 What's the word of the day? Dyson Chee. You're going to know that word, you're going to remember that word, because in the future you'll hear about Dyson some more. But let's talk about what Dyson is doing right now. Dyson, what are you doing right now? Well, right now we're supporting an initiative called Bill 480, it's the Bill at the Honolulu City Council that would phase out a variety of St. Louis classics. As a kid, this is really important to our future and we're trying to help pass this bill. Okay, let's break that, let's unpack that as they say. And first of all, you're homeschooled but you're equivalent to a senior in high school now, then you're going to be going to college next year. Yep, that's correct. Have you settled on what college? Well, as I'm a dual credit student at Kapiolani Community College, I think I'm going to go there, finish up the 200 level classes and then transfer over to the HBNLF. And you're going to study what? Political Science and Communications, so dual major. Try to change the world. Yes, sir. Well, yeah, I wish I had that kind of focus when I was your age. It's remarkable. Okay, so then you've adopted, you've deported, you're here to speak to advocate for Bill 480, which is about, you know, environmental. It's about keeping plastics out of our lives and out of our environment. So what's the problem with plastics in the environment? Do I really care about it? I mean, you know, we're here in Hawaii with a little tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny state. There's a lot of plastic stuff outside of Hawaii. This is only about the city and county. Bill 480 is in the city and county. It's a city ordinance, Bill 480. So why do I care? Should I get excited about this and why? Oh, yeah, hell yes, you should get excited. And here's some of the reasons why. So first of all, plastic pollution, a lot of people do call it environmental problem, because that's the most obvious thing you see, right? Like, turn all that has to straws it up, it looks like an environmental problem. Thing is, though, that plastic pollution is actually a human health issue and also a social issue. So for example, there was a study done that found that we humans ingest about credit cards worth of plastic every week. Can you imagine eating a credit card every week? It wouldn't be good for me, I can tell you. Not the greatest thing to think about. And plastics do have potential health hazards to our body, although they've only been in our environment for approximately 50 years or so. We didn't have plastics. Exactly. I know that, because in, let's see, the Dustin Hoffman movie, back when his father said to him, young son, it's all about plastics. You've got to get into plastics. That's when they invented plastics in the 60s, I think. Anyway, the problem is doing this in the city and county so that it does have an effect, and what effect would that be? In other words, if I took all the plastics out to this building and take, what effect would that be? What effect on the reef? What effect on the oceans? What effect on the fish? I know about microplastics, because we eat microplastics all the time, and I feel them building up somewhere. I don't know where, but they're building up. They're blood vessels. Yeah, who knows where, yeah. They're bad for people. But what about the environment in general? What is the problem with plastics in the environment? Yeah, so certainly if Bill 40 passes, you'll see less rubbish on your beaches. Rubbish people, for the most part, don't like seeing rubbish on the beaches, whether it be straws. Tourists don't like that at all. Yeah, tourists don't like it either, and we depend. We get billions of dollars in revenue from tourists, and if these tourists are like, well, I don't want to pay $1,000 to go see some dirty beach in Hawaii, I'm going to spend it in Tahiti instead, then we lose that money. And so, we lose the situation, so there's a lot of it. What about those awful pictures of birds, seabirds, where they died and somebody dissects them and opens them up and their whole body is loaded with plastic? What about the whales that carry lots of plastics in their whole lives? Because they can't distinguish it from other materials in the ocean that eat the plastic. How does it affect the animals and birds? Yeah, well, a lot of times what happens is that if they ingest plastic, it can be fatal to them. For example, if you have a whale that consumes a bunch of plastic bags and whatnot, it can block its digestive system, and then it's going to end up starving to death, and then you just have a dead whale that's brought into the ocean. Well, it's tragic. They're under great extinction anyway, and I happen to like birds a lot. So I really, it's horrible to see a picture. Imagine how much worse it would be to see it in real life. The bird that died from the plastic covering his inside is awful. So I guess the question is, why can't we deal with the plastics in some way other than Bill Fordy? For example, why can't I make a big oven somewhere? Put all the plastics in there and burn up the plastics, so we don't have to worry about it. Why can't I do that? Okay. That's a really good question. So part of the problem with plastics is that when you burn them, they emit certain gases like methane because plastic, petroleum-based plastics, you make them from oil. And when we burn oil, it's a known fact that contributes to climate change. Plastics are no different. When you burn them, or if you throw them in, what do you call it? You let them break up, they will release greenhouse gases, and that will contribute to climate change. So certain studies that have found that the amount of that plastics contribute to climate change is going to increase in the future. And so that's part of