 I view this as a celebration of the voyage of discovery undertaken by the Impact Fellows this summer and I think you will all very much enjoy hearing everything they have learned about plastic waste and recycling. A few words about the program to start with. It's an eight-week intense full-time program largely self-managed by the team of undergraduates who take a deep dive into a problem that has both a sustainability and a social impact component. We deliberately and purposefully assemble teams with a range of backgrounds so that a broad and diverse set of perspectives are to bear on the technical, economic policy, regulatory and social aspects of the subject of the problem at hand. The team often starts with a cursory familiarity with the topic and is faced with an extremely steep initial learning curve and I'm delighted to say that this team like its predecessors has successfully overcome this challenge greatly aided I may add by many conversations with the main experts and practitioners like some of you present today. Thank you for so readily sharing your knowledge and insights and suggestions with the team. Towards the end of the eight weeks the team gets to the point where they can conduct a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the key elements of the problem based on all the information they have accumulated all these conversations we have had and then most importantly they come up with the list of actionable recommendations. This is sort of the core of the project and the culmination of all the hard work they have put in over the summer. So we will go into the presentation and at any time during the talk or after it is done please submit any questions you may have via the Q&A function and the team will address these at the conclusion of their talk. So without further ado it gives me great pleasure to now hand the floor over to the stars of the event the team. Hi everybody thank you so much for coming. My name is Catherine I may be a senior this fall I use she-her pronouns and I major in earth systems with the concentration in environmental economics and policy. Hi everyone I'm Julia Hawke she-her pronouns I'm going to be a junior this fall and I'm majoring in mechanical engineering with a project realization concentration. My name is Robert Hurley I'm a rising junior and I'm majoring in biology with a focus in biochem and bio physics. Hi my name is Adriana Yarko I'm a rising sophomore I will be majoring in civil engineering and minoring in computer science. Hi everyone my name is Shree I use she-her pronouns and I'm going to be a sophomore this fall and I'm majoring in engineering physics with the focus and energy yeah thank you so much for joining us. All right so thank you everyone for your time today we're very excited to present to you our research findings and recommendations on plastics recycling in California a topic that our team of five spent the past eight weeks learning about before we start we'd like to thank our mentors Caroline, Cass, Donica, Elizabeth and Brian for providing us the opportunity to learn so much more about the research process. Finally thank you to everyone here today who contributed their valuable time and knowledge in our interviews also to everyone not here today I'm watching the recording hi to preface this presentation is a framework to synthesize our learning so we can reflect on our own opinions and understand how much is needed to make different kinds of impacts this is not the end I'll be all and comes from our personal judgment after scouring many sources next slide please. So today we will start by discussing briefly the current landscape and give you just a general overview of the problem and then we will move on to our key takeaways from the research that we conducted over this summer and highlight the main problems that are limiting the potential recycling and then we will identify the root causes of these problems and the key stakeholders that can engage with these problems and then which will lead to the recommendations which will identify exactly what each key stakeholder can do to I to address these problems and yeah now I'll pass it over to Adria the next slide. The Tomcat Impact Fellows utilize and synthesize information from a large amount of resources to create our report and list of recommendations. Our process began with over 20 interviews with stakeholders across the plastic supply chain innovators and activists. We then began independent research to further our knowledge of all aspects of plastic pollution and recycling in conjunction with many team meetings the Tomcat Impact Fellows constructed our comprehensive report and recommendations. To begin I'll hand it over to Julia to lay out the current plastic landscape. Next slide please. Yeah thank you Adria before we start getting into specifics here's some contextual information on understanding our current landscape about 70% of plastics used in the US every year is sent to landfill and while this number changes a little every year it is honestly a depressingly high number considering that most public perception of the national recycling rate would think it to be lower and this also manifests itself not just in our daily uses but also everywhere else imaginable. Every week we're ingesting a whole credit cards worth of plastic if there are about 52 weeks in a year that means each of us individually are eating much more plastic that's in our wallets every time our birthday comes around. This is because of how much bio plastics have overwhelmed our natural ecosystems and this is pretty evident with not only this rate of million metric tons but also the infamous great garbage patch in the ocean and so much more. The effects of these statistics will be discussed later but recognize that the plastics crisis is precisely that the crisis. I'll hand it over to Katherine. Next slide. Previous slide Danica. She seems to be having Wi-Fi issue. Hi sorry I got kicked off my Wi-Fi just now. With that baseline understanding of the global plastics problem and how we approach this research project we'll begin to run through some of the research that we did starting with the policy and economic context that drives the plastic crisis then moving on to the health and justice ramifications because of the plastics problem and then talk about some of the current technological innovations within the plastic space. So we can move to the next slide please. So in terms of policy we identified four important policy changes that have affected the plastic landscape. First being that China announced the national sword in 2017 which banned 24 recyclable materials from entering the country which included plastics it limited contamination to 0.5% and increased enforcement inspections. The ban came after many recycling programs abroad transitioned from requiring consumers to separate their recyclable materials which means putting their paper their plastics their cans and bottles into different bins and then exporting them that way and instead they began to collect a single stream which means all of those recyclables were put into the same bin and oftentimes with municipal waste as well. That led to a lot of contamination that the Chinese government