 Hello and welcome back everyone to part two of our briefing series reduce and reuse how to cut greenhouse gas emissions of building materials plastics and food today we will consider the climate consequences of plastics. I'm Dan Berset, executive director of the environmental and energy study Institute. The environmental and energy study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. And more recently, we have also developed a program that provides technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on bill financing programs for their customers. It provides informative objective non partisan coverage climate change topics and briefings written materials and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing recordings fact sheets issue briefs articles newsletters and podcasts are always available for free online at www.esi.org. The best way to stay informed about our latest resources is to subscribe to our bi weekly newsletter climate change solutions. And when you're visiting us online, you can certainly take advantage of that resource. Yesterday, we kicked off the week series with a briefing on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with building materials, and the steps we can take to make the most use of materials we already have. I'm going to see all of the resources from yesterday's briefing, including an extensive list of relevant reports at www.esi.org. Today, though, we turned to plastics, both the climate consequences of single use plastics, and the range of policy solutions available to us to change our course. I'm going to defer my introduction of the briefing today to a very special member of the esi family. Richard Ottinger represented New York in Congress throughout the 1960s 70s and 80s, at a time when some of the most consequential environmental legislation was enacted. He made environmental policy a top priority at a time when that was less common. And part of his commitment led him to co-found with several of his colleagues, the precursor to esi, the bipartisan bite and bicameral environmental and energy study conference in 1975. After esi became an independent organization, Dick chaired our board of directors. And in addition to his work as dean emeritus and professor of law at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, he remains very actively involved with esi as a board member and source of invaluable guidance and insight. For example, our briefing today was his idea. We could not do what we do without Dick, and it's a privilege to have him join us today. Although plastic pollution poses a major and growing danger to marine wildlife fisheries and human health, plastics are unfortunately not just a threat to our oceans. Rarely mentioned is that plastics are an enormous climate threat. In fact, if plastics were a country, it is found to then be the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter. Whereas yet, the fossil fuel industry plans to triple US plastic production by 2050. If this is allowed to happen, plastics greenhouse gas emissions are found likely to reach over 56 gigatons tons, 10 to 13% of the entire remaining world carbon budget. If we allow this planned expansion to occur, it alone was found to undermine our ability to remain within one and a half degree centigrade global temperature rise that scientists agree are necessary to avoid the worst ravages of climate change. In short, if the plastics industry succeeds with his planned build out, it is likely game over for climate change. The world's climate change managers must wake up to this threat and include the phase out of plastic production prominently in their climate mitigation programs. At least the planned expansion must be stopped immediately. Achieving this will be a major fight. Plastics are made from cracking of oil or gas. Their production creates greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of production. From oil and fracking and transporting gas to emissions from their deterioration in disposal. The fossil fuel companies are banking on the increase in plastic production to make up for falling demand for fossil fuels, as alternative energy becomes a widely available, affordable and sought after. Simply put, plastic production is a big oil and gas company top priority of fact that the industry openly acknowledges. The role of ESI with its strong relationship with congressional and environmental leaders in bringing plastic climate to the attention of the world's climate crisis negotiators is essential. And the team of experts ESI has assembled to make the case for this is incomparable. I have received my education on the subject from panelists Judith, and former EPA regional director and founder of the beyond plastics organization with whom I have partnered in collaboration with my pace university law school energy and climate change center to address the climate crisis deployment threat. Thank you very much, Dick, for introducing our briefing today. And before I introduce our panelists, let me remind everyone that we will have time for questions after our panel is finished. We will do our best to incorporate questions from our audience. And if you have a question you have two options to ask it. The first is by sending us an email email address is ask ASK at ESI.org, or even better you can follow us on Twitter at ESI ESI online and send it to us that way. We're going to introduce our first two panelists together because they'll be co presenting Judith, Inc. is a senior fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College, where she teaches classes on plastics pollution. She is the founder and president of beyond plastics and initiative that works on plastic pollution issues. As Dick said Judith is also a former EPA regional administrator during the Obama administration, and the former deputy secretary for the industry in the New York governor's office. And Judith will be co presenting with Jim Vallette. Jim is founder and president of material research L3C, a small business based in Maine. Jim and his international team specialized and analyze specialized in analyzing the global supply chains and impacts toxic chemicals greenhouse gases and waste material research works in service to nonprofit academic media and government institutions, Judith and Jim. Welcome. I'm really looking forward to your presentation today. Thanks so much Dan and thanks