 Welcome everyone my name is Roxy and I'm the chair of the AIC Sustainability Committee and I'm here today with my colleague Amy who is also on the AIC Sustainability Committee. And we are very lucky to be speaking with Professor Shelley Miller, who is a professor at the University of Michigan and does some really wonderful research related to sustainability. Professor Shelley Miller is the Jonathan W. Oakley Collegiate Professor in Sustainable Systems, the director of the program in the environment, is that how you say it? I'm like reading this. And the associate professor of the at school for environmental and sustainability at the University of Michigan so lots of different roles it sounds like and lots of great research. She has a BS in chemistry from Denison University a master's in civil and environmental engineering from Clarkson University and a PhD in civil and materials engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. So we read a few of Professor Miller's articles about lifecycle assessment and scenario modeling, which is used to assess different environmental impacts of goods and behaviors and it really interested us because some of these findings changed the way at least my environmental instincts kind of led me when I when I think about what is an environmental choice. And this, this sort of led us, you know, to a more nuanced view of what makes a low impact choice and really the importance of considering the full lifecycle of an object not just the waste that's produced. So, some recent publications that Professor Miller has authored or co authored include the future of food environmental lessons from e commerce, five miss, miss perceptions surrounding the environmental impacts of single use plastic that one really interested me. And the comparison of lifecycle environmental impacts from meal kit and grocery store meals so all really useful important information and I would encourage our listeners to definitely check those out. So yeah, thank you so much for joining us today and we're looking forward to throwing you some questions about this awesome research. Absolutely. Thanks so much for the invitation. Great. I'll hand it over to you, Amy. As you mentioned, you analyze the cradle to grave impact of various goods and services, along with human behavior and habits, and you demonstrate that some of the most environmentally hated things like single use plastic grocery bags aren't always as bad as the reusable alternative. And the meal kit article, my common sense is stood on its head because you show that dinners made from a meal kit can have a lower environmental impact than the similar dinner made from a grocery store. So depending on one another, Roxy and I are drinking on a broken reusable water bottles. Thanks to your article on single use plastics. I put myself in the category of someone who wants to do the right thing environmentally but maybe I'm just spinning my wheels. What are some of the really big takeaways from your research for consumers. I think that's, you know, one of the purposes that we do these studies to sort of challenge some of those major perceptions we have about environmental issues. So the idea of cradle to grave thinking or life cycle assessment is to look at the full environmental impacts of our products, not just at the waste phase, but the energy that happens while we use our products as well as everything that happened before we reacted with our products, when it was taken out of the ground when it was manufactured how was transported to us. And so it's important to just look at the end of, you know, oh, I have wasted the answer that must be really bad. That's one piece of it and we need to consider it, but the whole idea of the whole spectrum is where we really need to be thinking about as a society, and a lot of the really important environmental impacts are invisible to us as consumers. So we see the waste and so that seems like the most important issue all the time, but the waste is not necessarily the most important issue. And actually for most products, it's rarely the most important issue. It usually is energy consumed throughout the process or energy consumed, while we interact with something that ends up being a much larger deal. And so it's not necessarily, you know, the packaging that the stuff comes in, it's usually the stuff itself and we often think a lot about the packaging, but not actually what's inside that package and whether we need it in the first place or whether our use of it is the best environmental piece. And those tend to be a lot harder for consumers. It's way easier to just sit there and think oh I recycled so I did my part for the environment, but it is a little bit more complex than that. And certainly recycling is good, we need to do that but that's one small piece of the overall picture. So, following on that. As somebody who's sort of really cottoned on to this idea of the zero waste lifestyle. I thought that was very important and almost a little bit, it like relaxed me a little bit to be like oh right okay there's like a lot more goes into this. And the, the lifecycle assessment that you discussed the sort of like complexity of it is really, is really interesting and it's something that conservation has started to develop. We have a tool in development which would be like a library of life cycle assessment and we spoke to the folks that are doing the research for that as well in a different video so that's something that we're trying to really promote within our field. But since we're going to talk a lot about that we just wondered if you could give us like a little brief