 Okay. Good evening, everybody. Welcome. My name is Dan. I'm the director of programming for Bedford Playhouse. And the lovely lady next to me is Sarah, who's going to be our moderator and I'm going to introduce her in a minute. A couple of very quick things. We're going to wait just a 1 more minute because we had a huge registration for this program, which is fantastic. And we're just going to give everybody a chance to log in in the meantime. I just want to mention that for those of you who are participating tonight. If you registered, hopefully you all received the link over the last several days or since you registered to watch the film, the story of plastics. If you didn't, we will resend it out tomorrow morning along with the link to the recording of this talk. The link will be active until April 1st. So if you didn't have a chance to watch it, you still have some time and you can perhaps revisit part of it. If you are so inclined, I also want to mention that for tonight, we have a great panel. If you have questions, there's going to be a Q and a portion of the program. Please use the Q and a forum, which is at the bottom of your screen. If you were on a computer, it's at the top of your screen. I believe if you're on a mobile device, please use the Q and a, as opposed to the chat to post your questions just so we can keep track and we'll try to get to as many of them as we possibly can. For the course of the evening, tonight's program. So that being said, I'm only going to add that Bed for Playhouse is very proud to be partnering with Bed for 2030 on this series. We feel it's very important. There'll be a lot of future upcoming programs. You can find a lot of information on our website, which is bedforplayhouse.org. We have so many more, as many of you may know. Great program and coming up live music first on films is important series such as this and all that information is on our website to be to be found at your convenience. So I would like to then introduce you to Sarah. Sarah is Sarah Douglas is from Poundridge and she is the vice president of Bed for 2030 Board of Directors and the chair of the development committee, as well as being the mentor to the green light students. Who we did a great program with last year during Earth week. Sarah is the founder of Soul Tide Consulting and she spent the past two decades championing environmental responsibility by cultivating effective partnerships and generating philanthropic strategies for family foundations. Fortune 500 brands and nonprofit organizations. She's also a partner in natural ventures, which is an emerging hybrid advisory investment and operational growth firm. Supporting innovative early stage companies dedicated to protecting the planet. Sarah is a self described quote unquote crazy lady. I did not write that Sarah About our single use plastic crisis and you can find her inspiring community members at every cocktail party picnic sporting event just finding simple ways to reduce our dependence on single use plastics. So having said all that Sarah the floor is all yours. Well, thank you so much, Dan. I really appreciate it. Thank you to the Playhouse for partnering with Bed for 2030 our local climate action organization here in Upper Westchester for any of you that are zooming in from different parts of the country. It is our pleasure to have you here tonight and thank you for showing up. We're thrilled to be part of this program with the Playhouse. The Playhouse is a very special place for our community. So please support the Bedford Playhouse. We're thrilled that the story of plastic has so graciously lent us this film to watch to inspire all of us. And it was eloquently directed by Daesh Lossberg who has done a an incredible job also from the folks that brought us the story of stuff which inspired us all about a decade ago. And a huge thank you to our amazing panelists. We are absolutely thrilled to have them. Thank you for taking time out of your busy planet saving evening to be here with us. We're really, really thrilled. This is a very vital issue. This film is absolutely sobering and it's really exciting that we're going to be able to talk about this today. So thank you for being here. Today is the United Nations Day of the Woman. I was fortunate enough to be at the Playhouse today celebrating with the Women's Wolf Pack, which is a group, a women's group here up also in Northern Westchester brought together around sustainability and taking action for things that we care about in our local community. And a huge thank you to Leanne Sorkin for creating that along with Martha, Tracy and Christina. I thought that it would be a nice segue considering that we have all women on our panel tonight and Bedford 2030 in case you don't know is women led women founded it was founded 12 years ago by three incredible women all rooted in the town of Bedford, Ellen Conrad, Olivia Far and Mary Beth Cass sat in a kitchen and decided that the town of Bedford should be one of the very first municipal climate action plans. And so Bedford 2020 was born. Bedford 2020 was born with the goal to educate and inspire community members to reduce our greenhouse gases, which are, which is really just pollution. A lot of people around town think that greenhouse gases is a word that is difficult for them to understand what it is, it's pollution. So we're reducing the town of Bedford's greenhouse gases by 20% by 2020. We had to cover off the ball. We were able to do it one year early by 2019 and we reduced the greenhouse gases by 44%. So super exciting. We were able to drive behavior change and meet people where they are to inspire them to look within their homes and their yards and their buildings and their cars to make daily lifestyle changes for themselves, for their family and for part of the community. So we're really thrilled that now we huddled in the pandemic to create our next 10 years of climate action. And we have a very ambitious goal of reducing the greenhouse gases in our town by 80%. So we need all of you to step up. And how are we going to do that? I have two words for you, behavior change. And seeing tonight's movie I hope has inspired behavior change. Listening to our esteemed panel of amazing women tonight will help you to find a solution that you care about. And please adopt it. That is going to be your homework tonight is for you to take one thing that you learned in the film or you learn from these panelists. I encourage you to go on the myriad of incredible ones websites. I love the Bedford 2030s