to ESI for sponsoring this and what an honor to hear the inspired words of Congress member Richard Ottinger I think Dick is one of the single most effective environmental lawmakers ever to serve in Congress so that was incredibly special to see him today. We all know that plastics is a water quality issue and in fact December 1, the National Academies of Science put out a really exciting and important report on plastics in the ocean. It's a water quality issue. Plastics has been unfortunately a recycling failure, I'm a big supporter of recycling, but plastics is only achieved about an 8.5% recycling rate. So when you see all the advertising saying recycle all your single use plastic know that over 90% of that actually doesn't get recycled. Plastics is a very important environmental justice issue, both where the plastics are manufactured, and then also if they are buried or burned in landfills or incinerators unfortunately those facilities are almost always cited in low income communities and communities of color. Plastics is a health issue. But what we did it beyond plastics teaming up with the brilliant Jim Vallette in his research is we wanted to look at the plastics climate change connection. We published this great report, the new coal plastics and climate change, because we know you are all really busy, we kept it to just 25 pages, and the findings were really important. When you followed what was happening in Glasgow, you didn't hear anything about plastics and climate change. And when state legislatures and Congress look at the climate change issue, there's hardly a mention of plastics which is really too bad because our report took a detailed look at 10 distinct ways that greenhouse gases are released associated with the use and disposal and manufacturing of plastics from fracking to cracking to incineration. This report finds plastics to be a major source of greenhouse gases. And it's an issue that quite frankly very few people are talking about let alone addressing. We compared the greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants to plastic production. And I will let Jim walk you through all that but I want to tell you in summary that in the near future, the US plastics industry contribution to climate change is on track to exceed the greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants in the United States, and those health impacts are disproportionately felt by low income communities and communities of color. The good news is 65% of coal plants in the United States have been shut down. This is an important accomplishment driven by many concerns including climate change, and hats off to the Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal Campaign and Bloomberg authorities and others for achieving that enormous accomplishment. However, our report has found that plastics is replacing coal as a major source of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, and just think about what's happening in the US More and more renewable energy projects and energy efficiency commitments are being experienced in the US, which is a fabulous thing. We're seeing more investment in mass transit, electrifying the transportation sector, who among us is not on a long waiting list to get an electric car. So the fossil fuel industry saw years ago that the demand for fossil fuel for electricity generation and transportation would be on the decline. And they've decided to make a major shift toward plastic production plastics is the plan B for the fossil fuel industry. It was 42 plastic facilities have opened or expanded since 19 since 2019. Many more under construction. So the new coal plastics and climate change also looked at where is this plastic production happening. And what are the greenhouse gas emissions. We were surprised to find that 90% of greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production facilities comes from just 18 low income minority communities, mostly in Texas and Louisiana. Because of the huge increase in fracking. There's a super abundance of fracked gas, which has turned the US into the global engine of plastics production. I just want to spend a moment explaining exactly what's happening. So there are about 1 million new oil and gas wells that are hydrofracked in the United States. And at the well site. Gas is vented directly into the atmosphere, it's a thing gas it's a very potent greenhouse gas. What we see now in a handful of situations is new pipelines are being built that gas is being sent to new multi billion dollar facilities called a thing cracker facilities. It's heated at high temperature and cracked. That's the funny name cracker. And that then produces massive amounts of plastic pellets or noodles and sometimes plastic powder. That is then shipped around the world to make new single use plastic packaging. It's very energy intensive. It also emits a tremendous amount of air toxins greenhouse gases and water pollution, probably the most high profile battle going on in the country is around the saint James parish Louisiana proposal by for Mosa. I'm honored to feature the amazing citizen activist Sharon Levine on the cover of our report. Sharon is working with her community in cancer alley in Louisiana to try to block this proposal which is essentially two ethnic factor facilities. I'm going to stop there. I just want to say that plastics is the plan B for the fossil fuel industry. There's no plan B for the rest of us. So now I'm delighted to introduce Jim Vallette with material research, who was the author of this report, and who did just an outstanding job pulling together a lot of data in a short period of time. Thank you Jim. Thank you very much Judith and thanks also to ESI ESI for your educational work and for this opportunity to share the findings of our collaboration. I'll start with an overview of the resources that we have developed for public use. This is all open access information available to everyone for free. Next slide please. Beyond plastics website on climate and plastics features this report and supplemental resources that I hope you will find useful. These include the methodology for our calculations, a map of plastics industry facilities in the United States, and a spreadsheet with a lot of information about these plastics factories. The cornerstone of our report is this spreadsheet. It details 150 million out of the 232 