had to deal with and so as a result of the contamination a lot of the materials were unusable which drove down profits and was the impetus for the Chinese government to implement the national sword which has completely changed the plastic landscape. Now in 2019 changes were made to the basil convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous waste and their disposals which aimed to limit global trade and hazardous waste. This amendment included solid waste into the convention and that brought plastics into the scope. It also imposed tighter controls onto those importers and exporters. This amendment comes as a result of many industrialized countries exporting their waste to developing nations oftentimes in the global south leading to questions of distributional justice that Julia will get into later. Now the impact of these 2019 changes has been that only clean shipments of contamination free plastic waste have been allowed between countries. More locally to us California has had some of the most successful recycling and product reuse programs thanks to the state's integrated waste management act of 1989 and in 2016 a great bill which called Proposition 67 banned the single use carryout bags within the state. If any of you live in California I'm sure you have noticed that we get paper bags and we even get charged for that which is great. Lastly and most recently Maine passed their EPR bill LD1541 on July 14th of 2021. EPR legislation holds the producers of plastic products responsible for all the negative environmental externalities and their associated costs. That means it's incentivizing manufacturers to design resource efficient and low impact products to decrease the costs of the externalities. It also helps facilitate the effective end of life collection and treatment of products for reuse and recycling. Again related to California the our own EPR bill will be up on the ballot November 8th 2022 which is really exciting. So we find the Chinese plastic ban to be the most influential policy of these four as it has made waves in the plastics industry. As a result of the Chinese ban globally more plastics are ending up in landfills, incinerators or just litter in the environment and also there are rising costs to hallway recyclable materials which has rendered the products increasingly unprofitable. It's also forced countries to have to figure out new ways of dealing with their own waste streams and so we're actually hopeful that this change will lead to new recycling innovations within the space. Now I'll pass it off to Sri to explain why recycling is currently not a profitable business if you could switch slides. Thanks Catherine. So as you can see from the figure recycling averages to a loss of around 50.66 dollars per ton of waste while landfilling averages to around 42.66 worth of profit per ton of waste and waste energy plants average around 22 dollars per ton of waste of profit and from these figures you could probably tell that in most cases currently recycling is just not profitable except for plastics such as PET for the most part it's difficult to even just break even and this is due to two main reasons firstly there's a low demand for recycled plastics recycled plastics today are seen as an alternate to virgin plastics so when the price of oil goes up the price of virgin plastics goes up and more people opt for recycled plastics which then drives the price of recycled plastics up and so because of this the demand for recycled plastics does not depend on the current landscape of the recycling market itself but it depends on the oil market which sometimes makes it difficult for recyclers to make a profit. Next there is recycle plastics are always downcycle plastics it's impossible to maintain the full quality of parent plastics but in many cases they can still function well recyclers sometimes are not aware of the current market requirements or what I mean is like which plastics manufacturers are actually willing to buy and because of this miscommunication or lack of it rather many MRFs shred together plastics to produce a lower quality bail and this type of recycled plastic does not meet a lot of like plastic manufacturer requirements then there's lack of transparency in the supply chain there's a lot of ambiguity in what is actually recycled and what is discarded and exporting waste just magnifies this problem as a result it becomes difficult for consumers and manufacturers to understand and trust recycle plastics. The other part of the problem is poor supply of in-demand plastics. Recycle PET is an in-demand plastic California attains a supply of PET through curbside recycling or the redemption centers however there have been closures of redemption centers in the past few years because of the poor economics and the and because of this this has reduced the supply of PET available then the industry is also small and fragmented with several small actors compared to the virtual plastic industry which has many big oil and profit that can be invested in R&D and also just ability to withstand market shocks which makes it difficult for small actors to produce cheaper and higher quality supply and finally our current technology is just ineffective right now at achieving true circularity apart from PET which can kind of go bottle to bottle other plastics aren't really circular and they can't really be effectively recycled in some cases without adding large amounts of virgin to compensate so we can advance the technology address later in the presentation next slide please yeah and with that plastic production we see is at an all-time high and it makes sense for plastics infrastructure to be also widespread and growing and that includes the effects of it the human and planetary health so there are so many pieces this puzzle puzzle that all fall along with supply chain from fracking the pipelines of landfills and each individual group has their own unique and concentrated impact on the people around them and the environment at the front end fossil fuel extraction methods such as fracking which is inextricably linked to plastic production uses hundreds of toxic chemicals to contaminate groundwater and air many of which are carcinogenic and on top of what is released as the process is happening most of the fracking fluids are left underground to continue to pollute the pipelines used to transport this oil then poses dangers to anyone living near them as they're susceptible to fires explosions and oil spills this all might be common knowledge and perhaps many feel like the risk is a sacrifice to be made but california has a second highest number of significant incidents in the u.s. that means almost 600 deaths hospitalizations or significant spills from 1986 to 2013 at the end of the plastic life cycle the plastics that end up in landfills and the environment release methane at incredibly high rates to contribute to climate change where municipal solid waste landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions in the u.s. and california happens to have the most landfills in the country 300 which is almost doubled the second highest in Tennessee plastic processing and burning is especially polluting because it releases many