website, which the town supervisor formerly of Bedford 2030 Ellen Calvis worked so hard a couple of years ago to build. It's an incredible resource where everything is there for you. So please go on our website. Please go on the Beyond Plastics website. Judith and Anke and Ratchna Shah have done an incredible job with their website of how to take action. And please go on Sheila's website and have it's a waste there are many campaigns as well. So your homework is to pick one thing and adopt it and bring it into your daily life and make it a habit. And then once you've achieved that, please go out and share that with three other people and we can make change together. So thank you for being here. And I wanted to invite our panelists to to come and and say a few words. The way that we're going to go is I will I will set up the film. And then each panelist will have five minutes to talk about their overview of the work that they work on in these in these in this issue. And then we'll go into a Q&A that I will lead for a little bit and then please please send your questions to the Q&A in the Zoom and we will hope to get to them. This film is a sobering view and I I know that a lot of people have seen the film others have not yet spoil or alert. We have a catastrophe on our hands. So that is the bad news. The good news is that through an episode survey 71% of consumers worldwide would want to mandate on plastics. And let me tell you something. We have really good news this week. We are hopeful that that that there will be change and the change is coming from the United Nations. The United Nations delegates this week met in Nairobi as part of the UN Environmental Assembly. And they agreed to a mandate that begins negotiation on a global legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. Well, this is just a first step and we know that the United Nations moves a little bit like molasses. And we all need to be inspired to take that action in our homes in our individual lives in our community. And we have our Senator Shelly Mary here to learn about what we can do in the state of our fine state of New York. But it's really amazing. It just put wind into my sails knowing that we had this opportunity to discuss this very important film. And that the United Nations was able to step up and actually come together for a global mandate. So look out for that in a few years. So I'd like to make sure that you are inspired to pick your solution. We have no shortage of solutions and our panelists will talk about each of them. I did ask them also to think about in honor of International Women's Day, a shout out to women and the unique ability that women have that. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry to the other gender. But the unique ability that we have is that we can turn knowledge into action to make change and we are learners and we are nurturers and so we learn and we nurture and we create and we share and together that we can make change. So please join us. I'd like to introduce our amazing panelists. First from the great state of New York, our Senator Shelly Mayor, who is an progressive leader. We've called her the progressive pragmatist. And I'm really thrilled she has stepped up to be such an integral part of the 2030s work making change on the state level and we're just thrilled that she's absolutely here. She's been a champion for environmental protection. She's been a champion on many different issues. She's advocated for our towns. She's represented the Senate District 37 since 2018, which includes Bedford, part of White Plains, Yonkers, New Rochelle and the Sound Shore. She's been instrumental in passing statewide legislation to address climate action at the state level. And that's exactly who we need in office. These women that are taking names and making change. She's also been a staunch advocate of civil rights and rights for children in public schools. So we're absolutely thrilled that we have Senator Shelly Mayor here. And then we have straight out of Queens, we have Rajna Shah. Rajna Shah comes to us as a zero waste consultant at Common Ground Compost. And she's also the beyond plastics representative. Some of you may know beyond plastics Judith Anke, an incredible leader and former EPA administrator here in the city of New York, created an amazing organization called Beyond Plastics, which we'll hear more about from Rajna. But I am wildly impressed with, you know, yet another small but mighty organization making incredible change and impact inspiring people like Makna to become an advocate and to become an educator in your local community to teach people about the options, to teach people to take action. One of the special things about the Beyond Plastic website that I very much enjoyed was that they actually have a section that says, I think it's like make time, take action in time with your schedule or something like that. And so it's like if you have a teeny little bit of time, spend 15 minutes and sign some petitions. If you have more time, go and help your school. Go to your grocery store and talk to them about the issues that are bumming you out. I have, as Dan said, I am a self-subscribed crazy person about the single-use plastic, as all of us are on this panel. And we really feel like it is important that we all stand up and have our voice be heard and make change together. And then lastly we have as our straight out of California, Los Angeles, California, we have Sheila Moravati and she is the founder of Habits of Waste. She was also the founder of the Crayon Collection, which we will learn all about in her introduction. She has a great video. She has spearheaded the very first historic band of plastic straws and utensils in the city of Malibu, a place where I used to reside. And even more recently she has launched incredible campaigns about cutting out this cutlery. She's worked with Uber and Door Dash and, I mean, sorry, Uber Eats. Door Dash postmates to change the default setting for the utensils so that you actually have to get the utensils upon request, which is just a brilliant thing. So thank you Sheila for doing those kinds of things. She is now embarking on campaigns to eradicate single-use plastic on Hollywood television sets and movie sets. And she has an incredible app around plant-based eating. So definitely check out all of the amazing resources that our panelists have brought to us today. And in their intros we'll be able to learn a little bit more about their work. So let's dive into the story of plastic and this