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions that we associate with the US plastics industry. Each year, each year facilities with significant amounts of greenhouse gas pollution must report this information to the EPA. In 2020, there were more than 120 plastics factories that filed these reports. Our spreadsheet groups these facilities by the communities in which they're located. It includes a lot of details like what the plant makes, which resins, and how much, and what else is planned for that facility. Next slide please. Our calculation includes estimated releases of methane and extremely potent greenhouse gas. Methane is leaked into the atmosphere when natural gas liquids are extracted by hydraulic fracturing and then distributed to the plastics industry worldwide. At least 36 million tons of methane greenhouse gas emissions are leaked per year. These estimates are based on rates calculated recently by Dr. Robert Howarth of Cornell and Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford. In the report, we provide estimated releases at 10 different stages from extraction to disposal. And these estimates are expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents. So one ton of carbon dioxide has different factors, there are different factors of emissions for different chemicals in relation to that carbon dioxide. In the report you see on the on the left hand side icons and each icon represents 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. And this 2 million tons is the amount of greenhouse gas released in 2020 by the average 500 megawatt cofire power plant. Methane leakage from supplying the plastics industry is causing the equivalent of climate pollution from 18 average coal fired power plants, but really much more than that. For consistency with EPA, our methodology for this report uses EPA's regulatory framework for carbon dioxide equivalents between gases. The agency uses a factor of 25 for methane, and that is that factor is based on 100 year timeframe. But methane lasts in the atmosphere for only 12 years, during which time it has a much more severe climate impact. In that short term, methane has not 25 but at least 84 times the impact of carbon dioxide. So using that conversion rate, our estimated releases from leakage of methane for the plastics industry balloons to 120 million tons. And that's the equivalent of 6060 coal fired power plants. Gas liquids extracted for plastics are transported by pipeline to massive chemical plants that have the ethane crackers that Judith was describing. These crackers super heat the gas until the molecules crack into new components, including ethylene that are the essential ingredients of plastics. Our report provides details on where these crackers are located and where new ones are planned. Next slide please. Beyond plastics web page also features this map of facilities interactive map. These are the facilities that reported greenhouse gas data to EPA in 2020. The colors are keyed to the amount of climate pollution reported. As you dive into the map, you can see clusters emerging like this cluster between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Many people look at petrochemical plants in isolation from each other, but there are many interdependencies between them. One of the key relationships is essential to assessing the public health and other tolls that this industry imposes, mainly upon communities of color. In addition to the climate pollution, these facilities release massive amounts of toxic pollutants, plastic dust powder into the air. This pollution causes extreme cumulative impacts in some of the country's most vulnerable communities. Next slide please. One of this report's key findings is that plastics factories in 18 communities. The factories in these communities are responsible for over 90% of the plastics industries reported greenhouse gas emissions. You can find this table on your screen in the methodology appendix to the report. This shows the number of people in closest proximity to the industry. Weighted by population, it reveals that on average 67% of residents near plastic plants are people of color and have far less income than the rest of the United States and are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of this pollution. Next slide please. For tractors, major sources of climate pollution are chemical plants that make chlorine, which is combined with ethylene to make vinyl plastics and methanol. Methanol is used to produce formaldehyde resins. These adhesives are used in engineered wood products like countertops. Methanol facilities are outsized contributors to climate change. They are pictured here in Beaumont, Texas, and it reported releasing 1 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2020. New methanol plants are among the biggest sources of potential emissions from the ongoing petrochemical buildout. 10 new methanol plants are planned in communities like St. James Parish, Lake Charles, and Geismar, Louisiana. With the environmental integrity projects analysis of permits, these new methanol to plastics plants could emit a combined 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year when they're built. Next slide please. Another trend that I saw in researching this report is how much of the US plastics industry is export oriented. 44% of the resins made in the United States are exported. Then in the last five years, a whole new category of ships were launched that are gathering ethane from the United States. Ethane is the key feedstock for many plastics. These vessels, which are over 600 feet long, are called very large ethane carriers. They saddle up to the end of pipelines in Texas and Pennsylvania, and they haul ethane to crackers overseas in India, China, and Europe. Ethane obtained by hydraulic fracturing in West Texas becomes single use packaging in India every day. Through these exports, plastics is very much like the new coal because the coal industry also is counting on exports to stay alive. Next slide please. Another very concerning source of emissions from the plastics industry comes from fluorochemicals such as hydrofluorocarbons used in plastic insulation as blowing agents. Just one year's production of fluorochemicals used in plastic insulation in the US will have the climate impact of at least 13 coal fired power plants. But there's been very little