hazardous pollutants that cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer incinerators on their own have been found to release more toxic pollution than coal fired power plants specifically because they burn plastics and cracking facilities and plastic production plants as a whole are similarly harmful all of this amounts to the next slide please what was mentioned briefly in the introduction widespread harm to the environment and to the human population sorry actually previous slide more than 800 species are affected by marine plastic pollution and many endangered species are included so they're consuming plastics and die or continue to live and contaminate the rest of the food cycle and eventually reach us but micro plastics also are found in our drinking water and fruits and vegetables and the long term effects of this and our systems are still very much unknown and pose a risk to the future of the planet both animal and human as we know it next slide so social and environmental justice issues have also been amplified but some of these issues have existed for as long as plastic production infrastructure has existed only with recent political movements have a surface to mainstream awareness some specific examples include these on the slide where at this very moment and bridge who operates the world's longest crude oil pipeline system is expanding an oil pipeline line three in minnesota which is encroaching on the land of the indigenous community presiding there and leading to violent arrests and treaty rights violations it's actually pretty upsetting because not only are the community's livelihoods being ruined but the potential contribution that climate change it would bring would be higher than that of minnesota's entire economy i highly suggest if any of you have the time to later do a quick google search of stop line three dot org and learn more about the injustices happening there and finding ways to support it additionally incinerators and plastic production plants disproportionately affect the lives and health of black indigenous and people of color as well as low income populations as a whole and a very clear example of this can be seen in cancer alley which is about an 85 mile stretch of land in louisiana with about 150 plants the area is known for its inhumanely high risk for cancer directly attributed to the plants that are concentrated near residential areas and pollute the lives of the residents for most of plastics the company responsible for most of this even plants and expanding more in this area and community organizers have been continuously and rigorously quite literally fighting for their lives finally with plastic exports shifting due to national sword as catherine explained much of the masses of plastic have been diverted not back to their original producer but the countries mainly in southeast asia like malaysia the philippines and thailand or overall the global south this puts unnecessary pressure on the facilities there because not only are they getting more plastic that they can process much of the garbage is actually mislabeled contaminated and unprocessable this dynamic has shown to be a redirection of a problem rather than a solution and perpetuates more harm than good i'll now pass it on to robert to discuss current recycling strategies thanks to mea recovery rates in the current recycling industry are much too low every type of plastic is technically recyclable but for many of them it is not practical or economic to do so plastics are only recycled when they are economical to recycle most material recovery facilities only recycle pet and hdp plastic waste that is sorted but not effective to recycle is exported and current policy allows this to be labeled as recycling these plastics often go to developing countries that do not have the infrastructure to recycle them and there's often not transparency and what is actually done with it in reality much of this waste is likely not recycled it ends up in the environment plastics that are not exported are either land-filled or incinerated land-filling is currently the largest sector for plastic waste but moving forward it should be avoided whenever possible because there's only so much room available an analysis conducted by the environmental research and education foundation estimates that all currently operating u.s landfills will be full in just over 60 years as we heard from julia there are also many serious concerns about landfill pollution while land-filling has its issues incineration is not much better at than alternative advantages incineration or that it reduces waste volume by 87 and produces value in the form of energy however incinerators especially those that burn plastics have many detrimental effects on the environment arguably more so than land-filling there are several reports that identify incinerators is having serious health implications for those who live near them in the form of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases while the most popular plastic waste pathways are currently land-filling incineration both of these negatively impact the environment and plastics should instead be recycled most recycling done currently is mechanical recycling in the form of extrusion this process produces re-granulated material by melting and applying sheer force to plastics and already been sorted cleaned and shredded however the lack of uniformity in plastic waste even among individual polymers makes degradation with subsequent extrusions almost inevitable current technologies can only reprocess plastics a few times before the damage to material properties is too great to continue use as opposed to mechanical chemical recycling converts plastics from their polymer forms back into their individual monomers which can then be used to remake polymers similarly to virgin plastic creation without the performance degradation involved with mechanical recycling chemical recycling could potentially be done in infinite time however there are a lot of unknowns in the process including potential environmental impact another problem that many chemical processes cannot or possible but are not practical due to limited availability of chemical resources issues with increasing the reaction scale and also a common issue of affordability the only way for chemical recycling industry to expand is to the development of economically viable and environmentally sustainable chemical reactions some examples of potential recycling solutions are included on the next slide there are several innovative companies that are working to advance recycling technology it is imperative that more research and development for these new innovations are conducted because without new technologies plastic waste will likely remain to be an issue resource chemistry corporation has a mission to one day replace petroleum-based plastics with carbon dioxide these plastics that have equivalent or improved properties they have already made great progress to achieve this goal for PET the polymer that will replace PET is called polyethylene pharynoid or PEP which has increased barrier properties greater tensile strength higher melting point it is also 100 percent recyclable compostable and displays