overview of your, your sort of way of thinking about how that is calculated and and what we're really looking at when we're looking at life cycle assessment. Life cycle assessment can look at lots of different things and it depends on what you're really concerned about. You know, sometimes it is just looking at materials and energy again throughout the entire supply chain and measuring that and getting a sense often we're doing it in the comparative sense is, you know, is choice a better than choice be, and then let's measure all the materials and energy over here and that entire supply chain, all the materials and energy over here, which ones better or worse, which I do. So there's often trade offs that occur through those choices. And so the types of environmental impact I mean say environmental impact, but there's a lot of different environmental impacts. So it is, you know, this question of, are you trying to reduce overall energy intensity and climate emissions. So you're interested in solid waste generation. And, you know, potentially if you're in an environment that doesn't have good municipal solid waste, you know in the US we don't usually have that problem. But if you're, you know, in a developing context that could be, you know, you have a much higher probability of ending up with your plastic and marine environment than we do. You know, toxicity and that's often a big one, particularly when working with chemicals and things like that of trying to figure out both human and ecosystem, you know, overall toxicity burden of one thing versus the other. And so if you have, you know, something that's slightly more toxic, but you can use a lot less of it than something that is like the non toxic substance, but you need to use a lot more how do you actually value that. So I guess some of the things that LCA gets that it doesn't unfortunately often give you the silver bullet answer like, ah, this is obviously the right choice, but it helps frame that those decisions. That is a really great perspective so I guess I always thought that LCA was specific to carbon emissions but you're saying that's not true you can sort of choose which, which factor you're looking at. So carbon emissions are usually the ones we look at because they tend to be easiest to track and they tend to be where we have the most comprehensive data, because it's actually pretty easy to figure out, you know, figure out energy use and then subsequent carbon emissions. But in an ideal world we'd be calculating and collecting that on a whole suite of environmental impacts. So air quality emissions, water quality emissions, human and ecosystem toxicity, biodiversity issues, solid waste issues. You can, whatever you want to include in there that you can measure, you can put it in LCA and it's expanded to things like social issues, especially if you're talking about trying to look up the supply chain, and you know, having issues of human dimensions and you know, various issues of human trafficking or slavery or that kind of thing how do you put that into a supply chain. And that's much harder than measuring carbon. So often we stick with carbon. A lot of folks who are trying to attach social dimensions to LCA or noise pollution LCA, or all of these different pieces to say what's happening throughout the entire life of these products. Thank you. So LCA is, it's not a household term, but as you're explaining, they reveal so much important information that a consumer would be interested in knowing. And it doesn't have anything to do with what you, what your hunch is as an average person buying something. So efforts being made to kind of turn to LCA that is presented in a scientific peer review journal into maybe a label or consumer friendly version that people can use when they're about to buy something or not buy something. So there's been a lot of discussion about sort of putting carbon labels on things or, you know, basically having an environmental nutrition label site, you know, next to, you know, your actual nutrition label and what is that. And that's a topic of hot debate in the overall sustainability community. And the difficulty is because a lot of LCA's are suited to purpose. And so, you know, for talking about trying to do an LCA for preservation. That's going to, you know, you might have the exact same chemicals, the most same chemicals that are used in something else might have a different overall system associated with it as far as how much you would use and how effective those chemicals are at one thing or another. Some things are easier to put a carbon label on than others. But the actual process of life cycle is a bit complex in the sense of what's actually included in a carbon label is really difficult, because if I just am talking about a nutrition label and I want to know how many calories are in that snickers bar. The amount of calories in that snickers bar is going to be the same no matter if I eat that snickers bar today tomorrow or like 15 years from now. Hopefully it's not the same. But I can measure like the calories and the protein and all of that and that's not something that is under much debate. But when you put a carbon label on something. It is kind of one of those things of I can measure the protein content and a candy bar, but is a, you know, a kilogram of steel coming from the US. The same are different than one coming from China. And so there's, you know, yes, I mean the answer is yes. So is it that we just do it on steel overall or do we have to get to that geographic location specific and so it ends up being, you know, to actually do the carbon labeling would be