public attention on this, even though the United Nations says that eliminating the use of fluorochemicals in plastic insulation worldwide would prevent over one billion, which would be tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Hydrofluorocarbon gases escape from plastic insulation from the time it's installed to the time it's buried in landfills and thereafter. Next slide please. A year ago today, I was walking on a shoreline, not far from here and on coastal in coastal Maine. And I joined people who were picking up pieces of plastics from the intertidal zone of Penobscot Bay, shred by shred from pebbles and seaweed. These shreds of plastic wastes came from a bale that fell from a ship that was delivering this waste from Europe to a municipal waste incinerator in Maine. Among this plastic waste, I found dental floss. Most floss is coated with PFAS chemicals. When PFAS chemicals are burned, these types of plastics form extremely potent gases, which are released into the atmosphere. Some of these gases are over 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Most of the incinerators in the United States were built decades ago, when waste was very different. Their air permits are based on decades old assumptions. The proportion of household trash that is plastic today is double what it was in 1990. It's now close to 20% of municipal waste by weight and fluorochemicals are in a lot more products. Regulations have not caught up. This is a critical gap in federal policy that if it were closed could have great benefits for the climate. This is also a major data gap. Our estimate that the U.S. plastics industry is responsible for 232 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year in this report. That's just a floor. It's not a ceiling. It's really quite conservative. Thank you for your interest in this vital subject and for considering actions that you can take based on these findings. Thank you Jim and thank you Judith for that excellent presentation and overview of the issue and also an overview of how multifaceted the issue actually is. I would like to share a reminder that the slides and other presentation materials will all be available online or actually they already are available online at www.esi.org. So if you'd like to go back and read those slides or find links to the Beyond Plastics report, you can do that there. We'll also be taking questions. Actually, we are taking questions and we'll do our best to incorporate those questions into our discussion. You have two options. You can send us an email at askask.org or you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Our next panelist is Miriam Gordon. Miriam is the policy director for upstream nonprofit organizations seeking to reduce waste at the production level and the leading architect of local and state policies aimed at reducing single use plastics and packaging. Prior to upstream Miriam was the California director of Clean Water Action where she developed a program on waste prevention and launched the award winning program rethink disposable, which is demonstrated unequivocally. Food service businesses can save money, reduce waste when they transition to reusables. In the last 15 years Miriam has been a leader in advocacy campaigns that reduce plastic pollution and toxic chemicals exposure. Miriam, welcome to our panel today. I will turn it over to you. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to share some slides today and talk about why reuse is a climate solution for plastic pollution. First, a little bit about upstream. We are a national NGO that's been focusing on waste policy since 2003. We are named upstream because we believe that to create a good quality of life for a planet of 7.5 billion people and growing, that we have to redesign the systems that deliver products to consumers. And that means rather than focusing on managing waste once it's created, we need to redesign our delivery systems to move from throwaway to reusable or to eliminate packaging altogether. So I want to delve into that idea that recycling and end of life management are not going to solve our waste problem because that's a little bit counterintuitive for a lot of people. But I know many of you have heard about the myth of recycling that was unveiled when China stopped taking our hard to recycle and mostly plastic waste. But let's dive in a little bit more into that myth. Most of the materials that are recycled are downcycled, which doesn't turn off the plastics tap, for example, because we continue to have to use virgin petroleum feedstocks to make the plastics. When it comes to food packaging, which is the biggest place that foodware is where most of the plastics are going that are being created are going to be used. Foodware is generally too dirty to recycle when it comes into contact with food. Research by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality found that recyclable products are beneficial for the environment in only 56% of the cases of hundreds of studies evaluated. Now with compostable products, that is also a bit of a challenge. I live in California, where we've been all in on composting, packaging, and foodware. But the reality is that only 14 of the 182 commercial compost facilities in California will accept or process compostable plastic. And when they do, it creates a whole separate and contaminated compost stream that is less valuable and has limited uses. And packaging overall has been found to lower compost quality and also most compostables don't end up getting composted. They end up in landfill where the greenhouse gas impacts are 30 times higher than when products are actually composted. So if we can't recycle or compost our way out of the problem, how about just banning the plastics all together? Would single use plastic bands be the right solution? From our perspective, banning one problematic disposable material results in a lot of regrettable substitutions like bio-based plastics, aluminum, paper, wood, and bamboo. And I don't have time really to delve into all of the problems with these regrettable substitutes. I would point you to our reuse wins report. But our conclusion is that the problem isn't just plastic, it's single use itself. And so single use products and packaging from a climate perspective are the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. This is a conclusion from