biodegradability PEP is used by PET is created using co2 and edible biomass in a way that carbon negative and low cost resource has developed technology that can reduce this polymer more efficiently than ever before and they are taking steps to commercialize this process due to PEP superior material properties and degradability it has the potential to completely replace PET and should do so once this being sustainably produced commercially neopave is a road paving company that has developed a higher performing alternative to asphalt known as neo which can be made from road waste and contaminated PET neo is a urethane-based binder that when used to make roads last six to 15 times longer than asphalt because neo is made from recycled asphalt and PET it is also more eco-friendly than conventional asphalt one pound of neo can be produced for 40 cents and sold for three times profit while their current infrastructure could not support repaving of all roads ever made neo should likely one day replace asphalt world-wide nova loop is a chemical recycling company that has created a process to upcycle polyethylene PE polymer waste PE is the most abundant plastic in the world and the majority of it is not being recycled nova loops technology turns polyethylene waste into thermoplastic poly urethane elastromers or tpu which are highly valued plastics and high performance nova loop is preparing to move their process to a large scale jillix is a waste management company that would like to help all organizations to recycle more plastic jillix's branch company cyclics chemically characterizes waste streams for other companies cyclics is a plastic feedstock provider and jillix an advanced technology provider jillix is targeting the hard recycled plastics codes three to seven jillix's current operation region X is the first ever commercial recycling facility that can recycle polystyrene polystyrene waste is hardly recycled and it is strongly encouraged that more facilities like region X are created pure cycle technologies is the only company that can recycle polypropylene waste that is of equivalent quality to virgin polypropylene polypropylene waste comprises a large amount of all plastic waste and almost no one is recycling it pure cycle currently has contracts to build multiple large facilities across the u.s that recycle half a million metric tons of plastics by 2025 if this facility is economically sustainable and environmentally safe then it should be supported and expanded phoenix fibers is a startup company that uses enzymes to upcycle waste these enzymes can target multiple plastic polymers they're mixed and blended and recover and recycle them without any sorting required phoenix fibers has interest in recycling the plastics that are within waste fabrics as 46 billion dollars worth of textiles are thrown away every year while their company is still in development it has great promise to recycle many plastics they're not currently being recycled each of these businesses successfully expand and distribute their technologies the only non-recyclable plastics will be pvc and some code seven plastics we will now look at some root causes for issues within the industry throughout our research and interview we identified five root causes to address for which we provided actionable recommendations in no particular order we found that one virgin plastics are economically favorable and rising consumerism keeps demand up for plastics two consumers don't have full information necessary to successfully participate in recycling three recycling infrastructure is fragmented and insufficient four there are no implementable technical solutions to replace current products five there is a lack of accountability from big oil and big plastic pollution on planetary health we have also identified several stakeholders that will play important roles in each of our recommendations next slide those stakeholders are governments and geos plastic manufacturers waste management companies consumers academia research institutions startups distributors producers environmental organizations and environmental foundations each of these stakeholders will play in different roles in different recommendations and these entities have the power needed to make actual change and fill our recommendations i will now hand it off to Catherine to address our first root cause thank you for that so just before we get sorted into our into the root causes i want to explain the slide to you so first off like Julia said at the top of the hour oh sorry could you could you skip forward to slides thank you just before we get started like Julia said at the top of the hour these are our subjective perspectives they are what we think could be good solutions after our research and listening to all of you and and so on the left hand side we have a table of the stakeholders that we've identified for each root cause and potential solutions for those stakeholders on the right hand side of the slide you'll see a graph that graph charts level of impact versus level of effort these are just a framework we use to synthesize our learning it's not based on quantitative data it's based on what we've learned in qualitative assumption making based on various interests and political feasibility and what we think their impact would be so let's get into the first root cause the first root cause is virgin plastics are economically favorable and rising consumerism keeps demand up for plastics so as shree mentioned the current economic system greatly favors the usage of new virgin plastics and consumer demand for these new plastic products exacerbates that to counteract this we believe that government needs to enact new policy and legislation this includes expanding the basil convention rules on exporting plastics we need to stop or lower exports reducing or eliminating plastic waste exports helps incentivize recycling furthermore it ensures a localized supply of plastics that are easy to require for reuse second we should force firms to internalize the negative externalities of using virgin plastics by pricing them at their true social cost via tax next following in mains lead we must pass legislation or bolster existing policy that requires extended producer responsibility we should only have the chasing arrow sign on recyclable products as this leads to misinformation for consumers and five following in california's footsteps we should ban the use of single-use plastics now on to consumers consumers can vote with their wallets and demand transparency from the producers and distributors they purchase from but consumers are also part of this problem we need to stop buying new items and decrease our consumption startups need to innovate new technologies are crucial to addressing plastics problem now i think solutions two and three meaning the tax and epr would have the most impact but are also very difficult to pass because of political feasibility so you'll see that through the rest of these slides you have to we have to balance feasibility versus its impact and effort so on to the next slide please our second root cause is that consumers do not have the full information necessary to successfully participate in recycling our