incredible journey. You know, the filmmakers created this with the intention to show the entire system of plastic production of plastic use and of plastic disposal, which is sometimes not what consumers would actually think that is happening. So in the history of plastic, I found that part of the film absolutely fascinating that plastic was invented in the 40s and 50s, which we all knew, but it was kind of celebrated as this throwaway culture. And it was really launch of the petrochemical industry becoming part of our of our daily lives. The other piece that I thought was very interesting from the film was the life cycle of plastic. There is a 14-minute animated short in the movie. You can actually source that online through YouTube. And it's an incredible visual, a cartoon animated visual of how plastics are made, the health and human implications that happen with the production, with the incineration, and with all of the waste that we're left with choking and clogging our waterways and killing creatures. So I am inspired by our panelists because many of them are working hard on these issues. And it's bad enough that we have these crazy statistics that talk about by 2050, if we keep going at the rate that we're going, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Well, that is intense. And we obviously cannot go the way that we're going. And that we're eating with every bit of fish that we're eating. We're eating plastic particles as well. So it is just as dangerous and just as catastrophic to think about the health risks that are happening here. So whose responsibility is this? I know that our responsibility is to find out what's going to inspire behavior change in our homes, in our local community. But something that came up in the film that is really interesting that Senator Shelley Mayer has worked super, super closely on is this idea of extended producer responsibility. It is a reality in the states of Maine and Oregon. New York is is is close on the heels of it as as California. And I'd like to pass it to to Senator Shelley Mayer to do a little introduction. First, talk a little bit about women, then talk a little bit about your work and focus on the EPR. Well, thank you, Sarah. And thank you to Bedford Playhouse. It really is a pleasure to be here. And I'm so fortunate to represent Bedford in my current district, although I would just say in the next district, I won't be able to represent Bedford, which is unfortunate. But I have such respect for Bedford 2020, Bedford 2030 as the true model of civic activism. So to that point about it being International Women's Day. Today, our women, our woman governor, invited all the women commissioners and the women legislators and all the women that work here in the Capitol together for breakfast about finding your voice for policy change. Exactly to this point and saying to women, you have every opportunity to use your voice as the way to make change, however you choose to make it. You know, if you want to go through this electoral process like someone like me and be in the fray there, or you're going to do it at a local level, find your voice and don't be sidetracked by the naysayers, the confidence killers and all the other things that women face. And so I feel very empowered on behalf of the young women that surround me up here that are elected to these incredible voice of opportunity in the assembly and the Senate and work for the governor. So many young women and diverse young women with new voices. It's really, there's a super enthusiasm here. And it's certainly in the issues of climate change and the fact that we have a crisis on our hand, as you said, Sarah. So very briefly, here in the legislature, we are dealing with the budget right now. And the governor proposed in her budget, this extended producer responsibility bill to be included slightly different than the bill that was introduced by my colleague Senator Kaminski in her one house budget. And I know that Bedford 2030 and many groups feel the bill doesn't go far enough. And that's a conversation to be had. But the point is, there is a tension to this issue about plastic use in our common culture and the need for New York to do something much bigger, much stronger, and much harder. And the fact that the governor put it in her budget means that we got to talk about it. We can't just hide from it. And whether the bill is perfect, I happen to be a cosponsor of the bill because I think it's a good first step and a beginning of this conversation that has long overdue. This is an opportunity to talk about single use plastics, how we're going to move quickly to eliminate and reduce their dominance in our in our life, every step of our life. And credit to the activists here, Rachana and Sheila for and Sarah and all of you for sort of taking this global policy issue, which you mentioned the UN, the feds, now the state of New York is grappling with and making it a matter of personal change of behavior, because that focus is what drives legislation to change. When you get people who are mad enough about something to happen and are changing their own lives, it means the legislature, you got to change too. So I won't go on for a long except to say, I'm very anxious to hear about the sort of from the ground up work on single use, as well as the sort of top down policy because we're going to do both. And there's much, much opportunity for every person to have their voice heard in the policy debate. No one should be shy, intimidated or minimize. All of the voices must be heard in order for legislation to pass. So I'll stop there, Sarah. But thank you so much. I look forward to everybody's talk tonight. Thank you, Shelley. Your leadership is invaluable to all of us. Thank you so much. Retina Shah, you are up. Hi there. Thank you so much. Just give me a moment to share my screen. Okay, I'm just going to present some slides today, but I'm really passionate about this topic and hope I stick to the slides. Okay, so many of you have seen the movie, The Story of Plastic. We spoke in my class with, so I'm here as a representative of Beyond Plastics and Judith Anke teaches the class. It's the best $100 I've ever spent to audit that course. And I've learned so much since joining Beyond Plastics and watching the movie was actually part of our curriculum. And so it really hits home because I've actually worked in abroad in India on waste and climate justice issues. And now currently I am a zero waste consultant helping corporate offices, food service organizations to go zero waste schools as well. So let's just review for those who may not have seen the movie. And for those of you who have, just review some of what we learned. Nearly 10 billion tons of plastic have been produced since 1950. 