 Hello everyone, I'm going to give it one minute to allow all the attendees to join and then we'll get started. All right, it looks like our numbers have started to slow down so we will go ahead and begin. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. My name is Shia Maddox and I am with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network or SDSN for short. And we're here today to discuss a few highlights from our new Report America Zero Carbon Action Plan or ZCAP is our acronym for that and we'll be using that quite a bit today. And this report was recently released by our USA Network. And you can find the link to the report webpage in the chat which includes the full report download, executive summary, and then we also have downloads for each chapter if you don't want to download the full 400 page document. So this report was launched on October 27 and if you've been following along we've had several webinars to take a deeper look into each chapter. But today's webinar we're going to be discussing chapter 5.6 accelerating sustainable materials management in the US. So for a little bit of background, the ZCAP report was developed over the last year by the Zero Carbon Consortium, which is made up of nearly 100 researchers from academic institutions across the United States. The primary mandate of this project was to articulate a detailed policy pathway to help the US reach net zero carbon emissions by mid-century in line with the Paris Agreement. And so this report is anchored in an intensive modeling exercise, which was done by our colleagues at Evolved Energy Research. That's also chapter two in the report if you want to read a little bit more into that model. But they used a back casting model to determine the potential lease cost pathway to decarbonize the most emissions intensive industries in the US. So their lease cost pathway to the transition or central case in the model is what serves as the basis for the rest of this report. And so today we're going to hear from three speakers who contributed to this report and specifically to this chapter. First we'll hear from our co-chair for this chapter, Mark Lichtenstein. He is the chief of staff, chief sustainability officer and environmental studies adjunct faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Mark is also the center director for the New York State Center for Sustainable Materials Management. And he'll take us through today what sustainable materials management will look like as the new paradigm and go over a few recommended actions that can be taken at the federal level, federal level. So after Mark will hear from Susan Collins, president of the Container Recycling Institute and treasurer and board member of the National Recycling Coalition. Susan will walk us through the circular economy and what we can expect from a national bottle bill. And last but not least we'll hear from Judith, Inc. president of Beyond Plastics and former EPA regional administrator who will shed some light on the plastics and climate change nexus. So before we begin, I'd like to let everyone know that this webinar is being recorded, and the recording as well as the PowerPoint from today will be available on our ZCAP website. That link that's in the chat is where you can find that. And we'll also send out those links in a follow up email tomorrow. We'll be having a Q&A session at the very end of this webinar the last 15 minutes so we want to hear your thoughts your questions, as we really start to dive into the substance so please into your questions in the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. And we will be sure to ask them during that session. So without further ado I'd like to ask Mark to go ahead and turn on his camera and microphone. And we'll go ahead and get started. Hi, I'm Cheyenne and welcome everybody we're glad you're here. I'm joining from snowy and cold Syracuse New York. I hope you're somewhere warm. Let me just start by talking about materials management what that means to us really talking about I think people think about the three hours reduced reuse and recycle but this is about solid waste management but what you're going to hear today is our indication for changing as Cheyenne said paradigm. We are fortunate to have Susan and Judith here they are two of nearly 20 chapter collaborators we engage from all sectors around our country so a really good cross section of people involved on this chapter. So let me just set the context materials management has implications certainly for environmental impacts, such as air pollution water pollution, including marine plastics debris Judith will talk about this a little bit, but also it has implications for environmental justice or in other words the unjust impact our current approaches have in many communities across this country and for that matter across the globe. It also has implications for job creation positive, but the crux of this chapter focuses on climate change and greenhouse gas gas impacts and opportunities related to the next generation of materials management. Put plainly and I'm going to be really clear about this, the way we currently manage materials has devastating impacts on the climate. The estimates suggest that more than 40% of climate impact in the US comes from the materials and food consumed what we call consumptive emissions. This percentage is doubted by some but when the entire supply chain is considered from manufacturing transportation and usage to final disposition of the materials, which continues to be reliant on inefficient polluting and greenhouse gas generating waste management facilities. One could also argue that 40% is a low ball number. Regardless, it is essential that we shed our archaic costly and carbon inefficient waste management facilities, processes and systems, many of which are based on decades old technologies and policies. I've been a solid waste management system for a very large region in New York State for many years, which included landfills waste energy facility and recycling operations. I can further attest to the related negative impacts of these choices. I've been a recycling advocate for almost four decades and remain committed to the important niche role recycling can play, but I also must say it's not the panacea, not the silver bullet solution for our larger materials management storage. Reinforcing this EPA just came out with some data showing that our recycling rates are actually going down in this country's their estimate is 32%. Susan