The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Live Lightly podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. Today I am joined by Aidan Sharon, the Associate Director of Global Earth Day with the Earth Day Organization. Welcome Aidan.

Aidan Charron (00:13)
Thank you so much for having me.

Jessica (00:14)
having you back. You're my most popular guest so far. Yeah, I really appreciate you taking time to come and discuss your most recent, well, Earth Day organization's most recent attempt to educate everyone about plastic and how it's affecting our lives. And this time, it's affecting not only our lives, but the lives of our furry little family members. Yes.

Aidan Charron (00:16)
That, yes. awesome.

Yes.

Jessica (00:42)
You guys have recently released a report called Pets vs Plastics. And I am so interested in this topic because I've been a pet parent since my early 20s. I'm at my second round here. I have a little adopted furry friend. She has been with us, our family, for six years. And prior to that, I had two dogs. And they lived for very long, healthy lives.

But when I read through the report, I was definitely shocked at the amount of plastic that they are exposed to. And this is coming from someone who's like super vigilant about plastic in my home. So I can imagine that if I am surprised about some of this information, a lot of our listeners today are going to be.

just as interested and shocked at some of the information that is in this report. I'm just going to let you take the floor and tell us about all of the things that pet parents want to know.

Aidan Charron (01:44)
Yeah, so we came out with this report to kind of bring more people into the fold when it comes to plastic and talks about plastic and its additive chemicals. And it gives people who don't necessarily have children like myself, I don't have kids, I have two dogs currently. Like yourself, I always grew up with dogs and cats. think at one point we had a rabbit, fish, all those creatures were in my life pretty heavily. And I worked for a vet clinic.

Jessica (02:05)
You

Aidan Charron (02:11)
all through high school where I'd to see some of the hands -on stuff as well as volunteering with local adoption agencies and things like that. So pets and dogs in general, dogs especially, have always been a huge part of my life. we wrote this report as kind of a follow -up to the Babies Versus Plastic report just to give pet parents something to latch onto and pet parents to realize like it's not just human children, it's also our furry children or...

or scaly children, you have snakes and things like that. But yeah, it's 50, about 50 % of homes around the world have a pet in them. So that's a lot of people. The pet food industry and the pet industry in general is also continuing to grow since the COVID -19 pandemic. We've seen the growth of 5 .1 % each year since then, and it's expected to hit a $500 billion by 2030.

Jessica (02:42)
you

Aidan Charron (03:09)
And the biggest issue we see with that is there's not a lot of regulation when it comes to pet foods, pet toys, and those things. And there's just not a lot of knowledge about how dangerous the different additives can be to our pets.

Jessica (03:22)
That was one of the topics that I was super interested in. That was surprising. I've always tried to source the highest quality food and you know back when I had my first two dogs, I don't want to totally date myself but a long time, quite a while ago, you know they were still packaging it in big paper bags and I don't think that that even exists anymore does it?

Aidan Charron (03:47)
Wow.

No, not that I've seen at least. I worked in a vet clinic that sold pet food at the same time, like in my hometown, and that was all plastic packaging and things. It's also the, unfortunately, the liners on cans for wet food tends to be lined with plastic and PVC coatings and BPA coatings. it's, yeah, I have not seen the paper wrapping, but hopefully we're gonna go back to that soon.

Jessica (04:00)
Mm

Hmm.

Yeah, I don't know when it shifted from being in the brown paper bag because I was a pet owner the first time around for 17 and a half years. And at one point, the pet that lived until 17 and a half years old, he ended up on some of the soft food diet coming from a can. So that was probably the last couple of years of his life.

Then a year later, we adopted Izzy and everything is in plastic.

Aidan Charron (04:45)
Yeah, it's a similar thing that we've heard and we've seen with soda bottles. Everybody mentioned soda bottles being made out of glass, and then all of a sudden soda bottles are made out of plastic. And it all comes down to how cheap plastic is, but the issue with how cheap it is is also how dangerous some of the chemicals that go into plastic are. There's 16 ,000 different chemicals that can make up plastic. Everybody has a slightly different formula. Everybody uses slightly different...