an EPA report. In our own report, reuse wins, we looked at the life cycle analysis, which is basically the technical tool that practitioners use to evaluate the environmental impacts of products from cradle to grave. And we looked at the life cycle analysis of food packaging primarily because that's the biggest contributor of plastics in our environment is food packaging. And we looked at 14 different LCA's, the ones that were determined to be most credible and most timely. And on balance what they found is with the, you can look at the little champion or trophies in our chart here. On balance, most of them found that the reusables beat the single use through every environmental measure and LCA's generally look at environmental impacts through 14 different environmental measures from climate to water consumption to pollution to resource impacts. And so on balance, and for the most part, they are finding that reuse beats single use all the time. And I just want to highlight one example of why reusables are better for the climate than disposables, taking cups, for example, a very common disposable product that we all probably feel a bit of guilt about how much we're throwing away. And in the, in the report we showed that the LCA's show that disposable paper plastic and bio plastic have CO2 impacts that are three to 10 times higher than the reusable alternatives that were evaluated ceramic stainless steel and glass. And we've looked at the LCA's and looked at the per product per item CO2 emissions of one disposable product compared to one reusable product and pull them out of these LCA's that we evaluated. And you can see that the CO2 emissions of the disposable products are always higher than the CO2 emissions of the reusable alternative. Just for clamshells cups and plates. The other find big finding of our reuse wins report is that reuse always saves businesses money. And the program that I started in to launched in 2012 rethink disposable has worked with approximately 300 food businesses, primarily in California, but expanding to other states. And in 100% of those cases and every business that it works with the business saves money. And on average for small businesses, the annual cost savings, they save money when they transition to reuse for on site dining. And on average, the savings for small businesses are between three and $22,000 a year. They're eliminating high quantities of waste and and disposable packaging items and saving money at the same time. Now on the right side of the slide I'm showcasing the result of a Starbucks report that found similar results. For example, they found that if a cafe used 10 reusable cups per hour, that the annual cost savings would be about $6400. And they also found that there would be a substantial greenhouse gas reduction as well as solid waste reduction and water reduction. So we transitioning to reuse is something that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around because it's just not part of our culture currently. I want you to imagine a city where this is happening where all restaurants are serving on real plates cutlery and cups, like McDonald's actually does in in Europe for so many of their cafes, or where to go coffee is being provided in returnable or reusable or takeout and delivery is provided in reusable to go containers that are easily returned. Now I'll show you I'll point to the bottom picture which is me and two of my friends last night. We were able to have a meal delivered a takeout meal delivered in reusable containers from dispatch goods so it's already happening in my community. Where you could go to public venues and water and cup and drinks are provided in reusable bottles or cups. And when you go to get groceries and cleaning and personal care products they can be delivered to your home in reusable containers, or you can get them at the store as with the loop program. This is actually happening now as a result of many of the policies that are being introduced in communities and states across the country. And in these cities, 10s of thousands of people are starting to be employed in this new use economy, litter and solid waste costs are down. And none of these innovations required you to bring your own anything it was provided by the company to you. So it's a really exciting what policy can do, and just signaling the kinds of policies that we're going to need to make this the norm in all of our cities and communities across the country. We need to stop focusing on managing the waste once it's created and focus more on preventing it through reduce and reuse and policies can be can be an accelerator of this paradigm shift. We recommend two policy approaches the first is to focus on reducing and eliminating the unnecessary packaging. And the second is to make the rest reusable or refillable. And I'll just close with an overview of some of the strategies and policies that you can find in our recently released we use policy playbook. So for reducing as much as possible. So we're recommending sector wide business sector targets for reduction being built into extended producer responsibility and bottle bills, and we're starting to see some of that with break free from plastic pollution act and advocacy for the national national bottle bill. There can be bands on throw specific throw away packaging products where the replacement is a reusable and accessories on request, which means that you don't get unnecessary accessories delivered with your take out or deliver order. This law has been enacted last year this year in California and Washington and many local jurisdictions have been enacting it. And then in terms of transitioning the rest reusable and refillable. We are the break free from plastic act that was introduced has some refillables spending on infrastructure for refillables and targets for refillables. We're also seeing reusable bag policies and reusable food where for onsite dining being enacted in many local jurisdictions, primarily in California, and a host of other policies that I really don't have time to go over so I want to recommend you that you visit our website where we can we're showcasing these reuse policies and where they're being enacted and we're tracking them. And also our report, the policy playbook that I hope has been the link I think has been shared with you and you can also follow us and our many channels in