number one very complicated and expensive. Number two, getting a lot of those sort of variability pieces in sort of what choices people make and sort of the carbon. It's not as easy as like calories or protein or something like that. I wonder if individual companies are going to take it upon themselves to start using the terms and sort of sort of wishy washy way where, you know, like, oh it's light or it's healthy or or not or maybe now a company might start saying it's low GH greenhouse gas emission. And it's not totally verified but it looks good on the label. And so, you know, and that's going to be kind of that question on sort of okay green labeling and what does that mean, there's, you know, an entire suite of green labels. Some are very highly vetted and certified others are, you know, just basically greenwashing from companies. You know, the, the life cycle assessment community does have a set of specific standards that go through the international standards organization. So, in order to put up life cycle claims. And to say it's a certified LCA it has to be a third party nearby. So, in order to actually have a quote certified LCA companies would need to run their data through independent consultants to say okay, these assumptions are valid or not. So when you see some of the bigger companies putting out LCA information or, you know, otherwise trying to say okay this product is going to be zero net carbon. Generally speaking they're going to have to put some documentation together to back that up, and to have outside experts verify that. But that doesn't mean that they can't create their own label and just say. Do you think, sorry, Amy, can I just ask a quick question to follow up. Do you think that there, you know, is a way that we can make these sorts of things digestible and useful for for the general public or is it the sort of thing that needs to be communicated through, you know, the kind of research you're doing and then the media sort of putting out the findings, do you have a sense of that. In a very sort of broad category sense, we certainly can put out, you know, these kinds of information, you know, overall steel versus aluminum, we have some pretty good, you know, accepted data on that. The difficulty is that a kilogram of steel and a kilogram of aluminum aren't actually equivalent, because aluminum is so much lighter than a kilogram of steel so if you can take steel out of car and put a certain amount of aluminum in it. It's this weird fit for purpose, again, kind of thing where lightweighting a car the steel versus aluminum comparison is going to be very different than if you have, you know, you're talking about it in a packaging context. And sort of how much material you can displace for another material. And it is sort of this really complicated thing and and I think that is something we struggle with as a scientific community is, how do we not have to have all of this life cycle information be a one off, basically and say, Oh yeah well aluminum is better over here but the steel is better over here and actually neither of them is better when you compare them to structural bamboo. And actually when you, you know, and so there's, it does feel like there's a lot of nuance because it depends on specific material specific thing you're looking at. And it is tough. So you guys have not just me. Unlike how we can solve that and make it super simple. I think, you know, we'd be willing to retire early. I'll let you know. Appreciate it. It's like when, when science needs to get to the public, like the simpler the message to better and this is so not simple. But it's exactly that because it's like one of those things where it's like reduce reusable cycle right and, and that's all true but then you get into some stuff and you're like, Okay, but reuse but only if dot dot dot, you know, and so you get into these more complex messages. And that's not too much for people and especially if they don't truly care about the issues, or they care but you know that that like the jobs and like kids and other things to worry about. They need like very simple kind of this is good this is bad this is doing my part rather than having to sit there and think, Oh is this, you know, is paper better than plastic and if I take the paper option then oh, well, you know, I've just destroyed everything. I mean we don't, we don't want to get into that that's. And of course there's bigger, you know, there tends to be bigger things to really think about them, just, you know, those simple simple pieces. Yep. So with regard to the use of LCA and our work lives where we maybe have a little bit more bandwidth to consider things and when we're at the grocery store with the crying child. We're just starting to show up in our field as Roxy mentioned, and it's really illuminating to see where the biggest environmental impacts of say like a single use shipping crate for art is compared to a reusable one. And then I'm left wondering since I am not really versants in, like, for example, the volume units for CO2 emissions is the benefit worth the effort, especially since LCA is are kind of based on averages. So how can conservators, most of whom have a pretty strong science background but not usually in environmental science, become more familiar with LCA research in a way that allows us to read and interpret and possibly implement the findings. Yeah, so I mean I think with anything it's kind of that seeing the forest through the trees and not getting too tripped up in the details, and I, you know, I get into arguments with this with my students all the time where, you know, it's really easy