recommendations for this repose is a multi-faceted approach utilizing governments consumers risk management facilities and companies environmental organizations and foundations and producers our first set of recommendations involve government first local governments must offer continued accessible and user-friendly education about recycling to the public information about what happens to material after it is sorted by the consumers and whether or not material with labeled recyclable is actually recycled and what material belongs in recycling bin must be made available to the public literature with large pictures and concise messaging creates high readability and this one should be an outline for the information distributed visual literature can be distributed through web pages or mobile applications and physical literature should also be created to be distributed through mail services made available at city buildings next as captain touched on earlier to ensure that consumers are not misguided and are able to make educated decisions about what to buy from governments must regulate the use of chasing arrows on packaging chasing arrows are often used in marketing strategy to convince consumers that they are purchasing products that are not contributing to global plastic pollution chasing else symbol should be limited to material that has demonstrated economically viable and environmentally sound recyclability compulsability or reusability next to ensure that the youth are properly educated about the correct recycling practices recycling education campaigns should be launched by local governments in partnership with local environments local environmental organizations and waste management facilities in schools teaching students from K through 8 most people recall minimal emphasis being placed on proper recycling practices in schooling past elementary school therefore we recommend that educational campaigns are longer students old enough to effectively retain and utilize information they learn are exposed to continued reinforcement of the proper recycling processes such as how to stop how to sort properly is used to ensure that as students grow into adults they are well informed and become an active part of reducing plastic pollution our second set of recommendations involve consumers consumers must use information made available to them to make educated and informed decisions about what brands and companies buy from as captain stated consumers can vote with their wallets if consumers consciously choose to buy products with packaging that is sustainable producers may be forced to shift to most stable packaging designs to repeat consumers next consumers must also use information made available to them to sort and clean household waste properly ensuring that contamination does not enter the waste stream drastically reduces the cost of sorting and low second plastic our third set of recommendations involved waste management facilities and companies local waste management facilities or material recovery facilities consistent providing accurate recycling information in the ways that consumers can sort their waste properly this information should include how consumers can as I said recycle properly accurate recycling rates and what happens to waste accurate collected this information should be used in recycling literature released by local governments the waste management facilities and companies should also engage in their own outreach such as giving tours of the facilities or recycling webinars open to the community maintaining a high level of transparency will not only create effective literature but rather the support of consumers to improve processes our third set of recommendations involve environmental organizations foundation local environmental groups and organizations can supply the volunteers to staff the recycling education campaigns in schools these volunteers can teach students directly and engages the community directly to explain recycling practices simply we acknowledge the cost associated with the recycling education campaign so utilizing volunteers from non-profits may be an effective way to minimize costs our third set of recommendations involve waste involve producers lastly it is the responsibility of producers to accurately label practice label packaging the products we're chasing airways in order to not mistreat consumers who are purchasing their products producers must follow regulations provided by governments and demonstrate the accessibility usability or possibility of the packaging and products they use to use the chasing arrows symbol the recommendation we identified as having the highest impact and lowest effort for this root cause is for waste management facilities to improve to provide accurate recycling information this recommendation just requires waste management facilities to make public information that they've already made that they already have available to them as well as providing information about how consumers can properly store material actually help minimizing sorting efforts if consumers are already sorting material properly investments in high-grade sorting machines can be reallocated to making more effective recycling systems i will now hand it off the street talk about our next root cause recycling infrastructure is fragmented and insufficient to counteract this governments can provide financial support for recycling especially in underserved areas the skin either be done through helping or subsidizing curbside recycling programs most cities in california already have moderate to good access to recycling but in low lower income communities and rural areas recycling infrastructure is especially lacking and providing financial support to these areas can help overcome this this leads to point number two in the last few years as i mentioned previously redemption centers across california have been closing due to poor economics bills have been introduced to help reestablish redemption centers however we also need additional funding to establish redemption centers in underserved areas three in california patchwork legislation which just refers to variation in recycling programs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction creates confusion for several stakeholders disincentivizing them from recycling properly standardizing some of the framework when possible i.e. just defining what is recyclable and what isn't from jurisdiction to jurisdiction can help with this this leads to consumers as kathryn and adria already alluded to consumers should continue to offer recycling programs and support them recycling is nowhere near perfect today but by supporting these programs they can help create a consistent supply and demand that is needed to boost the industry. five the recycling industry is small and fragmented especially compared to these huge oil companies and in order to reap the benefits of economies of scale withstand market shocks waste management companies startups and recyclers can partner with each other and reap the benefits of just partnering with each other. six NGOs and environmental agencies can help improve access to recycling to underserved communities by helping them finance or make budget