order to learn more about this new reuse economy thank you so much. Thank you Miriam. I think the question everyone has on their mind is what was for dinner. Oh yeah. Yeah, so it was just a local Indian restaurant blocks from my house Casa restaurant and. And what we're finding is that this company dispatch goods is servicing is growing incredibly quickly, even during coven this solution is taking hold and very popular. My friends who are with me last night are not environmentalists and they are just so excited to enjoy a meal without all the waste. That's awesome well I had to ask because it's it's that time of the day I'm starting to get hungry. We are going to transition now to questions and I'm going to, Judith I'm going to start with you and then Jim, I'll be happy to give you an opportunity to weigh in as well and then we'll round out with Miriam I'd like to double back to a really, really important topic that came up, especially a little earlier in the presentation that is sort of the environmental and climate justice concerns with plastics policy. And so, I'm thinking, Judith will start with you again and I'm just like you to explain a little bit more about sort of what are those environmental and climate justice policy environmental and climate justice concerns that as we're thinking about what to do with cloud plastics policy what should we, how should we be really thinking about this what should we be thinking. Well, plastic pollution and extended producer responsibility legislation, whether at the state or federal level is very much linked to environmental justice. I'm always horrified when I personally use the term and I hear other people use the term cancer alley. And that is a very long geographic stretch along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, which is really the petrochemical center of the nation if not the world. Where people suffer every day because of the air toxins and the water pollution from those facilities, if they were located in more affluent communities they would have probably not been built, but certainly would have been shut down long ago. So, I, you know, I got active on the plastics issue. Largely because somebody concerned about the ocean, but I have now, you know, I teach a class at Bington College on plastic pollution which you should all take it's offered online, two thirds of the students are community people who audit it. And we focus on production use and disposal. So the production linkage is very clear. And then on the disposal and we know that plastic recycling is abysmal clocking in at about 8.5%. So that means the rest of that plastic is either going to be littered buried or burn. If it goes to a landfill or incinerator good chance that's an environmental justice community also people should realize a massive amount of plastic is exported to Asia and Africa where it becomes a headache in those communities. Folks should watch the movie the story of plastic, which follows the journey of plastic to other countries, and it'll really open your eyes to the global environmental justice implications, and for what so we can have, you know, plastic recycling that we use for 15 minutes for a mediocre lunch, you know, think of your typical lunch if you're back in the office it's the plastic bag it's the plastic straws the plastic cup it's the plastic soup container plate. And we're done, usually in 15 or 20 minutes and then that plastic outlives us. So, the environmental justice implications are huge. And then of course, more greenhouse gas emissions damages environmental justice communities disproportionately. Yeah, oh yeah just to add on to that. In research in this report. We saw the geographic patterns emerge. Many of us have been doing work trying to stop toxic pollution in the US for many decades and some of my earliest work was in Ben Rouge and again you know that showed up as a major center of of climate pollution, in addition to all the toxic pollution. Toxins and the PCBs and organochlorines that these industries have been producing for years. A lot of these plants have shifted their production from one toxic chemical to another in these locations over the over the decades. They've been producing for decades. You've seen plants, they've been making organochlorine pesticides like DDT decades ago, or, you know, all sorts of all sorts of or CFC is chlorofluorocarbons and now shifted to hydrofluorocarbons. The industry adapts to the time and now their adaptation is with this flow of cheap natural gas liquids from hydraulic fracturing, they're adapting to that maximizing their production in these in these in the same communities. And they're located there because this is where labor rights, environmental rights, democracy itself are at great risk. And you see that extended globally as well. One of one of the industries I've looked at over the years is the building and construction. And the flooring industry has transformed in the last 10 years. We've had a lot of build out in the US. There's also been a huge build out in China. And some of that build out is to produce cheap PVC vinyl flooring in the US over half of the floors that are sold in the United States are made of cheap PVC plastics made in China. And they're made there precisely because these floors are labor intensive. They're run by factories that are run by the government of China. And so there's no in regions where labor human rights environmental protections are the are the least. And that's what's coming into the US market. So the history of plastics is intertwined with the history and the layers and layers upon of injustices that have that the that the plastics industry has relied upon for its margins for decades. As the build out continues as the amount of plastics increase, these injustices will just continue to increase as well. Miriam I'd like to also make sure you have an opportunity to weigh in as well please. Thank you. Um, well, I mean, it as Judith pointed out the communities that live on the fence line or next to sites of extraction production and disposal and incineration are so directly impacted and their report shows that as well. But I think that, and I have seen that personal what I've seen personally in California, which is actually also a big gas producing and fracking state is that many of those communities also are impacted by other forms of single use product