Jessica (04:57)
Yes.

Mm

Aidan Charron (05:16)
chemical compositions when they're coming up with their product. But the vast majority of those 16 ,000 are harmful to human health. I think 4 ,200 have been tested and the majority of those were found to be harmful for human health. And if it's harmful to human health, it's likely to be harmful to our pets. One veterinarian I to recently put it at, like, pets are sentinels of our health.

And there's an issue with them and the issues that they're breathing in, the issues that they're coming across when it comes to these plastic chemicals, it's likely that it's affecting us as well. So if your dog has an increased rate of cancer due to just the amount of plastic that it's exposed to, there's a strong likelihood that you also have an increased rate of cancer due to the amount that you're exposed to. The other issues that come with it is our pets, know, majority of pets live most of their time indoors

and they're being exposed to the plastic that's, you know, flaking off of our flooring. If your flooring is an artificial product, it's flaking off your carpets. A lot of carpets are actually made up of plastic microfibers. A lot of people don't realize that. And just the general dust in your living space is mostly plastic now for a lot of us. Like I'm looking at my flooring right now. I didn't have a say in it. I rented an apartment in DC. It's what I could afford. It's got plastic, laminate flooring.

Jessica (06:23)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Aidan Charron (06:40)
that carpet I bought four years ago It's also made up of plastic fibers. So it's just something that these, pets are exposed to more just from the amount of time they're spending indoors.

Jessica (06:51)
Yeah, and that's just in the environment as it is. But then on top of it, I was reading about their beds and their toys and pretty much everything that they are exposed to on a daily basis. Their bodies are in direct contact with their bed every day and possibly playing with toys or chewies. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because that was something I did shift.

a couple of years ago, I want to say, I changed her bedding because her bed was, it was just time to get a new one. She was using the bed that my other two dogs had used and it was just time every time I took off the cover to wash it, the styrofoam insert was falling apart. I kind of just had one of those aha moments and I was like, that's plastic, right? And then I was thinking,

Aidan Charron (07:29)
Mm

I'm

Jessica (07:46)
about the cover and I realized, yeah, that's probably microplastic as well because it's that soft cuddly material and it's definitely some sort of microfiber material and that's where I drew the line. I was like, you know what, she lays on this a lot during the day. It took a while to find a bedding that not only had

a layer on top that you could remove and wash that was not a synthetic fiber, but also to have it not be filled with a synthetic fiber. And because a lot of them are like, ooh, it's eco -friendly because it's filled with a fiber that's been made of recycled plastic bottles. So it makes you think, ooh, this is better. But it's really just also plastic.

Aidan Charron (08:30)
Yeah, and the other issue is they don't have to prove that it's made up of recycled material. They can just slap, like there's no, like they can lie, frankly. But yeah, that, yeah, I have two dogs. We only have a dog bed for one of my dogs, not because we love one more than the other, but the other one refused dog beds. He just lays on the couch or on our bed with us. So he's pretty spoiled.

Jessica (08:39)
Sure. No regulation. Yeah.

Okay.

Aidan Charron (08:59)
and he's especially blessed. But the dog that we have for our other dog, likes to have her personal space, she's got, I think it's all natural fibers. And I bought it not because of that initially, I'm glad I have it now because of that. But I bought it because it was like, I need something that's washable, I'm just gonna hold up and that she can't destroy instantly. So we went with the natural fiber, like not gonna fall apart and it's worked out and we don't have to replace it now.

Jessica (09:15)
Right.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (09:27)
And then the other thing that we've had to start transitioning away from in our household at least is we have blankets essentially everywhere. we're a big blanket family. So we are trying to move away from those soft, really great feeling microfiber blankets that up until I started this line of work, didn't realize it was all plastic. Like it's all made out of soft plastic.

Jessica (09:45)
Mm -hmm.

Yep.