the problem with plastics is that they're still contributing to climate change, and they're still damaging the ecosystem, they're damaging our health. And then the other problem, too, is when you burn them, you get this kind of weird ash. Have you ever burnt a fork in a fireplace like a plastic or something like that? Yeah. It has that funky smell. It's like, ugh. That smell is the chemicals coming off of it. And so not only is it releasing greenhouse gases, it's also releasing chemicals that can be toxic. If you inhale that, that is not good for you. It smells toxic. Yeah. Okay. So what about this whole notion of the plastics, in order to make the, you mentioned, to make the plastics, we are giving off carbon into the atmosphere. Yeah, greenhouse gases. And then when they degrade, we are again giving off carbon to the atmosphere. And that suggests that there's really no easy solution by burning them or burying them even because they're bad at both ends in the creation and in the deterioration. So I guess what you're saying is let's not use them at all. Let's cut down on our use of the plastics. And in that way, we won't manufacture them and put the carbon in the air that way. And we won't have to worry about them being deteriorated and put the carbon in the air that way. So this is a sort of catch it at both ends kind of solution, which sounds admirable. But then, you know, you get into a pretty serious, wouldn't call it social question, how in the world are you going to do this? How are you going to wean people away from plastics that for the past 50 years, almost 60, maybe 70, we have been using in every which way? The name of the movie was The Graduate. I'm pretty sure I didn't watch that movie. His father was telling him, go into plastics, young man. Anyway, or his girlfriend's father, whatever. So I guess my question is, what does this bill provide because the provisions, you know, the details and you know, you know, the devil is always in the detail. So what are the details of this bill? How does it presume to stop people from using plastic? Yep. So Bill 40, what it does now is that it's in a phase out rather than like, OK, here's one day and we're going to ban everything one day. It's phased in a way that it starts out with, OK, first, we're going to make it that way. You have to do it by request. That's pretty easy for businesses to do, not asking for too much. That's the first year after that, which is 2021, I believe. It's going to ban the items that are easier to get rid of like straws, utensils, the thing that there are lots of good alternatives to. And there's also been like this big movement to get rid of them, right? And then finally, in 2022, we have the items that are going to take businesses a bit more time to run their stock out of like clamshells and things like that. And so by doing this tiered approach, the hope and the goal is that we're going to give businesses enough time to run out their stock, whether or not left over with a bunch of materials that they don't need. Is that the way you wanted it? I would say didn't you want to have this happen right now today? I mean, that would be amazing. But at the same time, you got to remember that in Hawaii, it's not easy to run a business and the point of this bill isn't to kill businesses. The point of this bill is to protect the people and the planet. And so killing businesses doesn't do you any good for helping the people. And so by helping to preserve businesses, as well as the other two parts of the triangles, we have something that's much more equal for everyone else. Why do you have different transitional periods for different kinds of plastics? Why don't you just give them all the different kinds of plastics, the same transitional period, you know, like four years, whatever it is. At the end of that time, you can't do this anymore. Instead of having it, you know, the reason I ask that question is it's going to be hard to enforce this anyway. The more detail you put on, you know, the prohibition, the more difficult it is for any law enforcement agency, for that matter, for all the retailers who will have to follow this presumably. Why don't you just have one deadline at the end? So maybe I should have made this clear, but it's actually three deadlines and the plastics are grouped together in specific ones. And like I said earlier, it's to give some leeway to businesses. The industry was asking for more time, which is totally understandable. And we want to be as accommodating as possible. And so the hope is that by splitting, instead of like, OK, we're going to do all plastics by 2022. We're going to split it that way. We're going to do the easier stuff first and the stuff that's going to take you a little more time to when your stock's out next. OK, so I take it you talk to some businesses in order to determine how much stock they had and how much stock they needed to run out. So who did that? What did define your organization for me, Darson? Who's in it? Who is on the street? Who is doing the legwork? Absolutely. So it's really a coalition between a variety of organizations. So some well-known ones would be Cocoa Hawaii Foundation, Sir Fryder, Sustainable Coastlines, and they kind of work under umbrella of Zero Waste O'ahu. And so together we're all like parts of the puzzle and together we get a whole puzzle. And so, for example, Sir Fryder would reach out to businesses and ask them, like, what do you need? What are your concerns? Sustainable Coastlines can try to gather community support for this. As a youth, my job is to really get youth to come out to these hearings. So it's hard. A lot of these hearings are like at 12 o'clock or 10 o'clock and people are in school or at work. Getting people to come out, having people be able to, you