production. So, you know, like agricultural products so growing all the corn to make the bio based plastics. But these communities that are actually doing, you know, working in that in in agriculture and living next to these agricultural industrial agricultural farms are heavily impacted by the pesticides and all the chemicals that are being used, but also all the oil and all the energy and oil and gas that goes into growing those products so we have to think about not just the last environmental justice with plastics but environmental justice with, you know, all of the single use products that live near logging big logging sites where their ecosystem and water resources are being devastated. And finally I will say that there's also the issue of exposure to chemicals in our single use food and beverage packaging. So to our unwrapped project or website. We recently revealed that there's over 12,000 chemicals being used in food and beverage packaging and other food contact materials, and it's the people who live in food deserts in low income communities and communities of color, who only have access to food that's packaged they don't have access to fresh, fresh food and produce, they're way more heavily impacted by this toxic chemical exposure. Thank you very much. Mary, I think I'm going to stay with you for this next question which is actually from our audience but Judith and Jim I hope you'll feel free to weigh in as well. The question is, do, does any state or Canadian province, or countries elsewhere, have a single use ban on ban on single use plastics, or plastics packaging that you can share and also curious, whether or not these are actually enforced or are they in your opinion enforceable. Well, I think there are, you know, the EU itself and also countries within the EU are moving forward on bans on single use plastic packaging, and also many countries that are targeting or establishing targets for increasing the amount of reusable packaging that's being put into the marketplace. So, I like to talk about those that are setting the targets like the EU that is specifying that by 2030 10% of the packaging products have to be reusable. Romania is setting a 30% target by 2025. Germany saying 70% of their bottles have to be reusable by 2023, and certain regions in Spain are setting very high targets in an EPR model that is upstream and beyond plastics and others have recently released we are recommending that we get to reduce, we reduce, we reduce packaging by 50% within 10 years. So, that as, yeah, I'll turn it over to Judith because I think she has more to say about plastics bands. Well, there are hundreds of them if not thousands all over the world. You know, some are narrowly focused on one product for instance, New York State banned plastic bags. Last year New Yorkers used 23 billion single use plastic bags. So that's a big change. You go to the supermarket in New York and you mostly see people bringing in reusable bags that's huge one bill. In two weeks New York is banning polystyrene foam for food packaging and also those dreadful packing peanuts. How are we going to live without them just fine and lots of, lots of styrene will not be needed to manufacture them. So you've got these kind of narrow policies. Miriam mentioned the EU where 10 different types of plastics have already been banned the standard ones but also remember when we used to have q tips and the cotton swabs were held together by cardboard. In the EU, you can no longer sell q tips with the plastic connector, which, you know, somehow we will manage in the bathroom to clean our ears with cardboard rather than plastic. What I'm seeing happening is a real movement from the grassroots up. It starts with city or county policies and then often it'll lead to the state, but I will say the US federal government is missing in action on this issue. How about a national bottle bill. How about looking at the break free from plastic pollution act introduced by representative lo and fall and Senator Merkley. There are different proposals at the federal level to prohibit single use plastic beverage bottles in national parks. There's a ban on flushable plastic items. There's a lot that can be done. And I honestly think that the December 1 report from the national academies will be a catalyst for the federal government to look at this issue. The public wants change. I have met many climate change deniers. I've never met a plastic pollution denier because it's everywhere. And people want choice. When you go to the supermarket, you shouldn't have to stand there and feel terrible about the juice you're reaching for. So people want choice. We're seeing lots of innovation. And the federal government has a lot of catching up to do. If I could just add, each one of those policy measures presents an opportunity to drive towards what we want. So, you know, when we have plastic bands, we're talking we are talking about what we don't want, but we should be in every one of these policies driving different business sectors towards what we do want, which is we want things unpackaged and we want things, not just not in plastic, but if it is packaged to be in something durable and reusable that doesn't have all of these EJ climate and all these horrible environmental impacts. I can definitely imagine a world without packing peanuts, but my vacuum cleaner will have a hard time with that because it relative utility will decrease. Those things get everywhere. We have time for one more. I'm going to treat this as a lightning round and Judith I think it builds off what you were just saying so I think it works well. Do you have any, our audience congressional staff people they work for members of Congress who represent constituents all over the country. Are there other state local policies or initiatives that are underway or that are in place that reflect the solutions that you all are working toward that you can share and Judith I'll start with you and then we'll go to Jim and we'll give Miriam the last word today. In Oregon have adopted extended producer responsibility laws. I think they're really good first laws out of the gate, but could be much stronger on requiring reuse design standards, we're just reducing toxics in packaging. A small group of NGOs have drafted a model EPR bill, mostly for the state level but I think it's relevant federally. National bottle bill, you know, next