The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica (00:00)
Hello, welcome back to the Live Lightly podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. Today I'm joined by Aidan Cherron from the Earth Day Organization. He's the director of end plastic initiatives. And we're going to have a discussion about plastic pollution as it pertains to its impact on the ocean for World Oceans Day episode. Welcome, Aidan.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (00:25)
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jessica (00:27)
Thanks for joining me again. I really appreciate it and look forward to our conversation today. I just want to start sometimes this information and this conversation feels really like gloomy and doomy. And what was your word for it? You had a word for it on our first episode. Yes, a bummer issue. And that it is plastic can be that. But we're going to talk about it just to raise awareness about the issues that.

this part of human impact is having on the oceans, not to, create fear or a sense of doom and gloom, but really just to offer people the opportunity to have enough knowledge about what's going on, because knowledge is power. And when we know, then we can make new choices as individuals and start to shift the tides in a positive direction for the planet and for...

the oceans of the world. So I'll just start by prefacing it with that. And then I'm just going to let you take the floor to tell us a little bit about why plastic pollution is so prevalent in not only the oceans around our country, but around the world.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (01:36)
Awesome. Yeah, that sounds great. And it is a bummer of a topic, but there are some solutions out there for it. So I hope we can get into those a little bit as well.

Jessica (01:45)
Definitely. living here off the coast of Southern California, and you grew up off the coast, the East Coast, in North Carolina, you go to the ocean and you don't really see plastic floating around in the ocean. People are not swimming through plastic. You're not walking on our beaches here in this country, luckily.

And so I think it's just a little bit of a hard topic for people to wrap their heads around because they don't see it. And it's not a direct impact to people here in our country, but it is a huge problem. So can you just give us a little bit of background as to, how this has become a problem, even in a country where we have curbside pickup for our garbage and for our recyclables in some areas as well.

and how this even became a thing.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (02:40)
Yeah, so every year there's over 400 million tons of plastic are produced globally. And then 8 million metric tons of that is ending up in our oceans every year. And while we may not see it as prevalent here in the United States, plastic doesn't know borders. And unfortunately, a lot of our waste is being floated overseas to different countries, we're directly paying these countries to take our waste and kind of manage.

manage it. In reality, we're just trying to find a new place for it. Or it's just floating in our oceans and it's more easily washed up on the shores of those beaches. Because of that, we may not think that it's a huge issue here in the United States as much. But in reality, it's there. It's just there as microplastic rather than macroplastic. So the plastic you can see and the plastic you can hold, it's down in these tiny little nurdles. So you don't really...

Jessica (03:07)
Right.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (03:32)
pick up on and kind of mixes in with the sand, or it's in the form of cigarette butts, which are just buried underneath the sand. And those are one of the more common forms of plastic pollution that people don't realize is actually plastic, is the cigarette filters. So while we may not see it, it's definitely there. And then the larger issue with it all is that when it starts to break down like that, it's able to float around and get essentially anywhere. Like it's found down at the bottom of Mariana Trench and then at the top of Mount Everest

It's not the consumers fault in particular, but it's just become so prevalent and just so easily able to get to all these different places.

Jessica (04:07)
Yeah, it's definitely becoming a mounting issue and putting a pressure on not only the environment but on Marine life as well when it enters the ocean. Can you talk about the Pacific garbage patches I literally had no clue. I mean I am living in Southern California now granted at that time seven years ago I'd only been here maybe four years and I'm from Colorado so I

definitely there is a disconnect between plastic pollution at all. I thought I was recycling it when I put it in my bin and it was taken away. I thought it was turning into another plastic bottle or another plastic yogurt tub. And so when I learned about plastic pollution seven years ago, particularly as it relates to the ocean and the Pacific garbage patch, in addition to the five guyers,

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (04:39)
Hehehe.

Jessica (05:00)
I also then started going down that rabbit hole and learning more and more about plastic and what it's made of, which I learned a few years prior to that and stopped putting food in it but beyond that, I just started learning about how,

unsustainable plastic was because it wasn't actually getting recycled into another plastic, whatever. And so I just kind of wanted to start by saying, if you've never heard of this, don't feel left out because I think a lot of people haven't heard of this topic, this problem. And just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it hasn't been existing. So can you just tell us a little bit about what's going on there?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (05:42)
Yeah, so in the United States, unfortunately, only about 5 % of our plastic is truly recycled into a new product. I think it's 86 % of it is ended up in landfills and then another 9 % is being incinerated. And that leaves us with a rough estimate of about 5 % that's truly recycled. And the reason because of that is due to all the additive chemicals that go into plastic, maybe it.

impossible for one, people to narrow down what type of plastic it is, and two, for them to actually figure out what to do with these tots of chemicals that are put into the plastic once it is then recycled and then broken down. And then to relate that back to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch it's looking like by 2050, there'll be an estimated more plastic in the oceans than fish. And that is by weight, not by amount. I think by amount, we might have already surpassed that. I'm not sure.