to go down a rabbit hole and be like well, you know, do we really you know we have like scrap paper sitting around and like, well, what should we do with you're like okay, like compared to, you know, shipping transatlantic, you know, five times, or whatever it is that scrap piece of paper probably doesn't have the scheme of things right. And so I think with any sort of system when you're trying to figure out how to reduce environmental impact. It's first of all just getting a sense of the big things that really matter. So your big energy consumers, and that tends to be sort of travel and shipping I would guess in your case. You know, maybe some things with, you know, if they're bulk chemicals used anywhere. And then sort of, you know, the, you know, overall materials that go into packaging and shipping and storing. So kind of thinking through all right what are sort of these broad brush environmental impacts what are the big ones what are the top three and focusing on those rather than you know okay well if it is a rivet in a crate, you know it's better to have that to be a steel rivet or a nickel rivet you know you can get really really into the weeds and the stuff. At the end of the day, you know, if you're, you know, if one of the environmental impacts is like this and one of the environmental impacts is like this. You know, even if you like improve 50% over here it's probably better to improve 5% over there. So just kind of thinking through with that. How do you tackle the big picture items the big ticket items, and then worry about sort of the lower, you know, priority items later. The lower priority items, even worth worrying about. I mean, I mean, I mean it gets in a mind frame for it at least. Yeah, and I think it totally does and you know, it's one of those things of decision making you can get decision fatigue and then environmental decision is very very real right so if every single time you have to like be concerned about anything that goes to waste, because you decided to be zero waste. You know, that can really wear on you and just say I could be using my time so much more effectively doing other pieces of my job or other than, you know, we've minimized waste 90%. What really is both the effort and environmental improvement of tackling that final 10%. Right. And, you know, and that's going to be different for every organization that's going to be different for, you know, every individual. But again, it's, you know, if you're trying to figure out, you know, how do we, like, you know, not throw out that final piece of paper versus, you know, the, you know, transportation miles that we haven't even touched, you know, that's, you know, one of those things of like, maybe putting effort in places that are giving the most benefit for the amount of time, effort, and making expended. Yeah, I really like, like that. Remembering I think what you say about getting in the weeds ring so true to me and actually that really follows on nicely to the question I was going to ask regarding the use of organic solvents. So a lot of conservators and I'm a paintings conservator and I think we're probably, well I don't know for sure, but we do use a lot of organic solvents. So a lot I mean, you know, minute amounts compared to, you know, industrial production. And so something that I've wondered a lot about, you know, there has been a lot of work on, on over, you know, half a century probably on, you know, tailoring these organic solutions and coming up with solvent gels as well. And so, so there's, there's sort of a well established body of research on how to do our job well with this tool. But now there is sort of a movement to adopt more green solvents. And, which, you know, as somebody who's interested in environmental work I'm like very much interested in and I just, I mean I can't imagine it's bad thing to explore that. But I do sort of, I'm curious about sort of the, if you have any, you know, information on organic solvents and, especially in small quantities like is this one of those things that we shouldn't be killing ourselves over or is it really a thing that we should be thinking a lot about. Again, that's like one of those kind of putting the problem in context. Right. So, my guess is, you know, when you're talking about conservation, the amount of toluene or whatever those the organic substance has to be, you know, the 100% that you might use in a year might just be what evaporates off of, you know, a solvent drum in some other industry, right. And so, as far as putting that in context, okay, how overall environmentally important is that in the context of other sectors, right, so is, you know, driving down solvent use actually going to matter. If you care about greenhouse gas emissions, I would say, potentially the bigger one is workplace exposure. And, you know, particularly, you know, and I'm assuming you have plugs and all like, and all of the OSHA, you know, type of things. But at the same time, you know, really trying to think through, as we're talking about disposal of, you know, potentially hazardous chemicals in some cases. And how do we drive that down and are there substitutes that are going to be as effective. But again, if you have to use four times the amount of a non toxic substitute, that might not be getting at, you know, some of the impacts, but from a, you know, from a chemical perspective, that is probably what's going to be driving down, you know, really pushing that effort. So, you know, it's always one of those things of trade offs right as far as what what, you know, what is the problem that you're trying to solve. My guess is from