and Judith are going to cover some more facts about this. I know it is cliched, but what we're talking about here is a need for a dramatic paradigm shift. We're talking about thermal recovery such as waste energy and recycling are all downstream end of the pipe options, forcing costly attention to materials in the management systems once they get into the management systems. The paradigm shift we're talking about is one that redirects our attention to upstream or front of the pipe solutions, keeping materials out of our management systems. This is what sustainable materials management or SMM is all about. This is the SMM slide up. Not going to go through each one of these stages on this diagram, but this depicts one example of what sustainable materials management is, you'll get the slide deck so you can take a look at this afterwards. But let me just say this SMM is an integrated approach towards managing materials through their entire life cycles that's the key to achieving social equity environmental viability and economic efficiency. I sound familiar to some of you this is the three legged sustainability stool or the triple bottom line of people planet profit. When we talk about material life cycles we are including all human activities related to the material selection, the exploration the extraction the transportation the processing the consumption recycling and the disposal of the materials. We really haven't done that. The objective is to maximize positive and minimize negative environmental, economic and social outcomes across the entire product life cycles, as well as every stage of the cycle. So we put forth with this CCAP chapter that SMM sustainable materials management with associated and embedded zero waste circular economy and zero carbon goals provides a progressive response of deep decarbonization that is intrinsically linked to being more sustainable. Put another way this is about eliminating the concept of waste. SMM with associated embedded zero waste circular economy and zero carbon goals should be embraced as us national policy that's our main premise. The US needs to play a foundational role accelerating accelerating the global transition to adjust resource efficient circular and climate neutral economy with zero carbon as a primary objective. We cannot do this without addressing the current economic and consumption model and associated materials management schemes to more rapidly reach zero carbon objectives. The US must also address a multitude of issues and challenges relating to materials management this is covered in the chapter. So these are the challenges I'm not going to go into these in detail, they are explored in great detail on the chapter so we encourage you to look at that. Going back to the main premise of this chapter, SMM equals greenhouse gas reduction. I want to provide you with two examples of possible reduction through through SMM strategies Fiona could you go to the next slide. I'm not going to do this but here are some scenarios that EPA came up with in 2009. So the data is probably a little bit old but it's still worth showing if you take a look at these various options of source reduction reuse and recycling. And depending on the percentage is what we might achieve with greenhouse gas reductions they're pretty substantial. Next slide please, please. So we fooled around with the EPA's warm tool this summer, where we just took a look at a 5% increase in aluminum glass, HDPE and PET containers, and the positive impact that would have on emissions, energy reduction, increased wages, increased taxes and increased labor jobs. Again, I'm not going to go through this in detail you'll have this but these, these exemplify what we're talking about here when we promote SMM. And more about the circular economy which is about designing waste out of the system. We have an extractive industrial model based on the linear production system of take make waste. By contrast a circular economy is one that redefines growth and materials use and focuses on positive society wide benefits. This is an economy based on decarbonization. The concept of recognizes the importance of the economy needing to work effectively at all scales for large and small businesses and for organizations and for individuals both locally and nationally. To accelerate toward towards SMM and circular economy, we are looking for activity primarily at the federal government. Next slide please. There's many successful state local private public private accomplishments in the field of materials management, but to reemphasize my main premise. Congress has been unacceptably slow over the last three decades with discarded materials increasing in quantity and continuing to pose other environmental and public health impacts. Federal action is needed from the US Congress to develop a comprehensive suite of policy changes to support SMM and circular economy activities. So here are some there's more in the chapter. I'm going to end here Judith and Susan are going to get into more details on each one of these bottom line here is something needs to change. The way we've been doing it for decades is not working. SMM provides a needed alternative. I have one last slide you can take a look at this this is a this is depicting the circular economy so you can take a look at that when you'd like. I'd like to turn it over to Susan now Susan. Mark, thank you that introduction is going to flow right into my first slide, where I'm going to basically reinforce and expand upon a lot of the concepts that Mark was just presenting. And I'm going to hold my microphone closer so that you can all hear me clearly can we go to the next slide. This, this chart is from the 2009 study that I think the same one that Mark was referring to. I've been working in recycling from an environmental perspective from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective for 30 years. And when this report was released and I read the information and I saw this chart it blew my mind and it was one of the top five things that I've experienced professionally that have blown my mind the most so I use this in most of the presentations that I give. It blew my mind is because everybody had always done reports and told the story about greenhouse gas production from the silo way of looking at things looking at the transportation sector, the building sector, the energy sector. And this report was done in a different way. It looked at the US greenhouse gas emissions, but it took all of that information