The Myth of the 3 Rs Sustainabilitys Road Ahead
[Applause]
on january 28
1969 um an offshore oil well
off the coast of the university of uh
santa barbara
um i think it was operated by uh union
only
blew up i told you it wasn’t to be fun
um
three million gallons of voids filled up
killing about 10 000 sea birds marine
animals
and such i mean mrs liga
described the scene as
the bottom of the ocean had exploded
look at that image for a second the
ocean was boiling
around that time um u.s senator uh
gaylord nixon
he was uh traveling uh for a flight uh
for a meeting
on a flight from aaa los angeles to san
francisco
and he had to fly over this 800 square
mile oil slick
and he looked out of his airplane window
and
onto that devastation that was unfolded
below him
and he had an idea stepping back
around that time the vietnam war was
going on
and what the us government was doing was
it was sending out these representatives
to local communities
and such to hold these community
engagement forums and downloads which
they called
teach ins and it was basically to
educate the public and encourage them to
reduce their consumption and save on
resources and energy
and such so senator nelson had this idea
that why don’t we have
this day where across the country
we’d have these teachings specifically
at college campuses
where people will talk about the
importance of
conserving the environment
all of this led him senator nixon
on april 22 1970 a year later
to create the world’s first birthday
i’m sure all of us have heard of earth
day now countries across the globe
market in their own
especially unique ways and it’s become
part of our cultural ethos as well
it although the origins of the phase are
not entirely
uh clear but it is widely accepted that
it was during that first birthday that
this phrase
the three hours recycled reduced reuse
came into being
i think i was in the fourth grade
when i was first taught this phrase at
school and uh
like a lot of 90’s kids you know it kind
of became my title
it we um it he believed in it
you know
the most effective lies are the simplest
ones because they’re catchy
they’re attractive in their simplicity
seductive
almost this was the same
but it would take me another 15 years of
my professional journey
before i realized just how destructive
this myth this lie of the three hours
really was and how corporations
and vested interests had taken hold of a
very pure motive
with a very pure origin story and had
twisted it
according to their own motives of profit
and gain
i have been working in the field of
sustainability and energy
for most of my dark life while that’s
not a lot of gears um
still young um but i have done things
you know and i’ve been across the world
i’ve been in this movement for some time
now i’ve
worked i’ve been lucky enough to work at
high levels in large corporate
organizations traditional bureaucratic
firms
i have started my own company tried to
have
impact from the outside from outside the
corporate machine
i’ve been a part of a large number of
environmental organizations across the
world trying to have
just trying to have some impact in any
shape or way possible
my work has been awarded internationally
i’ve been accoladed i’ve been honored
such as today
but i stand here today for you with this
great and humbling realization that i
haven’t been able to have one iota of
impact
i believe i strongly believe that
the reason the needy moves so slowly in
terms of having an impact
in in my industry and i i think i talk
for a lot of people who work
in this trend other lives
that have been so strategically placed
in our path
that obstruct the view of the truth
i don’t believe that i can start having
impact in sustainability
until i have a constructive discussion
with you about what those lies are
and before we start dismantling them we
cannot get on a road
to a real sustainable future so let’s
take one of those guys today
favorite recycling you turn on the tv
you watch any news network or deep talk
show or tv show
uh whenever the topic of sustainability
comes on and
you know you’ll always see these talking
heads uh this popular refrain
is this very popular advice hope you can
just recycle it
sounds like a good idea let’s explore
that um
recycling is nearly a national pastime
in germany
it is so embedded in the national
consciousness of germany they’re so
proud of their system
it’s very strict it’s very good it’s
very efficient like all german things
they have a blue bin for people they
have i think green and brown
for five degrees i think they have
yellow for plastic and black for the
rest of their trash
and in fact they’re so proud of it it’s
honestly um if you read their children’s
books like you know the popular teens
for children and school and everything
these colorways actually make an
appearance in popular gym and folklore
as well
and ap they have done a better job than
any of the other countries that i know
of
the world economic forum in 2017 hated
germany as the global recycling
champions
but expert studies have been conducted