Aidan Charron (09:54)
people have seen the video of it being made, like, it looks like cotton candy. That's not a good thing. It's a cotton candy of chemicals. And so we've started making that transition in our house as well, and just trying to move to more of those natural fibers. you have your cottons, your hems. think buckwheat filling is good for a lot of bedding and things like that. And it can be a pain at first, but in the long run, we're hoping that it

Jessica (09:57)
Yeah.

Aidan Charron (10:23)
betters our lives and betters our pets lives as well.

Jessica (10:26)
Yeah, in the long run, you just have to think about things being more of a long -term commitment or purchase when you're paying a little bit more.

I think that oftentimes we think about buying things often, you know, and so we want to buy things that are less expensive, but if you are thinking about longevity, which is also a sustainable practice, right, to not be,

Going through things and having to figure out how to dispose of them all the time is also a sustainable practice as well for the planet

Aidan Charron (10:57)
Yeah, mean, one of the things I have this longer webinar that I do occasionally when I'm speaking events is like a bunch of environmentalists always say reuse, reuse, reuse, and can be really obnoxious to hear all the time. But it's the truth. Like you want something that's gonna last longer. You want that product that's made of a higher grade material, like a natural fiber. And you want to be able to use it over and over again so you're not constantly buying it. It's the same thing with fast fashion.

Jessica (11:26)
Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (11:26)
I'm not a fashionable person. This t -shirt is from 2005 Earth Day, 2005 that I found in the back of a closet was like a hundred percent cotton. Great. I'll wear this one all the time. My clothes bin is just lined with t -shirts from working in different industries, like the restaurant industry, the

Jessica (11:31)
You

Yeah

Aidan Charron (11:46)
so would have an industry, fishing industry, is all those are just like lining my drawers. And then you can make those changes too with all of your pets' products. And the toys is another big one that was the hardest transition for us, I think, because my dogs love fluffy toys with the squeakers inside. And we've had to start slowly, slowly throwing those away, start slowly moving away from those. Yeah.

Jessica (12:00)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Sneak them out.

Aidan Charron (12:14)
basically sneak them out in the cover of darkness while they're sleeping and just moving to more of those natural materials again like you have your just piece of wood a stick it might be a little bit messier at times but you do it clean it up also rubber Natural rubber I should say is a better material as well the natural rubber may like it just it lasts a little bit longer it's

Jessica (12:19)
Right.

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (12:40)
tougher material for your pets. It's more malleable for when they're chewing on it. It's also less likely to have all those chemicals that are going to end up in their stomachs. Part of the issue with plastic toys is they have this chemical on them that makes them soft. That material slowly breaks down or that chemical breaks down while they're chewing on it, inhaling it, swallowing it.

and then that plastic kind of loses some of that softness and can harden up inside of their intestine. actually and that's when you run into having to pull it out. things. So we made that transition. We've also looked, and this is the one I'm most proud of, but also the most like slap in my head over is my dogs love chewing on my old t -shirts. So I cut them into strips, basically just throw treats in them or just tie them and then like tug of war with them. And it's...

Jessica (13:11)
Mmm.

huh.

Aidan Charron (13:31)
so bad because I've spent probably hundreds of dollars on these dogs' toys, and the one thing they go to now is this ratty t -shirt I got in college that's been covered in grease stains for five years now and they're just all over it all the time. So just little transitions like that.

Jessica (13:48)
Yeah, it's the simple things that we used to do a long time ago back in the day to give them a toy before you could just go to the big box store and find hundreds of toys. definitely keep it simple.

Aidan Charron (13:52)
Right.

Jessica (14:03)
go back to the basics and they're happy with anything. They don't know if their toy looks like a shark or if it's just an old cut up t -shirt with some treats in it, right? They're probably actually happier with that in the long run. But also you had mentioned, and I want to kind of back up a little bit and go to something you were talking about with fast fashion. A lot of people do have dogs that they like to buy clothes for

Aidan Charron (14:15)
Yeah.