But by weight, there's definitely going to be more plastic in the oceans than there will be fish. And that's because of how terrible our waste systems are currently set up and how interconnected our waterways are and how plastic is able just to permeate these waterways in so many different ways. So you're from Colorado, a landlocked state, but eventually anything that's thrown into a river, anything that ends up in a river in Colorado, is going to float into the ocean.

Jessica (07:01)
Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (07:01)
I worked on an aquarium on the Outer Banks for a couple of years and I was doing the presentations for a lot of tourists coming in from Ohio. They're like, well, I don't really have to think about the ocean as much because I'm in a landlocked state. I'm not really connected to the oceans. Like, well, you are. So everything that goes into your waterways is going to make its way into the ocean at some point or another. There's no disconnect between the two.

You may not be eating seafood all the time, but I guarantee in one way or another you are affected by what's going on in the oceans.

Jessica (07:33)
Yeah, and so I guess now that we understand how little of our plastics are actually making it to the recycling system and becoming something new and why there's such a large amount that's left over and making its way into all these other different channels, whether it be the landfill or incinerators or ending up in our rivers and oceans eventually. How does that problem affect the ocean and marine life and

Why does that matter for humans?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (08:06)
Yeah, so the scariest images we see when it comes to plastic in the ocean is the turtle with a straw shoved in its nose or a seahorse carrying a q -tip, plastic q -tip, and while those are terrible images, the larger threat is actually what happens to plastic after it's broken down. And when it's in the ocean, it tends to break down faster due to its exposure to UV light from the sun and then just the natural weathering that occurs within the ocean.

because plastic doesn't truly break down into its base compounds, unlike like a stick does, a stick or piece of wood is gonna break down into its base compounds, its base elements over time. Plastic on the other hand, just becomes a smaller and smaller particle that unfortunately the smaller and smaller particles are picked up by biological life such as fish or going down even further to like microscopic.

life. So a microscopic life is consuming said plastic, it's working its way up the food chain, And that eventually is leading it, those plastic particles even enter human bodies. So 3 .5 billion people rely heavily on fish as a main source of their diet. And that is ocean fish.

Jessica (09:14)
Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (09:14)
and they are consuming vast amounts more of microplastics in their diet because of that. Microplastics and their additive chemicals are associated with a whole host of issues, including cancers, neurological disorders, and the big one is endocrine disruption causing all of this. Endocrine disruption is just a disruption of the hormones in your body. Hormones aren't commonly thought of as something that's prevalent outside of puberty when we talk about it, at least in the US, but...

hormones control everything. They control your growth, they control your eating habits, they control your sleep, they're a part of everything. So once those microplastics start and the added chemicals start disrupting those processes, it leads to all of these disorders and diseases.

Jessica (09:57)
and that's starting to be proved by scientific studies and research. And also we know that it's in the fish that we're eating because these are newer types of studies that are being done, right?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (10:13)
Yeah, so more and more studies are coming out. It seems like a weekly basis talking about how terrible plastic is and how dangerous plastic is. It's just not something we really thought of. We thought the companies were kind of doing their due diligence when they're coming up with this material to be like, it's all over your food. We wrap everything in it. It's perfectly safe. But in reality, that's not the truth. And now more scientists are getting funding to actually look into it. And they're starting to realize, crap, like we've been allowing these 16 ,000 different chemicals to go into plastic.

We have no idea how bad they are for us. We've analyzed some of them and all the ones we've analyzed have been toxic to humans.

Jessica (10:50)
Yeah. And so can you give us a brief overview of why and how that got passed the FDA when it's packaging almost a hundred percent of our food today. And if not the FDA, who else would be in charge of regulating that?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (11:09)
Yeah, it just comes down to also recognizing that plastic is made up of fossil fuels. So plastic starts as petroleum or starts as the same thing that's going into your car to fuel your car. If you drive a gas car at this point. And a lot of people don't realize that connect. These companies have so much money and they're able to influence the politics in almost every nation they're in. And they're able to just kind of make companies look the other way. It also comes down to

Jessica (11:26)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (11:37)
these chemicals just weren't really thought to be bad. So we didn't put in the regulatory legislature, the regulatory admin ship to monitor them. We now in the United States are monitoring and trying to get rid of six of 16 ,000 different forever chemicals. These are the chemicals that are going into plastic to give it it's certain characteristics, but there's very little teeth to these things. And it just comes down to a matter of.

Jessica (11:59)
Hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (12:06)
While the government may want to do something, it has to go through, these chemicals have to go through a certain process for it to could take 10 years to declare this chemical harmful to you. That number might be wrong, it might take less than 10 years, but it's still a matter of like, they're looking at it, they realize it's bad. It takes a while to get these regulations set up. There's a phase out period. And by the time this is all going on, these companies can produce another chemical that's nearly identical to the one that's being banned and inspected.