plans to invest in recycling infrastructure and they can also act as a communicator between stakeholders to help manufacturers and consumers understand this patchwork legislation and how they can best work around it. eight plastic manufacturers could help invest in recycling infrastructure either as part of government mandated epr programs or corporate social responsibility although we know that the latter is probably much less likely to happen and although this is more of a band-aid solution it poses as an interim solution where we can incentivize recycling instead of landfilling which is the lesser evil and the ideal solution would be shifting towards reusable materials but this is not always possible and in cases where it is it will still take significant time and effort since the norms and infrastructure right now support the use of virgin plastics and lastly plastic manufacturers should also create partnerships with different stakeholders for example they could partner with recyclers to create more circular supply chains recyclers can provide a specific type of recycled plastics manufacturers and manufacturers can produce recyclers with the consistent source of plastics to recycle and this is a win-win partnership both both partners benefit from each other and they can manufacturers can also partner with NGOs and seek advice and help on working around patchwork legislation or just simply understanding the legislation in in their local area and figure out how they can incorporate recycling into their activities. Partnerships are relatively low effort compared to some of these other recommendations but they can have a really big impact especially when adopted by big companies and you can move to the next slide. As discussed before there are many potential innovations rising but there are still no immediate technical solutions to replace current products. The pathway to replacing virgin plastics is a gradual journey but there are specific recommendations that are aligned with this goal. Firstly startups with viable solutions need to demonstrate that their technology will work on the commercial scale. Companies like Agilex that have already created large-scale facilities should work to expand even more and as Catherine said earlier successful recycling innovations will decrease the demand for virgin plastics. Companies also need to share and advertise their technologies the technology could be an entire process or it could be a design feature like a label or container closure the best technologies need to be implemented for example polystyrene should not be only recycled by Agilex other companies need to know about and be using this process. Innovative solutions need to be widely known and available in order to make a greater impact on the industry. Similar to the solution on the last slide distributors need to invest in alternatives to plastics whether this is distributing paper to go containers instead of plastic ones or like Nestle working to package foods and fiber wrappers instead of plastic ones or ever there's an opportunity to opt out of plastics it should be done. Distributors should also reduce plastic use whenever possible unnecessary plastic packaging fillers and wrappings should not be included or should be replaced with non-plastics waste management companies need to invest in new technologies whenever a new process that will improve recycling becomes commercially available waste management companies need to purchase them similarly to the partnerships described by Shree. Lease management companies should also work together with other companies to optimize as many facilities as possible to spread the best talk technology available no company should be keeping secrets and acting in their own interest tackle this problem companies must work together the role that consumers play as previously mentioned is to support and purchase any alternatives to plastic reduce short-term plastic use products whenever possible. Academic and research institutions need to fund research for newer cycling technology it will take the world's smartest minds to innovate solutions for plastics and we need them to be motivated to do so. As some of us have already suggested governments need to create economic incentives that work against virgin plastics one solution is for governments to place caps for the production version plastics with a growing population and economy plastic producers are only going to produce more governments should also give tax breaks for companies that are working on products and processes that are proven to be environmentally friendly any possible incentives that will make companies want to help the environment should be given. The solution with the greatest impact of these would be for waste management companies to purchase and use the newest innovation if every merc had the same technologies as pure cycle agilics and no blue and codes one and two wouldn't be the only plastics considered recyclable the solutions that require the most effort are creating commercial innovations and government policies if any of these are realized and they will have huge implications for the future of the industry. So the final root cause is there's a lack of accountability from big oil and big plastic companies and their impacts on planetary and human health. I summarized earlier the various impacts and injustices of big plastic infrastructure but in terms of the progress they've made to resolve these issues we have yet to see change great enough to bring justice to communities and be environmentally sound enough to make substantial progress that the world needs to prevent climate change from getting out of hand even more than it already has. Thus I selected five stakeholders that can make an impact on this issue firstly with the government of course reducing production is one of the most impactful ways to reduce all impacts of plastic house in the world but particularly targeting production would tackle the root cause of these problems. Thus we have solution one and three indicated as the highest level of effort but highest level of impact as well. Solution one is to apply a tax and or impose a cap and trade program such that regulation is placed directly to prevent the industry from expanding more and increasing plastic production. Similarly solution three entails divestment from fossil fuel which would address its impact at all areas along supply chain and would lead to a better future as renewable and sustainable operations are prioritized. Solution two is regulating emissions and waste particularly because to keep big oil big plastic companies accountable on protecting planetary and human health we can look to the effects of infrastructure as I've previously mentioned. So making regulation that pressures facilities to be cleaner would reduce their current harms on local communities and the environment. As an example the EPA is in charge of upkeeping these regulations but as of current evidence and in our report we believe they need to be pushed to do a little bit more maybe a lot more but we'll explain on the report. On the opposite end of the impact and effort spectrum solutions four and five consumers can first avoid purchasing single use