a carbon standpoint, solvent use in conservation is not going to be one of the hot topic carbon emission pieces I could be wrong on that because I haven't done the analysis. I'll put you on the spot a little. But it is going to be probably from a human and ecosystem toxicity standpoint, probably one of your bigger books. Okay. I think the last time we talked, I'm sorry. Correct me if I'm wrong. You, I think you were saying that the carbon emissions of say ethanol compared to toluene. They're not that much different. And on a sort of per mill basis, probably aren't. But again, so if you need five more mills per, you know, square inch or, you know, I'm probably not at all on the right ballpark but whatever you know your, whatever that ratio is if you have to use five times more of something that has the same carbon footprint on a per volume basis, that is when we shift it. So if we're working on a giant, you know, mural project, and we're using a lot of something it probably would be worth the time to to really, you know, do that, do those experiments we do so much at the beginning of a project anyway you know, thinking about like okay, this is a little bit more environmental and more potent and I can use less. But if we're working on a painting that's like this big which I am at the moment. Yeah, right, exactly. And so it probably is like one of those that sort of fit for purpose analysis of how much effort do you want to put into really thinking through a carbon footprint or toxicity footprint when, you know, overall, you know, in aggregate how much does it really really matter. You know, it might not be that that big but you know in the context of the overall industry, it might be, you know, or you know something that is a really huge, you know multi year project. It really may make sense to invest the time and effort and making those calculations. So, I definitely feel that from reading your research I've begun to change sort of the way that I think about environmental choices a little bit. For instance with the meal kit delivery article, the emphasis on avoiding food waste really stuck out to me because that's not something that embarrassingly I think a lot about like I'm, you know, sitting there at the grocery store like stressing because the carrots that aren't in the plastic bag have sold out and they're only the plastic and then I was like, Oh wait, but if I just eat all the carrots that I'm probably fine. So, so that was really interesting and I wondered, you know, do you think that that this sort of research will eventually kind of improve our environmental instincts as a society. Or is this the kind of thing that we really want to keep in check like that environmental folklore. You know, I guess I'm just sort of wondering like for you have you kind of as your research sort of changed your behaviors a lot. And do you feel that it's improved your instincts. For sure. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, at least that's my hope, why we're doing this research, right, is to actually make a difference and improve footprints and that sort of thing. So it really is kind of that. All right, what's the bigger picture, right, and this idea of, you know, not getting so caught up in the details, and really kind of thinking through like, Okay, in my lifestyle. You know, you know, I can take it items that I can reduce and it tends to be travel miles it tends to be, you know, food choices and food patterns both in terms of waste environmental footprints of food. And it tends to be energy use at in at your home right and so where your energy comes from as far as what grid you're connected to what percentage of renewables and how energy efficient larger homes right. So some of the big pieces. And so then kind of thinking through those kind of things. Yeah, you know worrying about a twist tie and like a particular item isn't, you know, as big of a deal is like, Okay, but all of the lettuce in that bag. We never ate it because we did other things you know you know I went shopping and I stopped up and ate out most of the rest of the week. And those are the things that don't necessarily register with us is like, Oh, that's the environmental impact, not necessarily the plastic bag. And it is like I feel like it is just something that isn't in our headspace we focus on waste we focus on recycling, and we're not necessarily thinking about the rest of the stuff. Well, I really appreciate that takeaway because I'm totally going to change the way I shop. I thought it was interesting also that the subscription service I was like, Surely that has to be worse because more trips to the grocery store have to be worse and then it turns out because it keeps food waste down that actually is a better model I was just blown away by that. Yeah, that's I mean the meal kit study. I mean, people just like people had a hard time people at a moment with the meal kit study that showed that the meal kits were less impact than the same meals at stores at the grocery store, because it was like you also get this big box right you get this big box of food you end up with like a box you end up with like refrigerator pack you end up with like all these different pieces of like single use plastic. Like there's no way in I mean so that whole study started because of people sit like expressing their guilt to me like I, and that's another interesting part of my job is like people like, you know confess their environmental sins to me a lot. And so, you know, that study came about because I was like you know I don't actually think it might be worse because the supply chains are simplified