a human being. And you may not feel great about turning up every day and then going home and saying to your kids, guess what, I pumped out another billion bottles today that are going to exist forever. I'm sure people are stuck in these roles because we're all in that hamster wheel of consumerism and believing we have to earn a certain amount in order to buy a certain amount.

We're all in that terrible wheel of having to earn enough right now. And so people are worried about jobs. And so they do a lot of things. I think they don't feel good about. So a lot of what we want to do is how do we tap into the human within industry? And by doing that, we have to help them, not blame them, not vilify them in any way. You know, there is no such thing as industry. It's a construct that it's like money.

We just invented it. It's a body of human beings. So we need to treat people like human beings. And we need to really help them to get onto a better path. Hold them to account, yes, but champion them when they do the right thing. So what thoughts do you have for the viewers and listeners of this program who care about plastics, chemical pollution, the environment? From your perspective, what can people do in their own lives on this particular issue? I don't think your power really is for you as a consumer.

We don't have time to wait for this ethical consumer to rise up in sufficient volumes that industry will take note. Your power as an individual is what you do every day at work. And this is why I love talking to people within the world of business because often they'll say, yeah, what can I do, Sean? You know, I've got a usable coffee cup. Say, well, that's really great, you know, and definitely take a bag. to the store, don't take a plastic bag. All of those things are important. And we have a certain level of personal responsibility

and you have to vote with your wallet and support those who are doing the right thing. But ultimately, my message to them is, if you care, be a squeaky wheel at work. Go into work because there is not an industry on the planet that is not dependent on fossil fuels and plastic. So go in and see how can you become involved as a pro-activist within your organisation?

that is not about guilt and blame, but is saying, let's get some good people in and let's see what we can achieve. Because I don't understand how we have allowed this model to grow where industry, at the behest of everything, in the name of profit, to the destruction of the environment, inequality, all the things that we know in the name of profit can do whatever they need to do. And then we have this other thing called charity where industry out of the goodness of their hearts have a little bit of profit off to give the charity something to undo the harm that they've done. Why is that model, why does it exist? I don't agree with it.

Industry, business has to be the tool of good. Charity in my, sorry, controversial statement, why does charity exist? Because business has to do the good. I think the reason that it came about it was because fossil energy and its byproducts, which you're working on, were so unbelievably cheap and the world was still not ecologically full that it was just the path of least resistance to create this stuff for monetary profits and the externalities are not big enough to matter.

And now, 2023-ish, holy crap, the externalities are mattering in a big way. stuff's not becoming as cheap and we need to change the model and fast. But I think I think the origins are in this unbelievable cheap subsidy and bounty from the past that we treat it as interest, but it's really principal with a big old pollution asterisk, get tied to it. Totally agree. We are taking the resources from our children's future. We use two planets worth every single year. We sell them today and we call it GDP. How can this be right?

So obviously you have thought about these issues quite deeply as a mother, as a human being, as a runner of an NGO. Not on plastic and pollution per se, but what broader personal advice can you give to listeners of this program at this time of upheaval, anxiety, shame, guilt, worry about the few We have to have hope. We have to have optimism, but we have to remember that hope is a verb. Hope is an action word. It's not a theory. And we have to move to action now. So whatever you're doing, stop talking about it and start doing something about it. That's the whole thing of being that squeaky wheel. But have faith as well that we live on the most incredible planet in the

universe. And I think it's only now when we can see, I don't know if you've seen any of the James Webb telescope images, where you see the pillars of Hercules and the origins of stars. And it blows my mind when I see some of those images. But then equally, you look back and you see this little blue and green marble suspended in space. And it makes me value what we have even more. That's what we've got to look after. It does amaze me that the wonder and the majesty of everything is being recognized at the same time of the tragedy and the horror of what we're doing. And it's this like juxtaposition of both of them at the same time that can be a big motivator to change. And that's that's what I'm trying to do here with this portal to get more people to see that and

change how they think and how they act. So would you change what you just said? what additional recommendations would you have for a young human, 16 to 25, listening to this show? Being in the first quarter of their life, what recommendations would you give to a young person? Do not fall into the trap of consumption. Do not, yeah, well, it would be pretty simple, if I'm really honest, thinking off the top of my head, come off social media. because we all know that social media is bad for us. Protect your mental health above all else.