and sort of turned it sideways and sliced the pie a different way. So instead of asking the question. What is our transportation sector. You know how many trucks are on the road how many cars are on the road how many miles are they driving it asked the important question what's in those trucks. Why are those trucks out there on the road why are they driving around what what are they driving around what's in them. Why are we producing energy energy is going to all these different factories what are the factories producing. So when you look at it that way. It turns out that the provision of goods is responsible for 37% of our greenhouse gases and the use of those goods is another 7%. And when I say provision of goods I usually use the example of an iPhone or anybody cellular phone when you all of the work that goes into manufacturing it is in that provision of goods 37% but plugging the phone in and having that phone get electricity that goes into the use phase. So that explains those two pieces. So clearly the biggest pieces of this pie is our stuff. It's all of the stuff and the food that we eat but it's all of the stuff that we produce so every time any object is produced. And this is what what was shown on Mark's chart. There was the extraction phase, the initial manufacturing of materials then all of that goes into a factory to produce the exact product, then the product gets shipped in a truck to us, all those stages are all producing greenhouse gases and they're all producing toxic chemicals and they're all using electricity. So we have to address that production of greenhouse gases at the source, just like anybody will tell you before you install solar panels on your house to first do an inventory in your entire house and find the appliances that are sucking up the most energy reduce first, and then right size the solar panels for your house. So let's go to the next slide that that's the most important thing to think of then every thought that follows every strategy that follows comes from that type of thinking. This is reinforcing it that when we use recycled content and PET bottles this along the bottom it's showing going from 3% recycled content to 10% recycled content to 50% to 100% and you can see how the greenhouse gas footprint of the products drops and drops and drops the more recycled content we use. And it's because we've eliminated those really huge first couple of steps of making the product which is the extraction phase, and the initial manufacturing of the raw material. And once you already have that raw material in a form like a plastic bottle, the more you reuse it. The more you reuse those molecules in their existing phase, then the less greenhouse gases you're going to be producing per use. Next slide. Again, this is reinforcing it, but then looking at all of the beverage containers that we produce in the US in total about 2.3 million American homes could have all of their energy needs met with the amount of energy required to replace the beverage containers that were wasted in 2010. So instead of wasting those beverage containers if we had recycled them instead, it would have saved enough energy to power 2.3 million American homes. Next slide. So going upstream is something we talk about a lot in recycling and sustainable materials management. So this from left to right what we're seeing here is the most greenhouse gas intensive thing is to use single use products to use single use glass bottle a single use aluminum can or seal can. But then if we go into reusing something like a reuse glass bottle that gets washed and refilled many times, they can be washed and reused 20 to 50 times. We're going to be producing less greenhouse gases per item. And then the best of course is this bulk like kegs like the way that you get draft beer at a restaurant. So that's going to be the least amount of production of greenhouse gases per per use per item. So next slide please. And beverage containers can also these reused refillables we call them refillable beverage containers can be used by many of the same manufacturers if they're all using a common container. In Canada, they have something called the industry standard bottle. And I show this picture because you see a lot of Canadian brands but you also see American brands, and I also see Corona. So instead of shipping in bottles from Mexico to Canada, they're shipping kegs of beer and doing the wash and refill process in British Columbia Canada that's where this photograph came from so about 30% of their beer is being is going to be refillable bottles in British Columbia. Next slide. When we talk about beverage containers in particular, and I'm talking about this because this is one of the policies that Mark outlined in his slides as a recommendation. People often trivialize beverage containers because they don't really realize how many we use every year. So this photograph is a picture of one person's consumption the average person in the United States consumes more than 800 bottles and cans every year, and that's every type of beverage from glass from wine to milk to soda to water. Every type of container from glass to aluminum to plastic to pouches to cartons. So this is a mix here and that's what it looks like so obviously that's an enormous pile of material, and much of that could be either reduced or the rest of it could be recycled. Next slide. So we are increasing, not just because population is increasing, but also our consumption per capita is increasing. So we're going in the wrong direction. We are recycling a lower percentage, we're producing more. Everything is going in the direction of greater and greater greenhouse gas production from these containers which is not the way we want to go. Next slide. So that growth here you can see is coming from plastic water bottle consumption so we're drinking more and more water and plastic PET plastic water bottles are the primary source of beverage sales growth. So it's gone from under 3 billion, yes we measure beverage containers in billion with a B. It's gone from 3 billion nationally in 1996 to now more than 70 billion so it's in a 20 fold increase over this period of time that's tremendous growth and it's again not in the right direction from a standpoint of reducing greenhouse gases and energy use. So the solution to this problem is beverage container deposit laws which exist in 10 states and the beverage container deposit laws where you pay a deposit every time you purchase a beverage container and after you're