logistics are simplified. You know, it's one like small piece of an overall delivery system. And everything's pre packaged so you don't end up with a whole lot of like waste when you're making a recipe so you don't ever have to over purchase, you know, food items like when you go to the grocery store. And so that's more or less how the study played out. But it really was sort of that again that perception versus reality of this can't possibly be better and I actually feel bad that I'm doing this and in the end. It actually turns out just fine. I think the first time I saw a commercial for a meal kit I was like, Oh, this is just, this is just horrible. I can't believe what's happening. That's really crazy. And yeah, so I was curious as somebody who loves to cook so I was sort of like I'm never going to buy a meal kit for other reasons but you know my takeaway from that was when I cook I need to be very mindful not to over buy and to make sure I have like a plan for all of the different ingredients I'm buying. And am I right to think that if I do eat all of my leftovers and make sure that I use you know just minimize the waste that that would probably equalize or even. Yeah, yeah, so the way the meal kit study was constructed it was on average us households. And there's interesting data where every US household things that they do better on average than other households as far as minimizing their food waste. So, we tend to have poor perceptions of how much food we actually waste I think it ends up being 40% of all food we grow we end up wasting. It's insane. But so there's, there's lots there but yeah that is like one really concrete step is just trying to figure out overall food waste reduction, both at the grocery store level and at the consumer level. And that's one of those really great and interesting single use plastic trade offs, where one thing that causes a whole lot of rage in people is when they see produce that's vacuum sealed in a thin film of plastic. And thinking like, why would you ever do this but what it does is reduce waste of that produce, right and so in the supply chain they, you know, actually don't have to throw out as many cucumbers and they don't have to throw out as many of the things that are wrapped in the single produce plastic. And so you end up having that trade off of yes you are generating more plastic waste, but you are also saving a whole lot of produce from going directly in the garbage can and saving all of the energy and materials and fertilizers and waters that went into making the garbage waste. And, but it's really easy to look at that like vacuum sealed thing and be like, oh, no one thought about the environment here. Right. And in fact it might actually have been someone who actually thought a lot about the environment, but made that trade off choice. Okay, well this is the perfect transition yet again to my next question because we can I can be that, you know person at the environmental confessional. So, one of the things, especially with the plastic water bottle article where for those. Some of our viewers haven't, haven't read that yet. Basically you found that a single use plastic, you know to produce a single use plastic bottle is less, you know, less energy I guess then producing a metal bottle or even a reusable plastic bottle so in order to equalize you really need to make use those reusable things over and over and over again, which again a really awesome helpful takeaway, don't you know kind of collect metal water bottles like they're going out of style because they are. But I guess one of the things that that I do still feel is that sort of aspect of the single use plastic and how you know it has other environmental impacts which you kind of just alluded to in terms of, you know, filling up the oceans and getting water and, you know, just general health. So I'm wondering, is that something that LCA kind of doesn't do a good job of assessing, am I, am I wrong to have this sort of icky feeling still about plastic or, you know, do I just need to kind of say, no not using class single use plastic is good but I need to make sure I don't let the food go bad and I don't, you know, use my reusable bottle once and then buy another one. Yeah, so I mean, and those are great questions because it does often all come down to trade offs right as far as you know value systems what you care about most you know how do you actually sort of value overall magnitude of problems right. And so that's part of the single use plastic issue is, you know, in my mind, you know, as what I do, there's no material that's good or bad. There's no evil material, they're just materials that have various, you know, profiles and different trade systems. And so, you know, plastics do not generally biodegrade unless we specifically engineer them to biodegrade and even when they do biodegrade. There's some, you know, unfortunate unintended consequences that could happen there. So if you are in certain environments, you do have a potential to have leakage into ecosystems, like I alluded to earlier if you're in the US, the amount of your plastics that actually end up in marine systems is actually really really small most of our plastics do actually end up in landfill or recycling structure that is questionably operational these days. But yeah so in the US most plastics end up sort of in contained environments and relatively few end up leaked to ecosystems. That's certainly not true in all contexts and certain if you're in developing countries, single use plastics and ecosystem health as far as physical pollution of marine ecosystems is a much bigger issue