know, speak up and have their voice heard is a challenge. But it's one that I'm willing to accept. That's great. It's great. So when you say come out, what do you mean? Have them out in a meeting or protest, have them out in the street. What are the operational functions of promoting a bill like this? So the main thing when I talk about to come out is to come out to hearings. So far, I believe there has been five hearings for Bill 40. And so at each of these hearings, the council members are going to listen to members of the community. They're going to talk to businesses, the industry, environmental organizations and try to weigh all of those opinions together. And then they make the decision. I think that's what we're hoping they do. And so part of the most important thing is to get people to come out and try to support Bill 40, because if everyone's at work, everyone's at school and no one comes out, it looks like no one supports Bill 40. Even though maybe it's just that because they're at school or work, they can't take time off. This is the same problem. Everybody's sitting on the bench waiting for somebody else to do the work, but you're doing the work. This is pretty good. And so what kind of response have you had when you go out and talk to people? What kind of response has the community provided? What kind of resistance has the community provided against the bill? For example, I told you I went to 7-Eleven and they handed me to form. They said, would you like to sign our Bill 40 form? So wait a minute, this is this is against Bill 40. Have you got the one for Bill 40? I'll sign that one. We didn't have that one. So, you know, you get different interest groups, if you will, taking different positions on this. Some of them are going to be opposed to Bill 40. What experience have you had? So my experience has really been that community members, like individual members of the community, especially the younger ones who are around my age, they really strongly support Bill 40. People who are in my generation, we understand that the longer it takes for us to deal with this issue of plastic pollution, the bigger the impacts are going to be on us and the more we're going to have to carry. And so we want something to be done now. A lot of times, small businesses have already been taking these actions, like Banan, for example. They're using all compostables. They haven't had any problems. And yeah, not even in supply or in quality. And the cost of the compostable is not significantly more than plastic. Apparently not enough to put them out of business. And they've been doing pretty well. Banan is, I would say, well known in terms of in Hawaii. And so really it's been what I've been able to see is a lot of really small local businesses support this. But then larger ones like 7-Eleven, ABC Stores, Zippies, they've been coming out in opposition and claiming that this is going to hurt small local businesses. When reality, small businesses are already doing this on their own. They didn't even need a bill for it. They realized it's our job to take care of their earth. It's our job to protect the people to let us make this decision. That's pretty good. So you actually haven't had a lot of resistance. Not in terms of the community or small businesses. Yeah, that's pretty good. It's good for Hawaii. It's good to see people get on board with that. Now, what about in the city council? What has it been like? I understand that the mayor has said, Mayor Caldwell has said that if the council passes this bill, he will sign it. This is a big step, isn't it? Absolutely. It's good to have that kind of support from him because that has an effect on the whole process. But what about the council itself? What kind of response have you had from them? What kind of contact have you had with them? So the fact that Bill 40 has managed to pass so many hearings does show something. It shows that the council members, the majority of them aren't supported Bill 40. We know that there are council members who oppose Bill 40. Carol Fukunaga and Hayate Tuneo, she opposed Bill 40 at the last hearing. But now that it goes to the full council hearing, we have all the council members on. And so I personally am not entirely sure which ones are exactly in opposition or in support. There are a few that I could say are in opposition or support. For example, Council Member Manahan is probably in support since he introduced the bill and Council Member Fukunaga will probably still be in opposition to the bill since she opposed it last time. But a lot of them are in the middle. Maybe they lead one way or another. And really, that's where the community voice comes in. Because when they hear your opinions, that can help to build their own opinions as well. And then they'll understand like my constituency supports or oppose Bill 40 and therefore I should support or oppose Bill 40. But the debate is over and it's just going to go to a vote. Will there be further further testify? So the final final hearing is the date that you can submit your testimony. That will be on summer 4th. The hearing, the full council hearing starts at 10 a.m. Although Bill 40 will probably be heard at around 12 further down the agenda. But yeah, if you want to testify on Bill 40, you want your friends to testify on Bill 40, then please do. You can submit testimony online at the city council website. Or you can, for end, you can go in person. You can do either one. So in person would be at Honolulu Halle. And you are sending email out as I received from you. Telling people what the story is and telling them how they can submit testimony if they support the bill. And that's pretty good. I'm glad to find it helpful. This is this is just like they do it, you know, elsewhere in Congress. What have