Jessica (12:25)
Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (12:36)
and just tweak a molecule, same traits, same characteristics, completely new name, completely new regulatory structure that it has to go through. And it's really hard to just stay on top of these companies and to make sure that we're monitoring everything properly.

Jessica (12:51)
Right. It's kind of like how I think they started to realize BPA was not great for people and then they started replacing it

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (12:59)
it was BPA, BPA became BSA for a while. And then people were like, that's the same thing. Like that's exactly the same thing, but you just changed the name. They're like, you're totally right. And they just changed the name again. So it's like, great. We did it. We moved away from BPA after we found that it was causing increased cancer rates in babies. Let's just move on to these new chemicals that aren't actually different. So.

Jessica (13:09)
Ha ha.

Hmm.

right. So when you see this label that says BPA free, now I question everything, but prior to questioning everything, I went through the phase of it's better BPA free. And you know, now I question everything. I'm like, but what's the new thing? And have they tested that? And is that safe?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (13:43)
Yeah, and -

That's unfortunately what happens when you dive into the rabbit hole of plastic. And my wife has noticed it with me. If like every time we go out and like, no, we don't refuse that bag. I don't know what's in it or like our cabinets are becoming filled with more and more of old plastic reusable bottles that we don't know what to do with. As we try to transition into stainless steel bottles or glass bottles. I had my dad even call me out. He's like, I saw you do an interview but you had a plastic reusable water bottle. I was like.

Jessica (14:02)
Right.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (14:14)
trying, it's just really difficult. We have so many, I don't know what to do with them. So that's the dilemma when you learn more about plastic then.

Jessica (14:17)
It is, right?

Yeah, because then you're like, I don't want to use it anymore. But the whole point is to avoid plastic and because it's not recyclable, what am I going to do with it? Yeah, it's a vicious cycle. So, okay. So plastic is making its way in large amounts into the ocean, the world's oceans. And it is becoming a problem because it breaks down quickly and it's a problem because fish are eating it. And we're then eating those fish and

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (14:31)
Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jessica (14:51)
Just one more topic in the ocean that I think is important

I'd like to talk just for a moment briefly about the added strain that plastics are putting on our coral reefs because they're already under a lot of pressure from human impact. And now we are adding this to the list.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (15:10)
Yeah. So coral reefs act as kind of biodiversity hubs almost, or biodiversity hotspots in a lot of areas for fish. That means that there's a lot of endemic species. So local native species are able to populate and they live in these places. In the ocean, those are going to be our largest coral reefs. It's like in the Indo -Pacific, they do the Great Barrier Reef, those areas. but coral is everywhere. It adds us a natural habitat for fish and marine life. And.

Plastic has this way of when it breaks down in those microplastics kind of coating everything. So while the images of the great Pacific Garbage Patch are terrible and they're unsightly to see, the bigger danger is what we're not seeing. So it's those microplastics that are able to float from the top level all the way down. So they're at every level and they're just putting a film across our ocean floors and with that a film onto our coral reefs. This entangles them. It...

Jessica (15:43)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (16:08)
you know, prevents them from growing. It's going to increase dramatically by 40 % of all that could be exposed or entangled by 2025 in plastic. And there's over 7 ,000 species that rely super heavily on the coral reef ecosystems. And when they're entangled in this, they're not able to complete their normal processes. So they're dying off. When they're dying off, they're not providing food to the other marine life. So it's just causing this domino effect on marine.

marine ecosystems.

Jessica (16:39)
that's a lot to think about. There's so many layers to it. And it seems like the solution would be to no longer have plastic, because really, that's the problem. And until we end, the production of plastic, which I know that's part of what your job is.

to try to push for those things on a federal government level. Can we talk a little bit about solutions that individuals can, what can we do on our end in our local government?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (17:16)
Yeah, so in terms of the local government, it's reaching out to your local government members and making sure they are aware of the dangers of plastic and also start talking to them a little bit about the cost of managing plastic. So kind of look into like how much cost to manage it via waste. How much does it cost on our health care systems? In the US, the plastics industry and the plastic chemical additives add another additional 250 billion dollar burden due to the health.

Jessica (17:32)
Hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (17:43)
offence that are associated with plastics and additives chemicals and that's every year just in the United States. So it's a trillion dollar expense being paid for by taxpayers the world over, but in the United States alone, $250 billion. If you start mentioning numbers like that to your local governments, they're like, crap, maybe we should start looking for alternatives to start moving away. Talk to them about bag bans. Talk to them about straw bans. I know nobody likes to use the paper straws.