finished drinking that drink you turn the empty container back in and you deposit back that small incentive of five or 10 cents is so powerful that the recovery rates under with containers that are on deposit in this country are 23 even four times as high as the recovery rates for the containers that are not on deposit. And this this single slide the single astounding fact is the one that blows people's minds the most I use it in every presentation and it's the most popular slide. It's always been the most requested slide that we've ever, ever used. Next slide. This is on container recycling through compared to beverage, I'm sorry, compared to curbside growth in the United States because people often think that the curbside programs have been growing and that's more recycling and it turns out that when it, when it's applied to beverage containers, it really hasn't worked for us not at all as a matter of fact there's been an inverse relationship. So that that's not a solution that's really going to work for us the deposit programs really are. Next slide. Through the coronavirus this is new information that we put together this year. When we had a cessation in a number of recycling programs and deposit programs around the US. We realized how critical these programs are in a whole new way because it completely disrupted the supply chain. And all of the major industries that use these containers came out with a press release, stating how important these deposit programs are to them and how how they're absolutely essential for us to be able to have the raw materials we need in this country to make bottles and cans. So I know this is a busy chart ignore most of it just go to the bottom line. The bottom row of numbers that says tons redeemed as a proportion of all beverage recycling tons, and it's basically around half of all of the recycling of beverage containers in the US comes from these deposit programs so when the deposit programs were interrupted. That was a major impact to the supply chain for all of these companies that make bottles and cans for beverages. Next slide. So and click one more time I'm sorry this is animated. Nearly half of all the beverage containers that are recycled in the US come from just the 10 bottle bill states, even though they only have 28% of the population. Next slide please. So we've talked about how reusing the material in its same form is the really the perfect way to reduce the greenhouse gases to the most that we can, other than just reusing things or eliminating their use all together those are always going to be best. But if we're going to use a material, the more times we can reuse that material, the better to reduce greenhouse gases. However, when it comes to PET plastic which is the plastic that is used for soda bottles and water bottles. We've had very, very low recycled content rates in the United States, most of the PET plastic that's been used has been used for other things. It's been downcycled into carpet or teddy bear stuffing or T shirts. And over this period of time, the best we've ever really seen is about 8% used in PET bottles that means broadly across the entire United States of all the PET that is used to make PET beverage bottles about 92% of it is virgin material. And then only about 8% was recycled content and we really need to see that number rise for the obvious reasons that I've been stating. So next slide. Here we see a solution so some good news. Just a few weeks ago California's new recycled content law was signed into law by the governor of California. And that becomes the strongest recycled content law for beverage containers in the entire world. It's even greater than what they have in the European Union. And that's because ours goes through these three stages where it requires 15% minimum content by 2022, then 25% by 2025, but here's where it differs from Europe goes all the way up to 50% by 2030, whereas Europe only goes to 30%. Next slide please. So I've got just a couple more here. These are the bright spots. These are where these solutions that I've been talking about this morning that I'm so excited about that, that produce such amazing results. Exactly the outcomes that we want. Well, that has been recognized worldwide, just since the beginning of 2017, we've seen all of these places introduced new container deposit laws. And this adds up to 350 million people that once all of these are implemented, those 350 million people will have access to redemption of their containers at really high recycling rates. And the next slide shows the incredible growth you can see that in the period of time, you know, 2005 to 2015 we were just sort of holding steady and then all of a sudden you can see the steep upward trend starting in 2017. So we were holding steady at just under 300 million people covered worldwide by container deposit laws. And these new laws that have been introduced in the last just three and a half years are going to more than double the amount of people covered by container deposit laws. So this idea is really taking off like wildfire around the United States. So in the next slide, I just want to mention that we have an ongoing project here at the container recycling Institute again because there's so much interest because new laws are being proposed and state after state. There's been a huge request from us for guidance on what should be in the model container deposit law and we've got a project going on right now to seek input from all of the experts in our membership to put together a guidebook on that subject. And the last slide I've got is just where you can go to get more information. We've got free weekly news headlines, weekly headlines newsletter that anybody can sign up for on our website we've got two websites that can help you with more information. I'll turn it back to Mark. Great, thank you very much Susan. So Susan just outlined if you remember one of the slides I had one of the main strategies that were recommended which is a national bottle bill. So I appreciate Susan's attention to that. We're going to now go to Judith who is going to focus on a number of things but one of the things she'll focus on if you go back, you don't have to actually go back to the slide Fiona but if you think back to that slide I had on strategies and other ones related to single use plastics. Judith is going to talk about that and about why we need to address that serious issue as well. Judith. Great, thanks Mark. It's really wonderful to be with all of you and to