than it is the US. And so that's also one of those like we're like in the weeds kind of discussions but it's an important one just because it's like, you know, you know, being in Michigan, the likelihood that my like single rapper is going to cause like marine pollution somewhere in an ocean is actually pretty small. And so, you know, yes, marine pollution is an issue but where's it coming from and having sort of a better sense of where that trade off happens. So yeah, so it's a complicated issue, it is kind of that question though of, well which is more important climate change ecosystems. It's kind of like, well, right, or you know, what do you prefer butter like cleaner clean water, you know, like, I don't know. So, yes, well, please right. So, it is kind of a difficult thing of how do you think about trade offs and kind of that okay well which one matters more in the context of what I'm talking about. So if I lived in Indonesia, I think I'd care a whole lot more about single use plastics than I do in living in a landlocked part of Michigan. That is really interesting I had never heard that. I think, you know, there is a lot of use of that imagery of marine, you know, environments being filled with plastic to kind of freak us all out and probably rightly so to a degree. So plastic not also, you know, they use fossil fuels to make plastic right so is that not also kind of a calculation in terms of carbon footprint but you're saying but also the alternatives also use a really high carbon footprint. Is that right. Yeah, so like if you're just talking about sort of, you know, a single use plastic water bottle is sort of the metal water bottle. That's an example. Yeah, so the plastics going to be manufactured from natural gas natural gas distillates. So it is coming from a fossil fuel source. Interestingly, the carbon footprint of that is pretty low because we're taking, because unlike the other uses of natural gas where we burn them and create CO2, we're creating a solid plastic that doesn't degrade. And so doesn't create a CO2 emission from the actual plastic itself. So it's just the energy emissions that are in it but yes, if you care about overall depletion of fossil fuel resources plastic does have that impact. But when you just think just on a very simple basis, how much a single use plastic bottle ways versus how much a metal bottle ways. There's a whole lot more material in that metal bottle. And, as it turns out, metal is actually, you know, for thinking about aluminum specifically, it requires a whole lot of energy to recite to make aluminum, compared to, you know, that really thin filled plastic. And so this idea of, you need to really use that aluminum water bottle a whole lot to sort of break even with, you know, buying single use plastics to compensate for the amount of material that's in it just the physical amount of material. One versus the other. If one is one gram and the others, you know, 100 grams, you know, you still have like just to get that amount of material that's going to have to break even at some point. So that's where thinking about reusable and single use is pretty important sort of that if you have reusable, reuse it a lot like find one that you really love and are willing to hold on to and then try not to lose it. And, you know, rather than saying, Oh, you know, it's a it's a new month, time to get a new water bottle as well. So really thinking through those kind of things. So conferences replacing single use plastic bottles with reusable giveaway bottles is probably not the best move. So yeah, I do kind of tackle that one in one of my articles this idea of really well intended zero waste events that give away a lot of freebies in terms of pay here's reusable bottle. So sometimes the things that they're giving away in order to be cost effective are kind of not very appealing to reuse a whole lot. And so you end up kind of having these cheapy kind of reusable water bottles that people don't really want to reuse. And then you end up having sort of these, you know, reusable products that are actually used as single use products. And that's the worst possible scenario, because now rather than having this really flimsy plastic bottle, you've like created like this really heavy duty plastic bottle that requires a whole lot more plastic, and is only used, you know, one or two times. That's a good takeaway though I'm, I'm glad I got that right. Yeah, no. And so it is like one of those things are it's like yeah I mean zero waste events absolutely like do them but think about think through, you know, if you're giving away some sort of reusable products so you don't have to give away disposable products are people actually going to reuse this and reuse this in the same way that you're intending as you're throwing these events. So, um, regarding doing better for me and anyone listening and you touched on this a little bit. So are you thinking about any of your top three things that we can do or not do that are going to make a positive meaningful impact. So are you thinking about on a personal level or are you thinking about on a society level, personal level, so that I don't feel so guilty about all the parsley I throw away. So I would say, you know, thinking about your transportation miles, just overall, you know, and are there ways to reduce them and so everybody has a different structure. You know, not everybody can take public transportation not everybody can, you know, has the ability to so walk or bike places. So it is a thinking through transportation miles in a better way. Can you consolidate trips, can you figure out how to use your