Yeah, I am also guilty of dressing my dogs up, much to my parents and especially my Dad's Shigrin. We've showed up to multiple Christmases now, all dressed wearing matching sweaters. But one of the things we've made conscious ever to is look for the ones made out of natural materials, so that the wool is one that we use for our dogs. My dog, Buzz, he could probably live in zero degree weather all his life and not overheat.

Jessica (14:52)
Mm

Aidan Charron (14:58)
or not get too cold, he'd be fine. But my dog Sally, tiny little skinny, Foxhound dog, definitely needs more layers. So we wrap her in a wool sweater during the winter. And those are just some of the things we do. As well as like, if you have, you could buy tiny little cotton t -shirts that are designed maybe not necessarily for dogs or pets or anything like that, but it might fit them. And so it's just avoiding those materials that are labeled like polyester or nylon while they sound like cool.

Jessica (15:03)
Haha.

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (15:28)
hip fun materials and that's how they were labeled when they first came out too is they're plastic, they're made up of petroleum. 98 % of what they're made up of is plastic and with that is also those additive chemicals that are so dangerous to our pet's health but also our human health.

Jessica (15:44)
Yeah, because then those plastic fibers are shedding around the home, correct?

Aidan Charron (15:49)
Yeah, so those fibers are constantly shedding. They're also, when you're throwing those clothes in the washing machine, they tend to just release those fibers. And there's some legislation in different states like California and New York that are going through that will have built -in filters starting in 2029 for plastic fibers so they don't end up in the ocean eventually. But that's not applicable right now. That's not a solution right now.

Jessica (16:06)
Hmm.

Mm

Aidan Charron (16:14)
That's something that we can look forward to in the future. But right now, what we need to do is move away from those polyesters, those fake fibers.

Jessica (16:22)
Yeah, just making new choices. And I want to also backtrack to the food you know, okay, so now every dog food and cat food is packaged in plastic. And there was also lot of great information about some of the added additives or other ingredients that could be making its way into the food itself, not just the packaging.

I definitely wanted to focus on that as being something to be aware of for pet owners in addition to then maybe talking about some solutions

Aidan Charron (16:54)
Yeah, the things we put out isn't to scare people, it's just to make sure people are aware of them. When it comes to pet food, the industry doesn't have a lot of regulation whatsoever. The majority of pet food is from basically the waste materials from human food. So in, I believe it was Australia, and it happens all over the place. Australia is just the example that we have recorded evidence of.

Jessica (17:00)
Yeah, totally.

Aidan Charron (17:20)
They were just throwing away whole things of bread, whole things of human food that wasn't fit for human consumption, grinding it up, and then selling it as pet food. But as they're grinding it up, they weren't even taking the packaging off of it. So the packaging was ending up directly into the food, but through dyes and how much it's processed through, it's completely unrecognizable. The other thing that's really common is that when they're taking animals to slaughter in order to give them pet food,

Jessica (17:26)
Mm

Hmm.

Hmm.

Aidan Charron (17:50)
Yeah, they're leaving the ear tags on so that a mark that like this is this. This is this ranchers specific animal, sheep, cow, pig, whatever it is. They're just leaving those on So they're just processing it directly with that plastic piece on them. And that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg. I'm from North Carolina. went to school in Wilmington, North Carolina. We got hit by a big hurricane a few years ago called Florence.

Jessica (18:00)
Hmm.

Hmm

Aidan Charron (18:17)
that North Carolina is huge when it comes to the hog and the pig industry. I never worked in the pig industry, but there's just hog farms everywhere. Something that really scared the crap out of me frankly was I talked to a person who works in the pet food industry, has been trying to bring awareness about this problem forever. Said that after Florence, those pigs died during a flood. They were left inside of the barns for...

Jessica (18:22)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Mm

Aidan Charron (18:45)
couple weeks because the flooding was up for quite a while and then the pet food people came through, bought all the dead hogs and processed it and sold it to us to basically feed to our pets. I understand no waste, but at the same time, like what are the implications of that? What is the dangers of feeding that to our pets? And that happened, you know, 45 minutes from where I was going to

Jessica (18:48)
Mm -hmm.