follow Mark and Susan. My name is Judith, Inc. I'm currently teaching at Bennington College in Vermont. I founded a new project called Beyond Plastics and served in the Obama Administration as EPA Region 2 Regional Administrator. And one of the good things about being appointed by the President of the United States to your job is unless you really screw up and you have to leave early, which remarkably I didn't. If you don't screw up, you know when your last day on the job is. It's inauguration day of the new president. So that was my last day at EPA. So it gave me a lot of time to think about what do I want to do next. What's the next chapter in this wonderful life I've lived and enjoyed. And I, you know, I did have a couple offers that were very lucrative, but I decided making money is really overrated. What's an issue where I can really have an impact, and I decided to work on plastic pollution. The reason is because when I was at EPA, meeting with researchers, there was one statistic that really stopped me in my tracks and that is scientists tell us that unless we really change the way that we are packaging products and using plastics. Scientists tell us that within the next decade for every three pounds of fish in the ocean, there will be one pound of plastic. So we are essentially turning our oceans into landfills and I wanted to do something to reverse that trajectory. Next slide please. I am pretty much obsessed with solid waste issues. And the reason is because we've all seen the solid waste hierarchy. Every state agency, most local agencies, EPA has the hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle. Well, it's reduce and reuse and then recycle and then compost and then bury and burn. But I would challenge you to look at your own community at your own state and look at where the money and the attention goes. It's almost always the bottom two rungs of the hierarchy. And plastics, you know, is exhibit A. Plastics has an anemic recycling rate of only 8.5%. You would never know that when you pick up a product there's the iconic recycling logo on it. The plastic manufacturers have spent millions on advertising telling consumers don't worry about your overuse of plastics just put it in a recycling bin. I guess the good news is that half of all plastics ever made were made in the last 15 years. So this is a contemporary issue that we still have a little bit of time to get a handle on, but not a lot of time. So just in your own lives, your waste hauler or your local government may tell you to toss all your plastics into the recycling bin. In fact, only number one and number two plastics are actually recycled. If you're lucky, maybe sometimes number five, but not usually. Next slide. And I think the overuse of plastic just illustrates how we are a throw away society. And this is why I've spent so many years working on solid waste issues. The US makes up a little over 4% of the world's population, but the US uses 70% of the world's energy 24% of the world's natural resources, and then not surprisingly 12% of the world's solid waste. That simply is not sustainable. Next slide. It's also not really fair to local governments. If you're a local government official, I urge you to do the math. Look at how much tax dollars are spent cleaning up litter. And then how much either private haulers or municipal employees are spending picking up solid waste and then the tipping fee. And yet you as a local government have very little control over what is being sent to you. On the plastics issue, the way I often describe it is let's say your home because we're all home these days, and you walk into the bathroom, and your tub is overflowing with water. Is your first instinct to go and get a mop in some rags? Or is your first instinct to turn off the tap so the water stops flowing? Of course, it's that. So if you look at solid waste policies, rarely do we turn off the tap. Instead, we build multimillion dollar landfills, incinerators. We transport waste all over the country, sometimes hundreds of miles. When what we really should be doing is turning off the tap of waste production. Next slide. I spent a lot of time on solid waste issues because fundamentally this is also an environmental justice issue. Almost always landfills and incinerators are cited in low income communities and communities of color, including in rural areas. And that's the waste end. If you look at the front end, for instance, where plastics are made, plastic manufacturing facilities, again, in environmental justice communities. So I want to focus just a moment on the plastics and climate change nexus. The way I approach plastic pollution issues is I focus on production, use and disposal. And on production, what you need to know is historically plastics were made from chemicals and oil. Now plastics are made from chemicals and a byproduct of hydrofracking. So if you have a hydrofracking site, what is now being invested in is building a pipeline from that hydrofracking site to carry ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking. So if you've ever seen a hydrofracking site, the image usually has a little, a tall vent where gases are vented into the atmosphere. The discussion now is to capture some of that send it by pipeline to these very large new ethane cracker facilities where the gas is heated to a high temperature and cracked. That's why it's called a cracking facility. And then that becomes the building block the major ingredient for single use plastic packaging. Great. That's just what we need is more cheaper single use plastic packaging. There are about 343 new plastic production facilities proposed or proposed for expansion in the United States. A lot of them are these ethane cracker facilities proposed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Louisiana. And I think we're seeing the shift because the fossil fuel industry recognizes that their market is declining for electricity generation, because thankfully we're getting more serious about energy efficiency and clean renewables. And they see their market share reduced also in the transportation sector, because we're making investments in mass transit most people more people are biking. We're not driving to work every day the way we used to, and also a really important shift toward electrification, not just electric cars, but also it ports and for transportation of goods and products. So the fossil fuel folks are smart. And they see the market trends. And so their plan B is to rely on using fossil