you? I wanted to put this in, you know, a kind of perspective. You mentioned that other states have done similar bills trying to control plastics. Is it the same bill? Is this a uniform bill or is this a Hawaii special bill? So specifically Bill 40, it would only apply to the city and council city and county of Honolulu because it's being heard by the city council. Therefore, in terms of what a direct the impact, we can't stay affect what happens in Japan directly or in California or even on the big island because this is restricted to a whole that's our domain. The hope is that though is that if we can pass a bill like this, because this is one of the more comprehensive, one of the most actually comprehensive bills that we've seen in the country relating to single use plastics. Other municipalities have done similar things like San Francisco and Seattle. But theirs wasn't nearly as comprehensive as ours. Close, but not quite. And so the hope is that if we can do this, we'll be the tip of the sphere and we can show other places that, hey, look at what we did. It's possible, it's real, and it's coming. And so are you going to join us or not? Because that's exactly what we did for like our renewable energy goal. We did it first. And guess what? California, New Mexico, they followed us. Yeah. Oh, I mean, it's just you say single use plastic. That's what this deals with. What is a single use plastic and what is not a single use plastic? So I would say the overall definition of single use plastics is kind of what it sounds like. It's a plastic that's meant to be used just once and thrown away. So that's things like plastic forks, plastic straws, right? Usually you go to Starbucks and you grab your Starbucks drink and it has a plastic straw drink out of it once and they throw it away. And it's a done deal. And so that's what's really what Bill 40 is targeting because to ban all the plastics that we have, like chairs I'm sitting on, equipment that we're using. That's not not realistic. Oh, well, plastic. But like my glasses, that's to do that overnight is not realistic. But for single use plastics, which are plastics that, you know, we just use once and throw away despite the fact that plastics are meant to be durable and to last. That's a problem. And so that's really what they're going to go after that. You're going to have to single use it. It's the plastic bags, plastic foam containers. Yep, air foam, spoons, straws, all that. That's actually there's a modesty in that. You're not trying to completely change the world. This sounds like you're working at the margins. Maybe we'll change the world later, which brings me to my next question. Why not the state legislature? They certainly have the jurisdiction to do this. Why don't you go to them or are they on your list next time around? Well, we actually tried something similar at the state legislature. I believe the number would have been SB 522, which it did pass, but it got gutted. And so anything that would have banned or phased out single use plastics was cut out. I believe there are styrofoam in there, straws, all that got cut out. And instead, they just said, we're just going to do a working group that's going to figure out what we should do exactly. But then that means it's another three years, two, three years until we actually take action. The old story. And so that's why we have the city council here taking action and making moves to do this. That's impressive for the city and the city council. It is. It goes to them. They see and act on this issue before the legislature can get its act together. That's really interesting. So I want to put it in even a larger perspective. So, Dyson, you're part of a movement, I would say. Do you see yourself in the movement? It's an environmental movement. And, you know, one of the principal points for you and the young members of this movement are to protect the planet in the future. It's your planet, my planet, our planet. OK, thank you for that. I mean, how do you see this in terms of the evolution of our society, our civilization? Because if you don't do something, you know, we're going to be stuck, at least on plastics and on the environment. And who knows what else? You know, there are so many issues, so many threats to our quality of life, both both philosophically and and, you know, practically in the way we live every day. So is this is this how do you see the connection between the work you're doing on Bill 40 and the larger picture about saving the planet, saving the society, saving humanity? Are you into that? Well, that's a homerun question. I mean, for me personally, it all comes back to taking care of the place that you grew up in, right? The analogy is if you live in a home, your mom and father take care of you. And so what do you do when they grow old? You take care of them. It's the same thing here, right? I grew up surrounded by a community, a wonderful community that I call Hannah and in an amazing land that you call Hawaii. And so it's what can I do to give back to the community to the land that gave me so much? And so really, rather than, oh, we need to go to save humanity, for me personally, it's like, yeah, we are helping to better our land. But it's not for like, oh, let's go save humanity. It's to protect the people on the planet and the things that we love. OK, let me step back a little and ask you this. What's your next step after Bill 40, assuming not wood, not wood, that it passes like this week? OK, what's your next step? You're not going to say, oh, OK, well done, all finished, all fixed. No, there's more, isn't there? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is celebrate the holidays. That's the first thing that's coming up 2020. The next thing I'll do is probably vote. Yeah, OK, we want that. And then really tying in with voting. A lot of it is like voter registration, right? A lot of people don't think of voter registration as an environmental issue because it's not it's a social issue. And so how do we get young people registered to vote in Hawaii? We have a God awful voting record less than 50 percent of people coming out to vote. There's something like 40. Yeah. And so getting people to vote and getting them hyped about it. That's what I'm hoping to do next. And that's different than the plastics thing, because you're not seeking legislation necessarily. You're seeking to change the way people see their relationship with government see their duties as a citizen trying to be trying to engage with government, I always say. We are the government and the government is us. So we can never forget that. Absolutely. That's actually part of what we're doing with Bill 40 on me and all these other organizations trying to get people to come out, to testify and get civically engaged. That's like a first step, too, if you've never really cared about politics. That's the first step for you to get involved with your government, especially if you see a bill get passed and you realize like, oh, I testified for that bill like five times. My voice actually did matter. So maybe I can actually vote and it will matter. Because I have friends and I've met people who are like, oh, voting, that means nothing to me like politics. Yeah, it's disgusting. And so it's like, how do we change the narrative and say like, no, politics and voting is not you. It's yes. It's something awesome that you get to do. It's not something you have to do. It's something you get to do. Well, let's assume that you are successful on Bill 40. You don't have a lot of time before the 2020 election. Oh, yes. You're going to have to holly along. Yeah, we're going to have to hustle. Yeah. Well, the other thing, you know, what I get is that you care a lot about Hawaii and and, you know, a lot of people your age are a big ambivalent about whether they're going to stay here or not. You know, we went to a Thanksgiving dinner and the kids were not clear about whether they wanted to stay here or not. I think they were being tugged away or pushed away by educational you know, aspirations to go to the mainland and make their life. Because once you go, it's a fair chance you're going to stay for one one combination of events or another. And so what I get from you is you have no intention of this is your commitment. You're going to be here. You're going to do these things here in Hawaii. You're going to get to work to help. Absolutely. That is the entire point of what I'm trying to do is, yeah, how do I give back to the community? And I feel like I can give back to the community by staying here and learning about it and keeping in touch with the issues that are flicking. Yeah, a lot of issues, a lot of issues, you know, we're only beginning. You're only beginning on all the issues after the show. I'll give you a list. Oh, one thing I just want to explore with you is that, you know, it's important that we do this. It's important that we show the world we can do this, at least the United States. And that we are leaders in certain things, like an energy, as you mentioned. But there's other things we can, you know, we can be a leader in aloha, which covers a lot of ground and all that, especially now in a land in a country of divisiveness, we can actually show them you don't have to have that. You could be together. All this suggests, though, is that the skills you're working on, projects that you're wrapping around, you could be successful and valuable. If you go to the mainland, you know, I mean, sometimes I see these ads for people running for office in other states. And I like them and I get these emails and they say, why don't you give money to this candidate who's running in another state? If you like this candidate, I'll try to check this candidate because we're national now, you know, politics has become national. You're talking about local politics, but in fact, politics has become national. And I wonder if in your planning, in your perception of the future, whether you think you might make some of these Hawaii lessons and help the mainland do these things? Well, I personally think that, yeah, politics are national. Obviously, we have Congress and then, you know, from Congress goes the state legislatures and the municipalities. But as we're seeing with Bill 40, you can make the biggest difference, not at Congress, but on the small localized levels. And that's where the actual change happens because imagine imagine Congress trying to pass Bill 40, like no offense to Congress. But I think that would be extremely difficult in comparison to a nine member, you know, Honolulu City Council. And so the thing too is that with City Council, it's way more accessible. How many people in Hawaii can go fly over to D.C. and testify for a bill? Not that many, unless you're like specifically a lobbyist, you're paid to do this. How many people can come out to town to testify on Bill 40? Probably more people than who can go out to Washington, D.C. And so that's really the thing is like, yeah, it's a big picture. And you've got to remember that there's a bigger picture. But ultimately, if you start small, you can expand a lot faster. Yeah, a lot faster than if you keep on trying to go for the top and you just make no headway. And so that's really where my idea of community comes from. Yeah, you start small and localized. Very wise, Dyson. Very wise. Dyson Chee, thank you for coming around. We hope we can get together with you again and follow on this issue and other issues you're associated with. Really, thank you so much for having me, Jay. This is a blast. Aloha.