No.

Hmm.

Aidan Charron (19:12)
going to college where I was evacuated for this hurricane. We were at a school for six weeks, so I can't imagine how long it took to get those carcasses out of the barns.

Jessica (19:15)
Bye.

Yeah, that's kind of scary. When you think of it, you just don't know. of course, pinpointing what companies were buying them and the fact that this information is out is probably well after it happened, I'm guessing. Yeah.

Aidan Charron (19:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so that hurricane was in 2018. I think that sounds about right. And the woman I spoke to mentioned the report came out I believe in 2020. So two years later, we had other pressing matters going on around the world. So we were really focused on that. But it speaks to just how little attention is paid. So the FDA is the official regulators of it.

Jessica (19:45)
Mm

Hmm.

Yeah.

Aidan Charron (20:05)
Currently they're using an organization that I won't name as their kind of regulation setting. They're no longer to be using them as of October 1st. It just happened that we released our report talking about how bad it was and like these terrible things and then two weeks later they're like, we're no longer using them. So they're gonna, they're opening it up to a different set of regulations hopefully. So it would either be the FDA regulating it directly, which

Jessica (20:17)
Mm -hmm.

Really? Interesting.

Aidan Charron (20:35)
can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how much attention they want to pay. Or what we kind of want to see is a move to a higher grade and a higher set of standards when it comes to regulations, like what we have with the USDA for human food.

Jessica (20:50)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, that would be nice having a lot more awareness around what's actually in the pet food that we're buying and having some confidence in it. I think that one way that I've been able to feel pretty, because I'm a very stickler about food for and have been for many years for my own consumption and my own family's consumption, just quality and sourcing and sustainability.

And so I've tried to do that for my pets as well. back in the day, was kibble that was high grade, special. You had to buy it somewhere other than the big box store. And even now, still I'm sourcing the best that I can. Obviously, it's still in plastic. But I'm sourcing from companies that are basically very transparent with how they source their products.

Aidan Charron (21:33)
Yeah.

Jessica (21:49)
products, their ingredients, and where they source them. And they're doing quality tests themselves. And it's human grade. So I think that that's one way, if you're a pet parent listening and you're thinking, well, what the heck can I do if nobody's regulating it yet? You can find companies that are transparent. They're testing and they're regulating it themselves, kind of.

And that is one way but still packaged in plastic. So do you have any other suggestions?

Aidan Charron (22:25)
Yeah, I mean, obviously you should speak to your licensed vet about kind of the pet food diet that you plan on transitioning your pet to. But there's plenty of pet food or pet cookbooks essentially that go over kind of what a raw diet or not a raw diet, but like a more natural diet would look like for them. So it's a lot of you going out and buying the food at the grocery store at the same time you do. And there are ways to avoid wrapping it in plastic there. It's a little bit more difficult.

Jessica (22:47)
Mm

Yes.

Aidan Charron (22:52)
your guy at the butcher shop may look at you and be like, it's this person who can be a pain in the ass about the packaging. I get looks every time I go in and out. just like, you don't want your chicken covered in a bag? I'm like, no. They're like, why? I'm like, I don't have time to talk about it. And you're not, you're just gonna be upset with me. So there's that. Yeah, I don't wanna do it, I'm sorry.

Jessica (23:04)
No.

You're like, you don't know who I am. Yeah.

Aidan Charron (23:18)
could be here for 45 minutes telling you about the dangers of this certain packaging, but I won't subject you to that unwillingly. There's just a lot of different things you do in that realm. then just influencing with your wallet. So if you make a call to these industries, eventually they're going to have to cave. They're going to have to listen to their consumers. We're trying the same thing all over the place, whether it's diapers, whether it's...