fuel for plastic production. This is a huge problem. The ethane cracker facilities in particular emit not only air toxins, but also massive amounts of carbon, almost replacing the gains that we've made by phasing out coal plants. Those carbon emissions will be replaced by the generation of plastic and there's an excellent report on climate change and plastics by the Center for International Environmental Law, if you want to take a closer look at that. So, what is the alternative. One is to make less plastic, but that is not going to happen on its own it's not going to happen voluntarily it's not going to happen by you and me being super careful to reduce our own personal plastic footprint. And it's going to happen with systemic change and that systemic change only comes in my view from the adoption of new laws. Now I will admit I have a unique worldview. If you go to a surgeon with a problem she or he may tell you, you need surgery. If you go into a former federal regulator with a problem. She me is going to tell you that we need new laws on the books, and we need strong enforcement of those laws and we need a budget sufficient for these regulatory agencies to enforce the law. We are organically seeing people all over the country working at the local level to reduce plastics, whether it's a plastic bad band straws upon request polystyrene bands. We all start locally, because people are worried. They are concerned about this effort so we are seeing this massive grassroots effort to reduce plastic pollution. It's not that coordinated people are finding model bills. We now have a model bill on our website if you go to beyond plastics.org. We drafted a bill that dealt with plastic bags. We also drafted upon request in banning polystyrene food packaging. What happened recently in New Jersey is hundreds of these local plastic reduction laws passed at the local level, and that prompted the New Jersey state legislature and Governor Murphy just recently passing and adopting a New Jersey plastic trifecta law. We have little pieces of it in New York. New Jersey and Vermont did the whole trifecta at once, and New Jersey actually went a step further. They not only banned plastic bags but also paper bags as a way to move toward reusable bags. In New York, we have a plastic bag ban in effect. You're thinking, oh, what's one state? Well, New Yorkers use 23 billion plastic bags a year. So banning plastic bags has a huge impact. New York also has a separate law adopted in the budget last year that bans polystyrene or styrofoam for some food packaging. That'll take effect next year. There are different versions of the plastic trifecta all over the country. At the federal level, we're looking at a landmark bill called the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act in the Senate and the Congress. You see the bill numbers there. The federal bill does a number of key things. One is it requires product producers to take responsibility for collecting and recycling waste, also known as extended producer responsibility. I would argue that one of the best examples of extended producer responsibility are bottle bills, as Susan just articulated. And in this bill, there would be a national beverage container deposit law or a national bottle bill. This federal bill also phases out some of the top polluting plastic products like plastic bags, plastic straws only upon request, polystyrene. Some polystyrene would be banned. This federal bill also creates a minimum recycled content requirement. You heard Susan talk about the amazing California law that requires some recycled content so we can have decent markets for all this material. The bill also standardizes recycling and composting. It tells the EPA to develop standardized recycling and composting labels for products and receptacles. Right now, you go into a supermarket, you're going to see that iconic recycling logo on lots of products that will never be recycled because there are no markets for them. The bill also asks for studies on the environmental impacts of plastic tobacco filters. So cigarette filters have bits of plastic in them. A study on electronic cigarette parts, derelict fishing gear, and other recommendations. The bill also prevents waste from being shipped to developing countries that cannot manage it. The US and Europe ships a lot of plastics to Malaysia to Vietnam to the Philippines now that China has closed its doors to US recycling ports. You should absolutely watch the film, The Story of Plastic, which is on the Discovery app and I think the Apple app. And if you don't have access to the amazing documentary called The Story of Plastic, you can watch a different film that has a similar theme called Plastic Wars and that's on the PBS.org website. It's just a one hour frontline documentary on how we are exporting plastics to other countries. There are lots of solutions. Some are captured in the state and federal laws. I think the challenge on waste reduction is there's not one silver bullet. There's a bunch of different things that we can do. Everything from more return refillable beverage containers, cafeterias stop using single use plastic packaging and reinstall dishwashing equipment, Amazon, come on, you've got to develop recyclable packaging made from recycled content. And just as important, use your innovation to develop a way that we can reuse internet sale packaging. People are often home now when packages are delivered so we can hand back the packaging for reuse. I've got a zillion other ideas on reusable, but I'll end there and I do want to mention that I do teach an online course on plastic pollution. I taught at this semester because we went online with a lot of our classes it's going to be offered again, February 17 to March 31 you can take it for credit or you can audit. This is a shameless plug. It's just seven Wednesdays in a row and course registration opens December 1. Most of the people who took the class took it to audit because they want to get active at the local level. And that's really what we need because these issues are so important. And business as usual just isn't going to cut it when you look at the volume of waste that's generated. This all seems impossible. How do we shift to a true sustainable material recovery system. And the way we do that is by following the inspiration from Nelson Mandela who said it is always impossible until it is done. Thank you. I just want to mention something real quick before we turn it over to shine for Q amp a Judith you're