year is the 40th anniversary of the New York bottle bill. It's the first bill I ever worked on. The nine states have effective bottle bills. Why can't that be done nationally. I can go on and on but I'll leave it there because I want to hear from Miriam and Jim. There's more on the flip side of things of what can be improved and there are these huge gaps in accounting for the amount of climate pollution that this industry, specifically this plastics industry generates. A lot of the data that people rely on on policymaking are based on the industry's own data is outdated 1020 years old. A lot of the declarations around products are that way. They don't reflect current realities, nor does EPA's strategy of counting as much as possible as recycling. That's really a real counter to efforts to prohibit single use packaging. EPA, here in Maine, you turn plastic waste into a briquette and send it to a cement kiln. That's called recycling. I don't think that's what we think of as recycling as consumers when we put things into bins. We need to get rid of these loopholes, including the chemical recycling loopholes that the industry is pushing as a so-called panacea for plastic waste, where that again is just turning plastic waste into fuel to be burned. There's more CO2. So we need to close these loopholes in ways to be out of space. So we are seeing a lot of groundbreaking work at the local level. We put out a model policy comprehensive foodware reduction policy in 2019, and Berkeley was the first city that enacted it. It basically says we'll only allow reusables for onsite dining, even McDonald's, which is now rolling that out. And for takeout cups, we're not going to allow businesses to give them out for free anymore. If you want a disposable, you're going to have to pay for it. And then your choice is to bring your own reusable or the business lends you one on deposit or you just enjoy your beverage onsite. You can avoid the charge that way. And the Berkeley ordinance also said that accessories can only to utensils, straws, napkins, condiment packs can only be provided when a customer specifically requests them. And every one of these pieces, components of this legislation is being replicated in communities across the country. Cup charges, Vancouver passed a 25% cup charge. The cities of Dublin and Cork, we can't take credit for this. Maryland banned the use of single use cups at government facilities. So there's opportunities to drive reuse using government as a model. And then we have a whole bunch of local policies that are specifying reuse has to be a certain way to reuse at local events and government sponsored events. And even, even some cities and countries that are saying bottles have to be refillable. So Germany is now requiring that 70% of bottles in in use have to be refillable. And then this is filtering up to the state level and influencing state policies so we had the accessories on request as I said passed in California and Washington, we had reuse for onsite dining proposed in California last year it didn't pass. So it's a very, very exciting the movement towards reuse. And I could just mention one quick thing I promise to be fast. The Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act also has a provision that puts a three year pause on the construction of new plastic production facilities. And that is really essential and would match up with President Biden's commitment on environmental justice, because Texas and Louisiana are just so overburdened with air pollution and water pollution we need that three year pause for the regulators to catch up so we don't have, you know, continue to have health problems in these communities. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation today Jim. Thank you so much for your presentation today, Miriam. Thank you so much. It was so such an interesting panel and thanks to the thanks to the man who encouraged us to pull it all together did God and thank you for this is a great idea for a briefing and I'm really happy that we did it. So thanks to you. Um, I would also like to thank everyone in our audience for coming back. Those, some were with us yesterday, some are just with us today but I hope in any case, you'll come back for our briefing about food waste, reducing emissions by reducing food waste specifically as the name will be introduced tomorrow, special guest representative Julia Brownlee from California will be joining us at the beginning of our briefing which we're really excited about. Also, in the, in the name of continuity and tying things together we talked yesterday during building materials about insulation blowing agents installations a great thing energy efficiency is a great thing but I was something that I think is probably a little under appreciated in terms of how we think about HFC's and the bands that are are being considered and tomorrow of course food waste we're talking a lot about food packaging today. So it'll be a nice tie in for tomorrow as well. Thank you to our panelists thank you to our audience. Dan O'Brien who's behind the scenes making it all click, put up the entire series. If you missed any of it if you want to go back and read any of the resources or any of the presentation materials you can do that. So by clicking on that link, visiting us at www.esi.org. Also, it would be a real shame if you did all that and then didn't sign up for climate change solutions which is a really great by weekly newsletter. Like to end by thanking Daniel Brian, of course for all of his hard work today but I'll see also Omri Allison, Emma, Anna Amber Savannah and Isabella for all the hard work that went into today, and for all the hard work that's going into tomorrow. Sorry for being a couple minutes over, but I think it's worth it. And if you've already stayed with us five minutes over the hour surely you have another two minutes to help us by filling out our survey. This is the link you can use we've read every response. If you had any technical issues you'd like to make us aware of if you have any questions that you have about our, how to access our materials or anything like that ideas. We really do take all the feedback seriously. With that we'll close it. I hope everyone has a great rest of your Thursday, and we will see you back tomorrow at one o'clock Eastern for reducing emissions by reducing food waste. Thanks so much.