42% of current production is actually packaging plastic. But of the 10 billion tons produced since 1950, half of that is in the last 15 years. And I don't know about you, but I have socks older than that. So that's a very alarming kind of uptick in the recent past. 15 million tons of plastic enter our oceans every year. Many people think that this comes from dumping from trash that is dumped into the ocean, but actually 80% of that comes from land. It's that plastic litter that gets into the sewer system, which gets into streams and rivers and then ultimately ends up in the ocean. By 2025, for every three pounds of fish, there will be one pound of plastic. This is only three years away. So that's very alarming. So, you know, based on everything in the movie, the sum of these stats I talked about, I repeatedly wish, the one wish I would have is to turn off the plastics tap. In other words, stop making it for goodness sake. You know, there was a recent study that said 75% of people worldwide are in support of a full plastics ban, single-use plastics ban, I should say. So, you know, and if you watched the movie you saw, the plastic production is like your bathtub with the faucet being on full speed and it overflowing. And if you walked into that situation, would you run and get a teaspoon and take it out, the water out little by little? No, you would immediately turn the tap off and that's what we need to do with plastics. If plastics were a country, it would be the world's fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases following China, the USA, India and Russia. Part of the reason it's such a large emitter of greenhouse gases is because it's actually in the production of plastic. This is a picture of an ethylene cracker plant in Port Arthur, Texas. There's basically frag pads and pipelines as part of this structure and they're built to capture this ethane gas and that ethane is then sent to what's called an ethane cracker facility, which is in here as well. The process passes through drinking water supplies, so this is one way that it can affect the health of communities. Also, it's a huge carbon emitter, a super emitter in fact of carbon, so areas in which these facilities are, the incidence of cancer is much higher. So this makes plastic pollution a huge climate justice issue. And since garbage just doesn't go away, we must understand that it becomes someone else's problem and that someone else is usually from a poorer area who has no choice but to become an activist or watch members of their community die these slow and cruel deaths. And this trash can also go to poor countries, making them sick and stuck in cycles of poverty. This photo here is one from my time in India working with these women in the red saris are untouchables and they are, you know, these are the, it's usually actually women too as we're speaking of International Women's Day, but often these types of jobs fall to women and women who come from the poorest circumstances. Of course, there's the aspect of microplastics, which are broken down plastic pieces five centimeters or smaller, smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. This very gruesome fact is that human beings ingest, meaning we eat, drink or breathe in one credit card worth of plastic every week. Because of this prevalence of plastics in our life, the scientists have, have determined certain consequences. This book called Countdown by Shana Swan, which is an extremely fascinating look into this, this Dr. Swan and others have studied decreasing fertility rates and increased miscarriage rates and actually linked it to the incidence of microplastics in our, in our air, food and water. She actually quotes saying most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045 based on, unless we do something and act quickly. And I know this is frightening, but knowledge is power and doing something about this starting now is way better than a year from now or not at all. So in the face of so much evidence that plastics are destroying us, why do we continue to use them? I think this phrase sums it up. Comfort is the poison. You know, it's, I just actually today came back from a client that had installed refillable water stations and still we're getting complaints that it was too far of a walk from people's desks. And so they'd rather go a different shorter walk, I guess, to get a plastic bottle. But actually bottled water has twice as many microplastics as tap water. And, and also, you know, I think it's just this, this notion of the, we just want comfort all the time, you know, we don't want to take those extra steps. And maybe people on this call do, but there's always something that plastic can make comfort more comfortable in our lives. And we need to kind of examine that, you know, with its promise of smooth effortless efficiency, convenience threatens to erase the sort of struggles that challenge and help give meaning to life. And I think this really is a powerful way to look at it, because if you actually think about the things that really define your character, then it's, it's because you've gone through some sort of struggle, right? So comfort is almost, you know, it's not really helping us to reach our goals of self actualization and the kinds of the more meaningful goals in life. And so if comfort is the poison, then so must it be that discomfort is the antidote. Awareness and education need to happen. So people understand how much convenience really costs, the behavior change required to get us where we want to be, and the benefit of the struggle that I mentioned just before. And I'm not going to actually spend so much time, but some of the solutions, you know, just please remember, waste is hyper local, it starts in your own waste baskets, it starts in your schools and your places of work, because you are a stakeholder in those, in those environments. So your opinion really matters. And if you speak up, it often really makes a difference. I talk sometimes because I am a zero waste consultant, we do waste, large waste audits, but you can do a home waste audit. And this is a simple, if you look this up on Google, this is actually something you could do with your kids. It's a STEM centered activity. And it's, you know, just a way to, you don't often know what to do unless you know what you're