being asked to put the course link in the chat box if you can do that. So what you just heard is just a few of what we have in the chapter of over 17 recommendations so these are these are two of the top recommendations. I also have a recommendation that Congress should amend a record and the break free from plastics pollution act is something that we we feel should be seriously considered. So shine I'm going to turn it over to you to facilitate Q amp a. Yeah, and thank all three of you for for your presentations we do have a number of questions and I would like to ask the participants to please keep submitting your questions. I have two. And this is for Susan around the PPI 2009 image you displayed on your your first slide. Aaron asked if this includes international shipping to our US ports. And Alexa wants to know if there's a more updated you had US greenhouse gas emissions consumptions model outside of that PPI 2009 model. I'm not aware of an updated version of the 2009 but as as I understand it, the initial version that was done very tightly defined the borders around the United States. And that was paid for by the US EPA and then I think PPI hired the same consultant to look at everything we were consuming in the United States but also include the emissions that were happening outside of the United States to bring us that material. I think that was the value add that PPI did to produce their study. That's my understanding. Great. Thanks. I have another question and this might be best for Judith. It's from an anonymous attendee saying that the EPA is soliciting comments on a national recycling strategy. What is the best way to move the EPA to incorporate more of these ideas and what is the best role for the national EPA to play and moving these issues forward. Well, the most important thing is where we will be getting new leadership at the EPA, which is absolutely essential. I think he has an important role to play. And when I was at the EPA, there was a bit of a culture whereby solid waste issues were really handled by state governments. And, you know, EPA was not that proactive on solid waste management thinking that this is left to the states. I think that's a mistake. I think the states need some leadership. You know, there's certain things that can only happen at the federal level. So, you know, one thing I would recommend is every year, or I think every year, maybe every two years, states have to submit solid waste management plans to the EPA. And EPA has to sign off on them. EPA should require that there be a robust section on waste reduction. And that if it's not robust with deadlines and resources, you send it back to the states and you don't approve their programs. That can also trickle down when states have to approve local solid waste management plans. They should require a robust section on waste reduction and reuse. And one thing I've learned in my many years in state and federal government is, you know, it's nice to have these long term plans. But the aspirational plans are just not getting the work done on both greenhouse gas emissions and solid waste management. What happens a lot, I can tell you, you know, the shocking look behind the curtain. Governors say, sure, let's commit to this by 2040, they're not going to be around anymore. So if you're going to establish a long term plan, it has to have milestones. So every year, there is a check in, and if you're not getting to the plan, you know it in year one, as opposed to in year 19, if it's a 20 year plan. And I think the new EPA can get really smart about that. The other thing that I would learn, I would really urge the EPA to do is more fully integrate environmental justice issues in all decision making. So when Bill Clinton was president, he did an iconic executive order on environmental justice. One of the downsides is it created an office of environmental justice kind of over to the side. So these are always really smart, dedicated people in the agency, but they're always tapping on the door of the real decision makers in the agency. I think what needs to happen is the new administration has to say we are looking through the environmental justice lens on permitting decisions, repermitting decisions, where we bring enforcement cases, and where we spend money. That's where it matters. And as a college professor and someone who does advocacy, I am always contacted by people struggling with local environmental problems. Most always, these are low income communities, the nor light hazardous waste incinerator in cahos that was burning PFAS chemicals from Department of Defense, right next to a public housing complex. I am so concerned of this constant pattern of polluting facilities being cited in low income communities and communities of color. So I think on solid waste issues that also would be really important for the new EPA. And I saw a question about the name of the movie. The story of plastic. And that was put out by an organization that I'm on the board of called the story of stuff. You should also watch that older movie called the story of stuff. So just go to story of stuff.org and it gets to consumption issues. And then if you don't have any time at all, you'll leave an hour. Just go to pbs.org and watch plastic wars. And watch a romantic comedy on the weekend. That's what I do. Just one more thing to add to that. Cheyenne said it early on but this this document the overall Z cap document has been given to the EPA transition team correct Cheyenne. Yes, yes. That's actually why my colleague couldn't be on this webinar today is because she's meeting with with the Biden transition team right now. One of the things Judith mentioned is the important to milestones and targets and that's incorporated into the overall Z cap document, including our chapter. So that's just one mechanism to get it to the EPA as well. Great, I was going to bring up that point so thanks for covering that mark. I've got a question here for you from Patrick. This says the information from CRI is fantastic but is still only within the limited scope of recycling. What about transcending the paradigm of waste management that Mark opened up with and getting at the need for real SMM targeting our unsustainable consumption. A perfect recycling system could reduce our national greenhouse gas emissions by 4% but the IPCC tells us we need to reduce emissions by 100% by 2030. Great. Well, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. You know, there are 100 things we need to do and we need to