Developing a New Relationship with Plastics
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[Applause]
plastics
are perfect they’re lightweight
barely cost anything they don’t break
when you drop them
and they last forever unfortunately
a lot of those perfect qualities have
unforeseen consequences
they’re so lightweight that they blow
off of garbage trucks
and out of landfills and end up clogging
up our water systems
they can even destroy local economies
because nobody wants to go swimming in
an ocean where plastic bags get stuck
to your thighs they can destroy
ecosystems and even kill animals that we
love
love what’s love got to do with it
my first memory as a child is standing
on the shores of lake michigan looking
out
and thinking this is the biggest thing
in the world this is
important as a
water engineer and an environmental
sustainability consultant
i look at the earth and consider it
and its natural resources with every
decision i make
and i’m here to tell you that the earth
is nothing more than an extension
of ourselves the creek
or river that runs through your town
becomes the rain
that falls on the farm fields that grows
the food
that you eat and it nourishes our bodies
all across the world the air you breathe
outside is the same air in this theater
tonight
it’s the same air in your car in your
home
or in the factory that produces the
plastics that we buy
there’s one water there’s one
air we all share one earth
i was born an environmentalist but it
wasn’t until the u.s
embassy of thailand and the phuket
hotels association
deciding to work collaboratively to help
65
hotels reduce their single-use plastics
that i became a plastics expert
i got hired to collect data
and communicate that data to 65 hotels
to let them know different choices they
could make
in order to reduce their single-use
plastic and reduce their impact
on the ocean pollution
and i came with the idea that we need
to integrate environmental consciousness
into decision-making you see
it’s accountants and purchasing managers
with little to no
experience or expertise in environmental
sustainability
that have a huge impact on the natural
environment
and it’s not their fault they’re doing
the best that they can
we’re all doing the best that they can
that we can
but we can do better and i’m here to
tell you how
so before i embarked on this project in
phuket thailand
i had to give up single-use plastics of
course i did
how was i going to tell hundreds of
people to change their ways
if i didn’t do it first so i made a
commitment
no more plastics and soon enough i had
to go grocery shopping
one of the things on my list red
raspberries
so got to the produce section stood in
front of the red raspberries
and saw that they were only offered in
single-use plastic
oh gosh what to do i just made this
commitment
oh come on i’m only one person what does
it matter
no i made this commitment and then all
of a sudden
i felt tears running down my face i’m at
a grocery store crying
because i can’t buy what i want what i
need
what i think i deserve and this memory
of my childhood comes racing to my mind
when i was about 10 years old my mom and
i used to go pick red raspberries in the
backyard
and we had buckets full and i would run
inside
pour him over vanilla ice cream and our
whole family would eat sundays
together and we would laugh and have a
great time
i was denying myself this joy
i was giving up bad and i was feeling
worse
what a nightmare hopeless
i was really distraught i turned around
and as i was leaving
with no ideas in sight i saw apples hey
wait a second
we used to make apple pies together as a
family that was just as fun
and there’s a bunch of watermelon i used
to spit watermelon seeds
at my sister growing up that was fun
it wasn’t until i refused single-use
plastics
that i saw other viable options to move
forward
but i still had to find red raspberries
so i started shopping at farmers markets
and i found a farmer who would sell me
red raspberries in bulk
enough of them that i could freeze them
over the winter so i didn’t have to buy
the frozen kind in the plastic bag in
the grocery store
in january and i started planting my own
raspberry bushes
as soon as they started to fruit any
neighbor that walked by i offered him
some
we started talking sharing ideas
laughing creating new memories
i couldn’t imagine any of this before i
took that first step
environmental consciousness isn’t only
cutting out bad
it’s creating good new habits from a
place
of love no one wants to pollute
but most single-use plastic never goes
away
on planet earth we only recycle nine
percent
of all plastics used and it’s not
because we’re not trying
it’s because there’s a gap in the system
so i dare you to take action
today become aware
what if your name was written on every
single piece of plastic
you ever used and then you went home at
the end of the day you turned on the
news
and they they just brought in a whale
who died and washed ashore they opened
up her belly and pulled out eight
eighty plastic bags and one of them said
your name on it
another one said your neighbor’s name
a third one said your governor’s name
a fourth one said your grandkids name
how would you feel what would you
do i have to be honest with you
as soon as i started envisioning this it
made it
really easy to refuse single-use
plastics
step two create a practice
new habits wash your dishes with loofah
plants buy your dishwashing detergent
from a bulk store always
always always carry produce bags with
you when you leave the house
and a to-go mug
to do this work i dissected my life into
six parts
the kitchen the toilet the shower
the bathroom sink shopping and to go
eating and i slowly replaced every
single used plastic in each of those six
parts with eco alternatives i’m not
perfect but we don’t need to be perfect
we just need to start
the third step is leveraging change
by speaking out and living by example
change starts with self but then we can
start to influence our family
our community our work our city
our state our country and then the world
people watch each other in doing this
work i started a social media campaign
people follow me they take my advice and
more importantly
they give me advice that i take
we’re growing an all-inclusive equitable
team why because we don’t judge
judge each other because we’re doing the
best we can
the fourth step is vote vote for the
environment
every two years it’s the legislators who
write
bills who can stop the flow of
single-use plastics
into our natural environments
we have to communicate that we want this
both locally
and nationally and globally
so when plastics were created
they seemed perfect but now we know
better
you can measure the impact of your
choices by
asking would my grandkids support this
decision
in the name of love let’s get started
today
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you