generating. So it's a very beneficial activity to do one weekend or one day. I also say enforce border control. So if you don't want that plastic karma, don't allow it into your home and, you know, stop it at the source. Speak up about waste at work or school. I said that, but, you know, I've seen firsthand lots of programs being started because people spoke up in their schools and places of work. And of course, call out corporations and government officials, tweet at them, something Sarah mentioned, if all you have time is to retweet some tweets, do that, it really helps organizations like Beyond Plastics and other organizations to amplify messages. And then this is just, I'll end with a picture on my darkest times. I often go back to times of activism. This is a March, a die in I participated in with Extinction Rebellion New York City. And I just felt more empowered and more uplifted than ever before. And I feel this way today on this call with all of you, because I know you all are trying to do whatever it takes to, to kind of move us to where we need to be. So thank you for that. And then I'll just end if you want to be someone you cannot allow convenience to be the value that transcends all others. Struggle is not always a problem. Sometimes struggle is a solution. It can be the solution to the question of who you are. And I think it can be the solution to the question of who we all are. So thank you very much for that time. Well, thank you so much, Rachna. And we will definitely have a bunch of questions around how we mobilize around our schools and businesses, because I know that I was on the hearts and minds of our audience. And in listening to you and with that quote, it is, it's absolutely true, the convenience piece. And we all struggle with it. I think, you know, at Bedford 2030, we want to meet you where you are. And I always say there's different shades of green. It's gradient, right? So like there's the Uber green people, like some of us on this, this panel, and you know, I live my home is powered by solar and geothermal, we have a pollinator habitat in our yard. I am a crazy lady at picnics. When I see those red solo cups, I start to like break out in hives and feel like, Oh my God, like those kids are going to take two sips of that. And it's just going to end up being incinerated somewhere because only 9% of what we put in our bin is actually recycled. So we all, you know, I would kind of consider myself to our green, I guess, but like we're all different shades of green. And I would really hope that given the catastrophic issue that we are seeing with this and the solutions that we will get today, that we each and every one of us take the opportunity to figure out, you know, is it ziplocks, you know, you talk about convenience and like ziplocks are probably the most convenient thing that moms and dads grab easily and they throw their kids, you know, goldfish in it and they're out the door. That ziplock is used for four minutes and it is not recyclable. So well, it actually is if you take it somewhere else where thin film can be recycled, but it's not recyclable in our municipality by putting it in your bin. So looking at those things where to your point, we're turning off the tap in our home, if we stop using the ziplocks, then they will stop being put into landfills, right, and stop being incinerated. So that's turning off the tap. So thank you so much. And I will have some more questions when we get back to you. I do want to get to Sheila who has made it her life's work to really inspire people from the lens of a sociologist, which I love groups and norms. So when it comes to driving behavior change, we have a whole lot to learn from Sheila and her campaigns. And she is going to start off with a little message to women to empower this next generation. And then we'll see a video. Thank you, Sarah, for including me today. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be among all these wonderful panelists. Thank you, Bedford Playhouse and Bedford 2030. I just, you know, today is a very important and special day. And I really want to tell you all that I never anticipated being in the role that I'm in. And I was a new mom and I started my first charity called crayon collection when I kept going to restaurants and seeing the crayons coming to my daughter and knowing that this is just such a shame for all these kids out there not to have any crayons. Well, that the end of our meal, we just throw these out was a moment that I thought, I don't want my daughter to learn this. I don't want this throwaway society to be a part of my message to my child. So I had to do something. And so I think that that's the power within a woman that this this pure kind of femininity that we can use a little bit. And I took that moment of teaching my daughter something differently. And I started a campaign called crayon collection, where we donate those crayons to underserved schools. And we've already diverted over 20 million crayons on the work evolved as in habits of waste to be much more widespread. And we took action by just kind of coming up with small manageable low hanging fruit, but with the mindset of a ripple effect creating societal norms and new behaviors around the world. And so I thought it might be easier and more fun for everybody to see this little video we made of the work we've done in order to kind of express all the different things that we do without it being too long or confusing. They know we're already at 440. So take it away. At habits of waste, we identify problems and come up with solutions to protect this planet. We want people to understand you matter. You actually can make the difference. Crayon collection was born because I learned that there was 150 million crayons being thrown away by restaurants alone. So I started by asking restaurants to collect their crayons and finding a local school within five miles to pick them up once a month. We created art education programming with those crayons. And essentially it became this organization that brewed all 50 states, 10 countries. We set a Guinness world record. We've saved over 20 million crayons to date and it keeps going. It was in those same restaurants that I kept seeing the plastic straws on everybody's table. I mean you order a glass of water, it came with a straw in it. I saw that there was 500 million plastic straws being thrown away per day in the U.S. alone. And I realized we can do something about this. So we spearheaded the first plastic straw and cutlery ban in history and subsequently we saw city after city after city country after country participate. We saw that there's 40 billion packs of plastic cutlery produced per year with the sole intention of being used once and thrown in the garbage. So we thought well what if we were to change the default setting on these food delivery applications to make plastic cutlery available by opt-in only. 14,000 people wrote emails in and one by one we convinced them to change their default setting. We learned that postmates within a year was able to save 120 million packs of plastic cutlery that equates to 3.2 million dollars in savings for restaurants. So we took that information and we took it all the way up to the highest level here in the state of California and we just passed AB 1276 so that every restaurant can only provide plastic cutlery upon request. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of work but then you turn on the TV and you see your favorite actor or actress drinking out of a plastic water bottle having their salad in a plastic container with a plastic fork. We love our movies, we love our TV shows but subliminally they're telling us something. They're telling us what is and is not acceptable throughout society. So we wanted to create a campaign which is now called Lights Camera Plastic where we reduce or hopefully eliminate single-use plastic from being seen on screen as often as possible. We're trying our best to get into every single studio and get them to understand that we don't want to see single-use plastic anymore. It's time to denormalize it. So many times environmentalism is about changing systems in a grand scale. However, I believe strongly that it starts with us. We have to make a modification in our own daily lives and then it builds and builds and builds before you know what you have change happen on a really big scale. If Western cultures were to eat 40% less animal products, we create enough carbon offset to combat climate change. Period. Usually we eat about 21 meals so 40% of that's eight meals. Eat eight plant-based meals a week. See how that feels. We created this cool app where there's quizzes, there's ways you can take photographs, you can talk to your friends, you can share your progress, you can find really cool recipes, plug them into your calendar and then in the end you track how much of a carbon offset you've created. I think this is a door opener for the imperfect environmentalists because we don't want just a handful of people doing it perfectly. We want a lot of people doing it imperfectly. We are in awe of the opportunities that come our way. At this moment our goal is to be able to take all those opportunities and run with them but we need to expand and so today we're asking you to please give, help us grow and take on all these awesome opportunities that are coming our way to make change in a massive scale. We're part of this planet just like all the animals are, just like the trees grow out of this earth. We do too and my hope is that we start to remember how close we actually are to this planet and how important it is to protect it. We can make a change. We can make a difference. We cannot give up. We can do this together. Thank you so much Sheila that gave us a really nice snapshot of your work and it's very, very inspiring. I'd love to start with some questions for the panelists starting with Shelly Mayer. Shelly, who do you think is the best suited to a knock change? Is it the individual? Is it corporations? Is it municipalities? Like who, where does this responsibility lie? Well, I think everywhere and I think that, you know, between Sheila and Rachna we're hearing that, you know, there's a corporate change, incredibly important and they can do it on their own. Individual behavior change, that has to happen. But policy change is part of the conversation and Sheila just mentioned that in California they passed her bill basically on the plastic cutlery, you know, not to be a single use plastic cutlery unless requested by the customer or not to be the default. You know, we have that bill in both houses of the legislature. It's not moving at all, not moving one iota in through a committee. It's not on an agenda. So you need all three things. You need policy. I happen to believe policy is part of the package. It's not the only thing in nor the most important, but it is a critical way in which we change behavior. Sometimes people are not willing to do things voluntarily, ban on plastic bags, good example. We had to do that in order to really change behavior and people complained bitterly. I was here for that fight, bitterly, bitterly, bitterly and then most people adjusted and we had to make some modifications for small places that for whom there was a financial detriment. But my point is that not everyone is on this Zoom willing to engage in behavior change. There's a whole lot of people who resist change as Rachna was saying they like comfort and so sometimes you need to make policy change to push our world into a better place. So there's room for all of these different approaches. I'm focused in this, but not to the detriment of the other pieces of this conversation. Absolutely. And how can individuals like us on this Zoom help to move policy? How can we support you? Are we calling offices? Are we writing letters? Are we signing petitions? Tell us, how do we get civically engaged on this issue? We're dealing with a catastrophe and we want to help you. Well, one thing is, for example, bed for 2030 signed onto this letter signed by many of the activist community saying that extended producer responsibility bill was not good enough, was not strong enough. That came out of probably 65 grassroots groups that signed on it. That has a great deal of impact. We can't always do what people say, but that's one. Second is, and I'll put Bill's numbers in the chat, email your legislative. I count how many emails I get on subjects. It impacts me and it makes them hire on the list. I'm the chair of the education committee. My job is significantly to spend my time there. But if I hear from my community and the communities I represent that this is a priority, I will make it a higher priority for myself. So email, join the grassroots group that engages in the policy and politics conversation, small fee politics, and make sure that you reach out directly and know who your assembly member and senator and your local county legislator and your local town board. Like you mentioned about Ellen, we have all these elected officials who can impact