and it suggests that
there’s something missing there germany
reports for plastic packaging
germany reports a 50 recycling rate
expert suggests
it’s closer to 30 that’s a big gap
when you really think about how much
trash a country like germany produces
um germany produces i think three
million tons of plastic packaging waste
every year so you know
my point is why did a country that
really championed the recycling practice
in the world how
did it feel so badly because even if we
take them at their work which is 50
it’s kind of odd don’t you think like
when you take a water bottle and you put
it in the recycling bin you don’t expect
half of it to be recycled you expect all
of
so what’s going on there right
there’s a lot of problems there um some
social some side effects some
technological
some business let’s talk about one of
the major ones
um for a lay person uh
so let’s take an example i see a plastic
water bottle right there
and i’m sure if you look at it there’s
going to be a recycling sign on it
right so consumers but
that the bottle the body of the body is
recyclable but the cap
i can assure you is not right
do they tell us that when they mark
their products with recyclable stamps
and they
market it as such no okay let’s talk
about pizza
um yeah this is the only good part of my
talk uh
now how many of you have had pizza in
the last week or so
okay um
but um these are comes in watch a
cardboard box
right that’s fine that’s that’s
that’s recyclable right sorry to bust
your bubble
because cardboard that is contaminated
with food waste or oil or trees
is not recyclable in fact when the pizza
comes to you and you open it and the
cheese
is sticking to the lid it’s already
non-recyclable
there’s nothing you can do as an answer
so
my point is
instead of actually individually sorting
through each piece of trash that they
get in the trillions of tons of trash
that they get
recycling plants and it’s cheaper and
easier for them
to throw the whole thing out rather than
individually sold through these pieces
of cash
right in fact the truth is
i think i might be wrong about this but
i think 79
of majority of all the plastic that has
ever been produced
i’ll just take a second i pause here
just imagine that since plastics are
going to be introduced as a man-made
material
really 79 of that has not been recycled
it’s lying in a landfill somewhere it’s
been tossed out into the world
into a seed into our horse
and yet companies market themselves as
me
anyway um let’s let’s dive backwards
i’ll move on to um
i’ll move on to something something more
it’s another story it’s a little stupid
um you might be asking at this point
then
if if plastic recycling is such a sham
it’s such a pass then
why is it so popular why does it have
such good pr uh well
let’s go back to the 1970s during that
time when this phrase came out
the recycle reviews uh movement came out
a lot of money
and a lot of effort was put in by a lot
of plastic
manufacturing companies into generating
good weight
and creating a good image for plastic
recycling because
that they realized early on would give
them a very good method
of pushing more plastic products into
the system
there was a competition aimed at kids
really um
in the u.s um around that time
where uh you know it happened locally at
the community level neighborhood
where uh the kids who would design the
best
receptacle or like like a trash can best
design trash can
um so that the neighborhood people would
come and dispose of their plastic waste
so it could be recycled
uh they that they would win a price or
some money or something like that
fantastic right getting kids to do
something good for the environment
good for the world heartwarming story
until you realize what’s behind that
competition
it was funded by this project which was
called a bag’s life
which i think is a fun one about the
movie
and it was funded by uh
american progressive bag alliance which
is a lobbying group
which uh funnels millions of dollars
into lobbying against
efforts to reduce plastic packaging in
the industry
a fast corporation with a lot of money
you can use of something to target
children for their own
profit does that sound familiar
something about the tackle of the stock
um hey let’s move on
let’s move on to the second part
[Music]
keep it simple the way we consume today
and the way
products are manufactured today there
just isn’t a lot that you can reuse
think about it has everyone come across
a mother daily milk pouch right every
single one yeah
same recipe how do you use that
how does a common everyday man or woman
reuse
a mother daddy or any brand nail pouch
that’s once when it’s been cut open and
mobilizes
for that matter how do you use an empty
hairspray hand
or a deodorant can now
how do you reuse the energy that you
just spent flying from mumbai today
okay before calculating this correctly
uh i think you would have to actually
recycle
14 000 uh plastic water bottles just
like that to offset the energy that you
spend on
it from mumbai forty thousand uh