car less as a possible car for war. Everybody has a different scenario but thinking through your transportation miles are ways to reduce those or shift to different modes of transportation. So I would say, you know, diet is a great one to tackle next food waste is, you know, some really low hanging fruit, as far as if you want to make an environmental impact or a very quick impact on your environmental footprint. So how do you figure out how to use or how to waste less food, and I would say particularly in terms of sort of high environment impact products. Those tend to be meat and dairy, for the most part. You know, if you, you know, some lettuce wilting in the fridge, probably not nearly as is problematic as having a whole bunch of freezer burned burgers that you have to throw out right. So trying to weigh those and so, and also thinking about your overall, you know, dietary footprint overall, as far as, you know, trying to highlight things that are lower environmental impact in your diet, which again tend to be more of the legumes and whole grains and that sort of thing that we're supposed to eat anyway so bank for the environment and health. And then I would say, you know, to the extent that you can reduce your your home footprint both in terms of energy efficiency and that can go through a wide variety of things, you know, getting a smart thermostat using it, and then looking at energy programs that you might have so a lot of places now will allow you to purchase renewable energy credits for your house. So you don't necessarily have to put solar panels on your house to reduce the environmental impact of your grid. And so those would be some really sort of again high ticket items, I would say to tackle and everybody's going to be different. And so what you can tackle is going to be different. But I think there's there's lots of different love lovers you can pull. Those are three really good things. Yeah, at least to think about them. If not actually make some changes. Kind of following up on that. That's a little bit too. The first sentence in your future of food article is without intervention research shows that our current food system will exceed planetary bounds as early as 2050, unquote. I've been recently looking at temperature charts and ice cover charts on NOAA website, and it is so depressing. I have two little kids, and it makes me even more freaked out. I can bury my head in the sand because I'm not. So, how do you stay positive and hopeful, since you are probably thinking about it a lot more than the average person. Yeah, I feel like sometimes people in our fields just like deal in depression, like we just, we do a lot of bad news in big quantities, I would say. But I think, you know, there are plenty of dire predictions, there is, you know, I mean, it's not great. I think we can all agree it is not great the, you know, the estimates are not in our favor but that idea of without intervention pieces is where we're operating right. And so that is the point of what we're trying to do is we're trying to make these interventions and we're trying to figure out how to make effective interventions. So, the other good news is that we're just have so many potential levers to ramp down the things that we're doing, right. So if we currently waste 40% of what we grow from a food perspective. And that, yes, is going to lead us to toward like, you know, the planetary limits sense population grows and that kind of thing, but also is a great incredible opportunity to say, Hey, when we waste 40% of the food we grow now, if we only wasted 25%. Hey, there's a great idea. So, luckily, our margins for error are actually pretty large in the sense of, there's lots of things we can do. We have renewable energy technologies right, it's not like, Oh, the only way we can possibly source our energy is through fossil fuels. No, we have alternatives, right. And one of the ways we use energy is highly inefficient. And so we can again, overall do same services for less energy, if we just have the will power and investment to do it so I think a lot of it is kind of drumming up the willpower and the willingness to invest. And I think we're getting there. I guess you have to be at least an optimist in my field otherwise, you know, it would get pretty dire pretty quick, but I, you know, we are seeing no really great advances, and we do have major challenges in front of us, but, you know, job security, I guess. Thank you for pointing out how much room we have for improvement. It is a good thing to think about. I mean, it's depressing at the same time right because it's like so much room for improvement. Wow, we are not doing well on these metrics but that does actually mean there is a large opportunity to to right now. Excellent well I'm going to go make a lunch of reusable food that reusable food is about to go off is what I mean to say. I'm going to be like a totally wilted salad. I'm going to love it. Doing my part. Oh my gosh well thank you so much for speaking with us. This was like so interesting and so invigorating I think I was a little like just nervous that my that my instincts are so bad, but I think your your kind of guidance is really, really helpful because I think everybody who watches this will come away feeling, you know that there is something that we all can do, and I'm so grateful that you're doing this research because I will keep following it and keep improving those instincts I hope. Well thanks so much so much this has been a fun conversation and hopefully hopefully your community get something out of it. Awesome. Well thanks again. Best of luck. Thank you.