change in our community. I'd like to also just, if I may, just jump in. One of those grassroots organizations is Beyond Plastics. It's literally specifically for, it's a grassroots organization trying to affect policy change for plastics and we're effective. And I've learned so much about what I can do and the impact of these letters as the senator just mentioned. So I definitely urge you all to check it out. I absolutely agree. And on the website, it's actions made to fit your schedule, which I absolutely love. Right now, if you go there, there's 12 different petitions that you can sign ranging from the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, all the way to much smaller issues around, you know, teabags having plastic in it. You know, this is a consumer education issue. We did not know that in the production of these, you know, these companies are putting plastic into our teabags, so that a single teabag can actually release 11 plus billion microplastics particles into your cup of tea. I learned that on the Beyond Plastics website today. So it's really important that we take action on these issues. And to Senator Shelley Mayer's point, we need to speak up and we need to be heard. And I think Muchna also has explained to us, sorry, Rachna has explained to us around businesses and schools. We did have a question in the chat around businesses and schools. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, other than just making your voice heard? This is for you, Rachna. What are some steps that we can take to get on the radar for our schools and business leaders? My first thing that I would always say is, join the green team. And if there's no green team, start a green team. Green team is usually kind of their stakeholders in, you know, in all, on all sides. And even if it's just for school, for example, if it's only, if you've gathered a parent group, and if it's only two or three people, that's, that's even okay. But, you know, forming a green team is kind of like setting your infrastructure in a support system. So I would say that's like step one. But if it exists in the company too, these are the people that are often given, you know, kind of given a little bit of ownership over these programs, because sometimes the administrators or the business owners cannot really own the program, but they do support it. And so if you can step in and fill in some of those, those responsibilities to establish yourselves, then that's really key. Because of course, we don't want, you know, many people support in theory, like eliminating plastic, but then when it comes into practice, they start getting very hesitant. So it's kind of hand holding and saying, you know, let's, let's figure out a way to do it where everyone feels comfortable. You know, so, you know, as much as I would like to just enact bands as much as I would love that, it's just not the way human beings work. And so, you know, it could just be, you know, we're just, we just want to get rid of plastic water bottles. In beyond plastics, I've learned there was college students that actually petitioned for vending machines to not have any plastic bottles. They should only have aluminum cans. And they were actually successful in all beverages that had an aluminum option to switch that out. So it's kind of, it's both the going at its slowly angle and also that you have to meet people where they are and, you know, give them the solutions and say, I'm willing to do this legwork to help you out. And then, you know, and then you kind of build that relationship. So thank you so much. Sheila, we have a question around the cutlery bill. Along the lines of cutlery bill, has there been any advocating or programs pushing the food service industry, restaurants, delis, fast food, etc. to use fully compostable takeout containers? I've noticed a big switch over to take out that looks green, a brown paper exterior, but the interior is lined with plastic. Yeah. You know, we're really interested in the reusable movement right now. That is kind of, I'd love to jump into reusable as if possible, where there's these new companies, especially out here in California that are coming up with some incredible systems and solutions that you'd actually receive your takeout in a reusable container that then gets returned to the restaurant. And it's a completely different system than anything I've ever seen before, but it's a really great model. And I'd really love to see that. I think at this moment, you know, the compostables are sort of been lucky partly because of the materials they're using are better, but in the end, they behave just like plastic in the environment. So it takes about 180 degrees to properly compost these compostables and finding these facilities are few and far between. The closest one to me here is 150 miles away. And the waste haulers don't actually want to mix up compostables with their compost bin. They look just like plastic, so many times they just go in the trash anyway. So what I'd really love to see is a little bit more of an effort to get these reusable companies up and running. It would be amazing for the government to support them in some ways and get them out there a little bit further. I know that the food delivery ops that I have relationships with are actually very interested in that model as well and trying to see how they can make it work. So that's really exciting news. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can I just say one quick thing there too? I'm sorry, I keep jumping in. I just want to say understand if you have a, like I'm such a busy parent too, as many of you may be, and there's like, I'm just going to give my personal example. There is a place, a Tex-Mex place that we go to almost every week. Understand how much power you have for a place that you frequent, like very regularly. And so we've asked, I talked to the manager and I said, I'd like to bring my own glass, my own stuff. And he was a little resistant at first, but he came around. And now that I just feel so good that every single week I do not see that plastic waste. So just remember your power is my point. Absolutely. And use your voice. Absolutely use your voice. We have a question from Erica Pierce and she's talking a little bit about that there are many pieces of legislation currently under discussion in Albany around utensils that are clogging our junk drawers and becoming mountains within our house. And we don't know how to dispose of them. She says, including one creating a commission to figure out how