one per day is 365 a year do the math
long lives uh anyway
also the stuff that you can’t you
shouldn’t reuse like the plastic water
bottles again
start of our show today ladies and
gentlemen
over time overuse if you keep reusing
and keep rewashing them refilling them
what happens is that there’s normal wear
and tear in the molecular structure and
it breaks apart and it reaches chemicals
harmful chemicals
like bpa uh might have heard of it into
the water and
you said epa has been linked to cancer
it’s been linked to uh developing
disorders injury
so how do you use that after knowing
that
okay i just
i just have to come back to this over
the course of my career
i realized that there’s only one one
true r this just leaves us with one true
hour
which is reduced
the reason i say that is
we we just cannot recycle
or reuse our way out of this mess that
we created for ourselves
you know we have to we have to reduce
the consumption we have to reduce our
footprint and our impact on the planet
it is the only road to a sustainable
future
we simply cannot rely on the other two
hours
the people don’t exist or their lives
which actually cause more harm than good
let’s do away with another lie while
we’re at it your team will always tell
you that oh
uh reducing consumption that’s against
development right you need to find
better alternatives
uh you’re not really developed if you’re
looking at you’re going back into the
past you’re using less stuff
modern stuff is cool it’s good we are
currently consuming
1.7 earths worth of resources
let me ask you this question if a man
came up to you and said
um however much backpack balance you
have in your bank you need to spend 1.7
times of that otherwise you’re not
developed
it’s safe to say that that man doesn’t
have your best interest that part
or you know there you are i’m sorry is
this a joke if there’s any banking
lawyers here don’t sue me
in there um anyway
moving on the point is right
we are at a precipice in in our journey
right
and and ingenious marketing
decipher social campaigns have been
hijacked by these companies
with a lot of resources and you know
they’ve shifted the blame of pollution
tackling the energy prices finding
sustainable alternatives
onto you the consumers all of this why
mind you 71
of all the greenhouse global gas
emissions since 1988 can be tracked down
to just
100 companies in the world what you not
me
then but they’ve made us feel like we’re
the villains because we used
a plastic bottle but they they create a
world where there is no alternative so
i i submit to you it is time
to see through their lives it is time
where we push the responsibility back
where it belongs
to do that the first step would be to
take our money away from them
it would be to reduce our consumption
it’s the only way reduce your
consumption of unsustainable materials
ask them to think of a better way to
market their materials make better
materials make better products make
less products but better products in
2018
i was having a great time i was at a
great place in my life
i had a great high flying corporate job
i was
uh i think i just got put onto the host
list uh
speaking i have money a good life i was
in the u.s
one fine day i woke up and i quit my job
and i started my company i tried to do
something outside
why because i realized that i could not
live another day
where i was blind and i was playing into
a system i was supporting a system
that left the world a worse place than i
found it
i could not be a part of that but in the
journey since then
i’ve realized two things
the first thing is that i do not miss
microsoft outlook
horrible piece of software please do
something about it
second thing i can’t do this on myself
right which is why i’m here i’m here to
talk to you
i hope that the next time you’re talking
with your friends and families you tell
them these stories
you develop in these facts i hope that
the next time uh
this brand advertisement comes on
television and they talk about how
they’re turning green because their
products are not recyclable i hope you
go
the bubbles are from inside you and you
go lies
i hope you do that i’ll do this by
myself
because the first step is to kill the
lies
because when you take the lies you see
the truth the horrifying
the scary disgusting truth of the
situation in the state of sustainability
right now
which is being masked over so well so
beautifully
i hope you see the truth
because the truth no matter how scary no
matter how depressing
unfeelingly unflinchingly always gives
rise to one thing
which is hope hope that we can change
hope that we can reduce our consumption
it’s about hope
it’s about talking about it raising the
hope
this is the hope is beautiful the truth
however inconvenient
leads to a beautiful thing it is hope
alone that pushes the human race forward
since time a more immemorial
the theme for today is where are we
headed
i do believe that once we’re done with
all their eyes
once we see through all their eyes we
can honestly say
forward towards an actually sustainable
future
thank you so much