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• Earth Day 2024 Calls for Planet Over Plastics!

  This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

  It is hard to break free from plastic in our lives, but as individuals, we can take some steps. But it's also important to inform ourselves and maybe advocate for the kind of policies and laws that could reduce the waste. Because we ultimately, as taxpayers, are paying for all of the waste collection, the sorting, the incineration, so decreasing that it's a win win. 

  We often talk about how the individual can do things. It's true. As individuals, we can reduce our single use plastic footprint. You could bring your own mug, your own bag. You can use bars of shampoo and bars of conditioner to break free of some other kinds of single use plastic. 

  At the company level it's going to demand redesigned eco design. And it is happening. There's one espresso maker that has pods that are made of aluminum and provides consumers with mail in bags. So when you finish making all the espressos and getting yourself jazzed up, you put this in the bag, mail it back, and the company recycles the aluminum and compost the coffee. So they have closed the loop and taken responsibility of their own packaging. 

  I think that the US and other countries should look to Europe. They have very strict laws on enhanced producer responsibility for companies. That means that the companies are required to often take back their packaging design it in a way that makes it easier to recycle, have less layers, have sometimes, I think, beginning to start to talk about having fewer chemicals in them that could harm us when we use these products. Europe is the gold standard. There's just not enough of a recycling market for so many of these plastic products. The plastic is too thin shaped in ways that makes it difficult to recycle. So we cannot recycle our way out of this problem.