to eliminate the use of single-use plastic. What is the best path forward to remove these unneeded items from our pantry shelves, landfills and incinerators while also saving our mom and pop delis and other food providers much-needed funds? I have an answer. Me too. We have signs that actually say cutoff coverage. What's that? Did I freeze? I was saying that this week created these signs, behavior change takes a lot of nudges. And so these signs, you can actually include your own logo if you'd like, the restaurant's logo. And it's just a reminder as the customer comes in and also one in the back of the house, we only provide plastic cutlery upon request. And if enough of us provide these, just download it, print it and hand it to your restaurant, they're so grateful. They save so much money. Eventually enough restaurants have this that then the state of New York is like, wait a minute, people really want this. And then all of a sudden, their focus is on what we want because we're the ones that they're trying to please all the time. If we're not happy, those positions are going to go away from them real fast. So take those action items on our website. You can download the sign, slap it on the door of the restaurant. They'll be so grateful every single time we've ever done it. We've just been received with so many things. Oh, this is such a clear, clear thing now. Pictures there. It's, you saw it on the video too. It's just says cutoff cutlery only upon request and that's it. Everybody's happy. That's amazing. Let me, let me just add, Sarah, that, you know, Erica Pierce, who is commenting is the county legislator from Bedford and chair of the county environmental committee. And she makes a very good point here. Not everything is a matter of state law. In many ways, Westchester has been ahead and localities, like you mentioned Malibu, you can get your municipality to be steps ahead of the state. The state takes forever to make change. Municipalities, county governments, and especially Westchester with the real progressive county board and county executive can make change faster and can in effect adopted changes before state, the state did. There is a bill, for example, to ban single use plastics. These kinds of bills are an extremely difficult lift up here. And it's unlikely that something as big and bold as that is going to make it through until we do these incremental things as Sheila and Roger are saying that create the momentum and say, you know what, this is what our constituents want. So we have to do this stuff because don't think that the purveyors of the plastic industry aren't up here in number. If we were to consider a true single use plastic ban, you know, these folks would be all over this place and they would have a great deal of influence in determining whether a bill can ultimately pass. So you have to build both from the ground up, the grass root stuff, and also do these incremental changes. Like someone asked in the chat about the extended producer responsibility acts, there's several versions of it. I happen to be on the Senate one that is sponsored by Senator Kaminsky, who is chair of the committee in our house. Assemblyman Anglebright is the chair of the relevant committee in the assembly, has a different bill and the governor has her own. So there's multiple pathways and we're not going to get perfection at the state policy level. You're going to take an incremental approach to keep digging away at the use of plastics. And that's what we're fair to do. But thank you, Erica, for making these points here on the side. I'll just add to the senator's comment. If you can also show the cost savings, I think that really supports the role that everyone wants to play for the benefit of restaurants. They've been through the ringer. The only reason why AB 1276 passed was because my organization was able to come up with that number, 3.2 million dollars were saved just from Postmates effort. So it's a huge savings. And so when we're able to show the win-win-win, it is a very, very, very unique opportunity to just kind of pave your way through and make that a little easier for everybody. Agreed. That is great. Well, we are really out of time ladies. This is crazy. I could talk with this group for hours and hours. And we have so many great questions that did not get answered in the chat. And I apologize for that. We also have more questions in the Q&A that we were not able to get to. But all of our panelists have contact information on their websites. And we certainly can reach out to them. You can feel free to reach out to Bedford 2030 with any questions as well. You can reach out to Sheila at hello at habitsofwaste.org around all of the cutlery. And our president of Bedford 2030 has a nice little shout out for the La Familia in Katona, which we're really proud of you because they responded to requests to go aluminum for the takeout to containers and compostable for the utensils. So that's a great example of a local pizza place that is a chain doing the right thing. And also shout out to Grassroots Kitchen in Tarrytown. So this is awesome. I'm so happy that we were able to do this. Bedford 2030 is here to meet you where you are. So please go on our website, the Habits of Waste website, the Beyond Plastics website. And we have a host of amazing events coming up. I know Alison was going to show some slides of those. Those include an Earth Day Festival, which is going to be amazing. It's every year. It's Sunday 24th every year. It's at the Bedford Hills train station. This is going to be a wonderful experience for the family. You'll get to learn about our amazing programs, which is rooted solutions, learning how to use natural climate solutions in your yard, like simply planting native plants, tall trees, next step using goats, all kinds of interesting things that Bedford 2030 is launching this year. So please join us for that. We will have a magical moon dance, which is our annual gala on May 21st. And if you're interested in energizing your home, please reach out to us at Bedford2030.org, and we can connect you with our amazing energy coach. Bob Fishman can come to your house and give you a free consultation what you can do to create less carbon coming out of your homes. So thank you all. Please remember to do your homework. Pick one thing that you learned today or go find it on one of our websites and inspire three others to do the same. Thank you all so much. Thank you. We'll be up in about a day or so. Super. Thank you. Good night, everybody. Good night.