Jessica (23:41)
Mm

Aidan Charron (23:47)
so so that i have to risk and i have to risk which resource like it's eventually there's going to be a shift because it's going to be popular plastic hasn't been around frankly for that long it's been around since realistically since the nineteen and and more to this basically when plus it but that's what i believe that four percent we were using all the time but that wasn't always the case that we can start going back to that but we just made

cuts on the single -use plastic when it comes to our pet foods wrapping or our food wrapping we can make cuts like we just cut out single -use plastic that's 50 % of all production of plastic that takes us back down to you know 2 ,000 levels so the year 2000 levels of plastic production which may not seem like a big deal but that was 25 years ago almost and that's our plastic consumption has just been skyrocketing in those past 25 years

Jessica (24:28)
You

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (24:46)
and it's also understanding that it's not the consumer's fault when it comes to this stuff. It was, the switch was made. We didn't consent to it. We've been fed this narrative that plastic is a safe inert material. Now we're realizing it's not, and there's going to be a good 15 years of bad tracking from all these industries. starting, you know, last year and just moving forward, they're going to be like, we messed up. Let's see what we can do. So it's just kind of.

Jessica (24:53)
Mm.

Aidan Charron (25:15)
Influence it with your wallet and just just staying on top of what is actually going into your pet's food

Jessica (25:21)
Yeah, into your pet's food, into your home, and so on and so forth, all of the things we've discussed today for sure. There's so many different ways that they're exposed to plastics and I think that knowledge is the best way to empower yourself

But with awareness, you can make new choices. And it takes a little bit of due diligence. And it takes a little bit of research. I was at the farmer's market yesterday and reusing a paper bag that was from their stand. They sell almonds from their farm. And I stop by every two or three weeks

Aidan Charron (25:44)
Yeah.

Jessica (26:00)
to reload on almonds and he went for the plastic bag and kind of like you with the butcher just like, you know, I don't want to explain, but no, thank you. I've got my bag here that I've used a couple of times and I'm good.

Aidan Charron (26:09)
Yeah.

Jessica (26:17)
And then that kind of opened up the conversation to, you know, plastic. He's like, wow, that's really cool. That's great. And you know, at a farmer's market, you've got people who are a little more open and receptive and then at your butcher maybe is not quite on board yet or aware that that switch happened without them even really, I think, being aware of it themselves, right? Like everything used to just be wrapped at the butcher in a paper, right? Yeah.

Aidan Charron (26:26)
Yes.

Butcher paper, it's got a name. We call it butcher paper.

Jessica (26:46)
Yeah, no plastic bag needed. it's so unnecessary. And it's like one more kind of gross layer that you have to go through to get to the meat, right? Like now I have this plastic bag that's filled with juice and I have to dispose of that.

Aidan Charron (26:49)
Yeah.

Jessica (27:02)
When it's just in the paper, I think it's actually so much more clean. But yeah, that's one example of how I think it's just been sliding in.

to all these different areas of our life and it's just kind of like nobody, we don't question it because it's like free, right? Like it's not an extra expense. Very tricky.

Aidan Charron (27:20)
Yeah, it's not an insurance fence initially, but we don't really think about the healthcare costs, the cleanup costs of know, they're finding plastic that was produced in the 1970s for a yogurt container. think it was PP, Plastic Pollution Coalition, just came out with a photo and was like, look, expiration date 1971. It's still floating around in the ocean, just washing up on shore. And that's common all over the place. Like you hear about those spills of rubber ducks

Jessica (27:43)
Hmm.

Aidan Charron (27:48)
over off the coast of France 34 years ago these rubber ducks are popping up all over the place and we're all like what why why i thought it was supposed to break down after a while but it just doesn't

Jessica (27:55)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm, or it breaks down and it's just in teeny tiny particles on the beach, which was my experience I mean, it's my experience every time I go to the beach here in Southern, California, but I was just in Hawaii recently and I was very surprised at the amount of plastic and micro plastic on their beaches You would just expect I think that

Aidan Charron (28:04)
Right.