Get out into nature whenever you can. We live in these concrete boxes and it's how much more science proof do we need that when we're out in nature, then we feel better. Our mental health is restored. So you've got to get out into nature and just enjoy the world for whatever time we have,

whatever time we have. Let's just relish it and embrace it and appreciate it like we never have before. I have a large diversity of guests and their professional background and what they're working on. But everything you just said is a very common answer. So that gives me kind of a positive feeling that it's robust. Like that must be true, those things. Get off a social media, get out in nature, stop being a mindless consumer. I mean, I think those things hold water.

What do you care most about in the world, Sean? Well, it's got to be my family. I'm absolutely blessed with three wonderful brothers, a husband we just celebrated 32 years of marriage, and my two sons, who I pinch myself every day, that I can't believe how wonderful human beings they are and how gorgeous they are to us. So my family is really, really important to me.

My friends, super important to me. And then if I'm really honest, I am a massive advocate of the mini break. I think when we all work as hard as we do, and you Americans are not good at this, you need to take more time out. Even if you're still connected, for me, that whole thing of getting out into nature. You know, I've just come back from working from Greece. And that's my fourth August now where I thought, you know, post-COVID, I can work anywhere. And so I based myself on a little Greek island with good Wi-Fi, as you know, with pretty good Wi-Fi.

I could do everything I needed to do. But for me, the joy of being able to just jump into a sparkling, warm sea every morning. It's those simple pleasures, I think, that that's, that's. all we need. I don't need fancy jewelry. I don't need any of that stuff. I don't need more things in my life. I need less things. But I definitely need more wonderful experiences with friends and family. That's what fuels me. If you could wave a magic wand and there was no personal recourse to your decisions, what is one thing you would do to improve human and planetary futures? I would probably do exactly what you said, which is make fossil fuels completely unattainable.

unaffordable because I think the catalyst that would happen from that would be really extraordinary because fossil fuels really are the road to destruction we have lost our way but you would have to give a deferral on that because if you did it overnight it would absolutely crash the global system so there would have to be like a build in a phase in phase right yeah totally Totally, totally. But that's that whole thing. If you give industry certainty, they will move. Because they have to move.

And the stakeholders will allow them to move. And at the moment, nobody has certainty. So this is where we just need to say, this is how it's going to happen. Here's the date. It's going to happen exactly, as you said. And then we have to come true on that. And then I think it will be unbelievable the world that we can create. I think we have no idea that the future, if we wanted it,

the future that we could reimagine for ourselves into a true reality could be better, brighter, more exciting, more optimistic, happier, better mental health, all of those things, living in harmony with nature. We just need to want to get there. And right now, the majority, don't seem to want it. I would agree with that. This has been great. It's been eye-opening. Again, I've learned some things. Do you have a lot? Any closing thoughts on the topic of plastics, chemical pollution, and your organization, a plastic planet? I'd encourage anybody who's interested to learn more to join Plasticfree.com. Pretty easy to find.

I think talking about the impact of chemicals, you know what's amazing to me, Nate, is you go to any dinner table with friends gathering tonight. They'll talk about schools. They'll talk about the price of property. Very, very few people will talk about what's actually happening to the world. Very few people would dare talk about the climate crisis, the plastic crisis. It's a bit of a downer. They don't want to be seen to be an eco-activist. So I really encourage people.

Let's start to have the conversations that matter. Those honest conversations, don't feel like you're some kind of the eco-weirdo. We've got to start talking about things. And we're really not. We're a little bit in La-la Land. Maybe we need a sequel to the movie The Graduate, which was out in the 70s, and Dustin Hoffman had some advice from his girlfriend's dad say, hey, I got one word for you, plastics. And now in the sequel, it's the impact from plastics and we need to change it. An odd comment to end the interview on, but I think the conversation.

But I love it. I know. How many people went into plastics because of that? I'm sure they were woo the day Justin Hoffman listening to that thinking I never should have got into plastics so thank you so much for your time and for your work on this important issue

I have these things every month called reality roundtables where I have former guests three or four of them convened together to discuss a topic I would love to have you and Shauna Swan and maybe Pete Myers and Martin Scheringer or others to convene and have a deeper

interdisciplinary conversation on this if you'd be willing. I would love that, Nate, and thank you so much for just giving this some air time, because this is the dinner table, isn't it? These are the conversations that we should all be having. So giving it the airtime, we really appreciate because it's much, much needed. We've got to take it out of the closet

and talk about the problem, and then we can fix it. Thank you, Sean. to be continued. Thank you, Nate. If you enjoyed or learned from this episode of The Great Simplification, please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform and visit ThegreatSimplification.com for more information on future releases.