plastics and lean more towards products made of material from a renewable and ethical source. As Catherine mentioned consumers have huge purchasing power and can affect the plastic industry if they induce a paradigm shift that also shifts the man away from harmful and not sustainable products. However this is a bit of a numbers game will require substantial engagement to capture the attention of corporations but once their demand changes and they know their customers care about these issues their actions will follow. Similarly pressuring big plastic companies for more transparency on the extent of their waste and environmental pollution will highlight concrete evidence of their impact and companies can be held responsible in this way. Next is plastic manufacturers oh sorry yep where communicating and collaborating with environmental organizations and nonprofits would be critical to foster effective dialogue to make communities safer and healthier around their facilities. Manufacturers will discuss with representatives who are the voice of the people thus they can better serve a plethora of their needs and be held directly accountable for their actions. All changes may be difficult to do economically communication is essential to raise awareness and push for action. A solution that would perhaps require more effort but also have great impact would be if manufacturers themselves invest in zero emissions and eliminate water contamination as soon as possible so they stop contributing to the declining house of local communities. If their facilities continue to produce with minimal impact they will not need to be replaced or moved because of their harms. Environmental organizations and nonprofits have been doing great work for arguably as long as plastic infrastructure has been around and have been one of the main forces of kind of accountability that we see today thus continuing their work and preferably getting better funding for it is vital to this cause area firstly their work countering big plastic lobbyists is important as we've learned they've been paid enormous amounts of money to push for the corporate agenda and push for more lenient policies such as resisting the chasing arrows regulation that Adrian mentioned was so important for recycling. Furthermore by pushing for sustainable initiatives more effective regulation can be imposed onto companies so that they can be forced to be greener. Finally distributors and producers can both prioritize using products derived from renewable material and weeding off of single use plastics as well as striving ultimately towards operating a zero waste as this will influence the market and influence the big plastic industry to do better. I'll hand it off for Robert to wrap this up. Sorry never mind. Okay next slide. Now so yeah we wanted to end this presentation with final messages and a call to action because with all the research conducted and the various people we've interviewed there was one main theme that we knew was essential to all this work and that was that we have to work together with all of us on top of hundreds it's not thousands or hundreds of thousands of more organizations in the world working on the same plastic issue many are tackling it from different focus areas however many are also working on the same by centering collaboration groups of people who share similar work and combine their resources and strengthen them. This would not be possible without communication and transparency across all stakeholders we each have our own responsibility and capability to make change but if we don't share our perspectives we will be deeply missing out on critical information like a puzzle missing its pieces communication and transparency will ensure that changes made effectively and we can maximize our impacts by understanding all necessary perspectives and thus addressing all kinds of problems big and small. Then with this strong foundation we can develop interdisciplinary solutions that don't just address one end of the spectrum of issues but multiple as we said before a hybrid solution is necessary to solve a multifaceted issue this is why we repeated some similar solutions between each cause area because we know that they will affect change in multiple ways furthermore as people with more power have more responsibility to make more widespread changes those with more local powers can address the issues at their own unique standpoints however bottom line we must improve planetary and human health and prioritize those first and foremost people and animals are dying because of plastics and the infrastructure behind it and will continue to climate change is worsening while funding is necessary and money is sadly very essential to the world we live in we cannot let financial benefit or loss keep us from doing what is right to prioritize health is to ensure that we don't turn a blind eye to consequences develop into things like cancer alley and with progress and collaboration we hopefully won't let it happen again and that's the end of our presentation thank you thank you very much everybody um that was a very uh comprehensive overview of your project and uh i think it sort of exemplified the complexity of the issues and interlink nature of the problem that you took a look at so if anybody has questions could you could you please enter them into the q and a and we'll get to them we don't have a huge amount of time left but we'll try to get them as soon as possible okay so i have maybe a couple of questions here that i would like to pose to the team but donica did you want to have caroline just say a few words so caroline was the graduate teaching assistant to help the team with this project and uh she would like to maybe say a few words yes can everyone hear me yes amazing uh great job team again thank you for such an informative presentation i know the team has come a long way and it's certainly not an easy problem for us to to tackle so thanks brian for making our life so hard over the summer and really grinding us and mostly the team um and i hope this is a good learning experience i mean part of the big part of the learning is to help simplify and distill all these um takeaways which i think the team did a really good job so yeah just really happy and and glad um and thank you all for tuning in thank you so i have a question here from julie mille to the team and uh julie's question is what technology needs to be developed to better recycle plastics where should the research be focused i know you touched upon a few things in the course of the presentation but if you had to prioritize um it would be uh interesting to hear what your views on this uh robert you kind of spoke to it so maybe you can feel this question yeah i really think any solutions that can expand recycling to like new polymer types would really be ideal and anything that can maybe increase the efficiency or like or decrease the degradation involved with recycling because you know we can only do it a few times and really recycling would be able to reuse the same material over and over again um yeah so just expanding the amount of material that can be recycled i think is really the main focus um i would oh sorry go ahead i would also say