Jessica (28:24)
The lifeguards and just in general they would have more community cleanups around because they're an island so everything is going into the ocean

Aidan Charron (28:34)
cleanups are good, cleanups are great, but what we need is just, production needs the lexanoplasm.

Jessica (28:39)
Yeah, and that's the bottom line. We just as consumers need to start putting our foot down. I would love to hear a little bit about how the work that you do is helping to make the industry think in a different direction and make changes.

Aidan Charron (28:57)
yet ready word for doing it there education initiatives were coming on with you frequently just be like what does that this was what's happening the last of the sorts going on this is why people need to pay attention a lot of the health of that's what it's i didn't get into the into bio of something i didn't get into biology and my line of work because of the health effects, without it is the environmental effects and environmental that's a plaster just huge ever growing

or just waking up to it. So what we're trying to do is push people to start moving away from plastic in their own lives and then also talk to their leaders, their local leaders even, be like, look, I just read this report. Why don't you talk to these people ahead of it? I'm not a lawyer, but I can get you connected with the lawyer to talk about it. I'm not a politician, but I can get you connected with the politician who's speaking out against plastic. There's also just so much information that just kind of...

goes by the wayside we don't really think about there's legislation here in the United States that would be really great in combating plastic to specifically address what you were seeing on the beaches in Hawaii there's something called the Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act that was introduced I think it was two years ago or three years ago it had been last year again and it's to mitigate the spilling intentionally and non -intentionally of basically what's the starter

for plastic production. And it's this little ball of plastic that you'll see and that those balls are then heated up, put into a mold, and that becomes our materials. Those pellets are tiny. Those pellets spill all the time. They end up in our waterways. They end up in the ocean. They end up floating around. You also have spills from ships. There's recently a spill in Spain and I believe Indonesia.

had a huge spill and they're just washing up. People, if you're not paying attention, you look down and you're like, it's just a piece of sand. But in reality, it's a piece of plastic. And so that that would help to mitigate that a little bit. But once again, it all comes down to we just need production cuts of plastic. And that's what we're going to advocate for from now until now until we actually see some cuts. So another part of the work that we're doing is attending the

Jessica (30:59)
Mmm.

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron (31:19)
Intergovernmental and data -shipping committees around a treaty to address plastic pollution Which it should be called just plastic pollution should just be plastic. -huh because people have different levels of what they think is pollution Looking at you oil industry But what we're doing is advocating for a strong global plastics treaty to address plastic And what we need to see from our leaders is to be like the cost of this

Jessica (31:29)
you

Aidan Charron (31:47)
isn't worth it for our citizens. As much money as the petrochemical industry says they're pumping into our local economies, and I know the petrochemical industry and the petroleum industry are huge. They have more money than everybody else, essentially. But the governments need to realize that it's only benefiting a small subset of people, while the rest of us are facing the burdens, especially the frontline communities. We have a place in the United States called Cancer Alley.

Jessica (32:01)
Mm

Aidan Charron (32:15)
from where this plastic is being produced, where this petroleum is being processed. And it's just like, we don't even talk about it. We don't even think about it when it comes to it. Just be like, well, petroleum is really profitable. But it's only profitable if we completely ignore the cost of human life, pet life, the health care costs, the cleanup costs. It's just all of it's so terrible. And we just need more advocacy, and we need people that are willing to stand up and talk about it.

Jessica (32:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, 100 % agreed. The people who are living in the communities where these plastic plants are producing or incinerating the waste, it's terrible. But that, is a whole other episode that I would love to dig into at some point with you. But for now,

Aidan Charron (32:54)
Yeah.

Jessica (32:59)
I appreciate your time and thank you so much for being here today with me and I look forward to our next chat about babies So keep your eye out for that episode coming soon. If you also have a baby or maybe thinking about future

Aidan Charron (33:01)
Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Jessica (33:15)
pregnancy that is definitely also something that should be brought to the surface of awareness. So thanks again, Aidan. I appreciate it.

Aidan Charron (33:24)
Yeah, thank you.