Jessica (17:49)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (18:12)
Opt away from the straw altogether. You don't need it most of the time. If you do need it, bring a reusable straw. Bring a stainless steel straw that you can clean. Other things you can do is refuse to -go containers when you're going out. Bring your own Tupperware or refuse those to -go utensils that are just thrown into bags.

Jessica (18:14)
Right. Right.

Yes.

Mm -hmm.

Definitely. There's a lot of little things that people can do now that they're aware of the problems. And these are very simple things. And it takes a while. It takes some practice. Nobody's perfect. And you might forget and get those plastic utensils in your bag. But don't give up, because next time, you'll remember, I promise. And it's just practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes better. And better is, you know,

better than nothing. And so I would also like to reiterate the fact that anything that you can do in your own home, in your own household does actually matter and make an impact, whether it's switching to a stainless steel water bottle, or if you get coffee a lot, like there's a lot of also people think that their coffee is in, you know, a

paper cup and it is technically, but there's like a thin coating on that paper so that if your coffee's in there a long time, it's not gonna seep through and make your cup wet. So that's actually plastic, right?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (19:40)
Yeah, there's a thin layer of plastic on most to go cups. So that's and you know, even aluminum cans of a thin liner of plastic within them. Plastic bottles for the most part, as far as I'm aware, do not have this plastic liner in them. But if you take. Sorry, if you take like a plastic or a aluminum can and you put it, I think it's to be used. Don't do this at home. Don't. But if you put it into a solvent, I won't name the solvent.

Jessica (19:44)
Yeah.

Hmm.

But wait.

-huh.

Okay.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (20:08)
It will erode the metal on your left with just the plastic liner and you can see the soda within the can.

Jessica (20:16)
So does that make it so that aluminum cans are really not recyclable then?

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (20:23)
Well, we're pretty good at recycling aluminum and aluminum cans. But the process includes a little bit of incineration and a little bit of heating it up to get rid of that plastic. So while we are breaking it down, we are getting rid of it or reusing it, we're also dumping emissions from the actual getting rid of that plastic liner.

Jessica (20:26)
Yeah.

Interesting.

Okay, so it is even in our aluminum cans, but not in glass bottles. Okay.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (20:50)
Not in glass bottles, you're gonna have on the lid of the bottles probably a little thin piece of plastic at the top there. so glass is kind of our go -to when it comes to like best practice for avoiding plastic at least.

Jessica (20:55)
Sure.

Okay, so bring your own coffee mug and whatever else you might put into a takeout cup can go in there too, because it keeps it hot, keeps it cold, right? Okay. And also at home, there's a lot of different things that come into the home that are made of or packaged in plastic. And that's where my guide comes in, livelightly .eco, under the free guide tab.

This is a website where all of my podcast episodes are housed, as well as my free guide that you can easily download and start using. There's a chapter for every thing that you would normally be buying for your household, including children's toys, clothes, furniture, pet stuff. So it's a really great resource that you can just pull out anytime you're buying something you would normally be buying and easily find something that will.

reduce your unintentional plastic use. I want to say this, it's not anybody's fault because there was no warning label on the straw that our grandparents were handed at the fast food takeout counter 50 or 60 years ago. And there still isn't today, clearly, any.

warning labels on plastic telling us the possible health risks or environmental impact either. So don't feel like it's your fault. We've all been unintentionally participating in something that has been very well hid from us.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (22:39)
So yeah, it's real sneaky with plastics for the past 60 years or so. But I feel like people are starting to wake up to the idea that it's not a great, well, it's a great material in some ways, but it's a terrible material in many other. So while maybe utilizing a bunch of different ways, we had to figure out better systems for it. Or started thinking about going back to older technologies when it comes to especially our food and how much we're exposing ourselves to the plastic.

Jessica (22:45)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, because that's something that if you multiply it on a daily basis by three meals a day and however many people are eating food that's wrapped in plastic, that's a huge place where we can push for reform and for change

One of the things you might be able to do is email the people that you're buying products from and ask them if they can repackage their food or their product in something that's not plastic. I just think, any little thing that you're motivated to do, go for it.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (23:43)
Yeah, I agree 100%. Every little step counts.

Jessica (23:47)
Yep. All right. Well, thank you for joining me today, Aidan, and let us know how we can support you and the work that you do with Earth Day Organization.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (23:56)
Yeah, if you just go to Earthday .org, just scroll through all the different resources we have. We have stuff on fast fashion, getting together as a college student, getting together as an elementary school student even, asking your teachers to do a little bit more in the classroom, or just helping your teachers start implementing more environmental policies with their climate education program. We just have something for everybody.

Jessica (24:18)
so there are a lot of wonderful resources on that website as well. So just dig in and anything that inspires you. I highly encourage people to start taking action.

you, Aiden.

Aidan Charron - EARTHDAY.ORG (24:30)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.