get them done by yesterday. And this would be one of them. But certainly recycling as Mark said, as Judith said it's, it's, you know, the second to last choice first you have to reduce and then reuse so in the context of beverage containers. I'm, I just calculated it. I'm coming up on, I'm 44 days away from my 10 year anniversary of making a New Year's resolution to never drink water from bottled water again. And it, it was the easiest New Year's resolution I've ever made. I've kept it up for 10 years. So that has been hundreds and it's not just me it's my other family members so hundreds of bottles that we're not using we're just drinking tap water and refilling our own bottles. In addition to that we have a soda stream machine to make our own sparkling water with real glass bottles that get washed in the dishwasher we've had that for a year so we don't purchase sparkling water. And then we're also lucky enough to live in a place where we can use refillable bottles for milk. There's a dairy in California called Strauss. So, as many times as you can find a layer that you can eliminate a layer of packaging an item, you know just eliminate it and then you know for sure that there's no greenhouse gases no energy use that you're being responsible for now that we're only a couple of people. So obviously the education needs to go out to millions of people hundreds of millions of people to keep eliminating those layers so that we're not using stuff in the first place that's where we're going to save that's the easiest cheapest fastest way to save greenhouse gases. So, then have a really robust recycling system but I want to lastly point out that the deposit system is the key trigger that makes the refillable program work as well. You have to put that system in place and it allows both refillables and recycling. Very, very good point and I have a question myself on the national recycle the national bottle bill I spent the summer in Michigan which has a 10 cent deposit and you know I definitely saw the effects of COVID but I think every family and friends kept all of their cans and their garage just kept storing them and storing them and waiting for the opportunity to be allowed to go back to deposit. And even then they had to limit them to only 25 cans at a time because they had so many and they were trying to social distance. So it, I've seen the behavior and it definitely works in these places so I, you know, I guess my question is, we only see 10 states with this what is the, what is the devil's advocate side of not implementing this kind of a national bottle bill I know even in our own I think Z cap group, Mark had to discuss this with some of our co chairs there was some disagreement so I'd be curious to hear some of the reasons against it and why it's not being passed. The reasons against it aren't good enough because the reasons for it are fantastic. And I only went through some of them in our presentation and left a whole bunch of stuff for another day, because I could just pile on with the benefits. When I first started at this job I had a consultant who said to me. I said, I've never worked on an issue where the, the facts were so much on your side. But there are reasons that are brought up. The, you know, the one that we battle the most in the last year is that people are afraid of taking money away from municipalities that they use to pay for recycling, which is it. The horse and buggy argument. It's saying we need to keep this horse and buggy system going because because gosh darn it the horse and buggy manufacturers when there's clearly an alternative that's going to overcome that. And, and I won't even go into them there have been so many layers of arguments that just really don't stand up to any close scrutiny. And I would just add, the real reason we haven't seen a national bottle bill or other states is because of political opposition from really well connected lobbyists. There's opposition from supermarkets, but also what I find really disappointing and I hope, you know we can't see who's on this panel but I hope someone from Coke or Pepsi is on because they've made really strong public pledges to use more recycled in their material, and they historically never achieve the goal that they lay out, and there's no accountability for them to do it. But when we do litter cleanups, we see a lot of Coke and Pepsi containers in parks and beaches and the side of the road. And if they're serious about getting to their goal of higher levels of recycled content. They need to support bottle bills because as Susan laid out that's the really clean source separated material that can be reused in in manufacturing. So I'm, I'm really hopeful that in the months ahead companies like Coke and Pepsi and beer companies and others can stop spending so much money on lobbying in the state legislatures and in Washington to kill criminals and kind of come to their senses and see that this is their waste stream to get them to recycle content at higher levels. And also they want to be good corporate corporate citizens, I used to live in Brooklyn. When you litter in the low income area of areas of Brooklyn, you never see bottles and cans on the streets of Brooklyn because there's a container deposit law in New York and so if you want to be a good corporate citizen Coke and Pepsi I'm talking to you. You need to support bottle bills because it makes our neighborhoods cleaner. It saves local tax dollars and it'll help you get your recycled content goals. So they survive beyond one press release. So we are always looking for private sector partners with our ZCAP report so if we do have anybody from Coke or Pepsi on feel free to to reach out to us. We are at the end of our hour I know we didn't get to all of the questions. We really want to give a big thanks to Judith mark and Susan again for for joining us today. I'm going to ask Fiona to put up that last slide for us. As I mentioned at the beginning we've been doing webinars for each chapter of this report, and we are almost through all of them we have two more upcoming. We have the industry chapter which will take a look at decarbonizing cement steel and chemicals tomorrow. And then we have our food and land use webinar next week right before Thanksgiving to talk about sustainable agriculture systems, renewable things along those lines. So thank you again to our speakers and our attendees, and we'll hopefully see you guys tomorrow for the industry webinar. Thank you. And thank you everyone for participating.