um plastics three to seven um they've often been labeled as like plastics that are technically recyclable but actually aren't and we've seen just like a lot of like inconsistencies across all plastics when it comes to all the different um facilities and so on and so forth and so i think bottom line like trying to make sure that all all recyclables that are labeled recycled that are labeled recyclable are being recycled because that is not the case a lot of them are going to landfills as we've seen how high the 70 percent is so as um technology that can ensure that that recycling rate goes um a lot higher and landfilling rate goes a lot lower um a lot to do with kind of circular economies but also like robert said innovative um technologies that can keep this um renewable plastic i guess idea going that would be great but making sure that plastics are actually being recyclable is key and that's what i believe and one more thing i think really product innovations that can replace plastics would be the ideal overall like anything that can be doesn't have to be recycled it can just go into the environment safely but still provide all the properties necessary with plastics those would be the best solution i see the map canon the director of the tomcat santeris uh has got the flow map would you like to make a few comments or yeah yeah definitely uh i just want to just make a brief remark and then and then ask a question if i could uh yeah all i all i wanted to say was you know congratulations uh to the team i'm extremely impressed with uh the breadth of this project uh and and the depth of your analysis um it's it's just an incredibly complex uh problem that uh touches on so many different aspects you know technology government policy social whole corporations etc so you really did an amazing job of managing all that and putting together a a coherent and i think quite insightful presentation so congratulations um a number of things kind of uh you know surprising and interesting to me uh one one question i guess that i'll try to phrase it as specifically as possible so so this issue about transparency about what actually gets recycled um and education you most consumers maybe aren't aware that most of what they're throwing into the pen is is going to end up in a landfill or or or or worse just sort of improperly disposed of so it would you go so far as to say we should just make the blue bin exclusively for say pet and hdpe or the two plastics that are in reality recycled and just say that everything else has to go in the the black landfill bin um i you know i find myself even getting fooled because i have a huge blue bin and a small black bin and so yeah i every week i fill up the the blue bin and you sort of feel you know without thinking about it like wow okay i'm i'm doing what's what's right i'm not putting that much in the landfill but but the reality is as you know is is is not the case so so would that be a specific recommendation just to say you know then people would just be more aware of how much waste they're actually generating and and hopefully we could you know make it easier on the recyclers uh you know just because they're now they're just handling you know one or two streams so be curious to know what your thoughts about about that as a policy and the prospects of trying to get that get that approved um i personally think this would be an extremely effective way to communicate to consumers what material they are placing as the blue bins is actually being recycled so as Heidi St. Born said as Julia as Catherine and i said the chasing arrows are incredibly misleading and i think only only allowing recyclable PET bottles to be touched one and two we put into recycling then would be the most effective way to communicate to consumers what exactly is being recycled and not ending up in in landfill as they are now and to add also that um sorry sort of like you alluded to consumers we get like this warm fuzzy feeling when we think that we're like saving the earth um by recycling but i think just the visual image of seeing how much less you are able to recycle would be incredibly powerful from the consumer side because we are so unaware now feasibility wise i just know that there would be so many lobbying groups chasing that down because there's a reason that the chasing arrow sign is on products that are labeled resin code seven which aren't even recyclable um just doing a survey of our friends no one knew that seven wasn't recyclable so i just i would find it very hard to believe that that could be an implementable policy solution at least in the next five years though it would be incredibly impactful thank you just a really small snippet um also included in our report so you can also read that um the plastics product design and the use of plastics that aren't recyclable include like plastics that are colored like green and brown plastics um so the uh onus of the to fix recycling as a whole like with this misconception would be to change design to make sure that things like labels are being separated properly and all of that kind of caps and bottles um and all these different kinds of numbers um if the labels are fixed if the design is fixed and that would make it a lot easier for consumers to do what it's right so we have a couple of uh we have a question and a comment we have one from nick uh the legislature is actually two weeks away from passing a ban on chasing arrows on unrecycled little plastics thanks for all the research so congratulations to nick and the whole team Heidi's uh Heidi's band of merry troublemakers who are making a big effort in changing the rules out in Sacramento so i think that's a that's a very positive thing that resonates with a lot of what you have said and i think what needs to happen is this helps to happen on a much larger scale uh julie mure had a question and she said looking locally what should Stanford do to reduce plastics and increase plastics recycling on campus based on what you have learned are there any things that we should be doing that we're not already doing one thing that i noticed is that even though in our dorms we have a lot of we have the separated bins and in the dining halls we have the separated bins uh it's really hard to find separated bins when you're on the go i'm thinking right now of trusseter um which is like where our food there's a food court there and it's where a lot of visitors go after tours and and it's by the bookstore and i know that there's one separated bin by the bookstore but besides that's really hard to find when you're on the go and just little tweaks like that um we think would be helpful we were talking about that on the municipal level just the other day of how helpful it is just to see the visual color separation and know that you have access to that no matter where you are is great i think we've run all the time and we probably should wrap things up right now so once more thank you so much to the team the presentation and the full report will be made available to all of you uh who uh helped us and participated with us on this journey and i'd like to thank caroline once more for her help and dr cat or professor cat who also helped the team on the research and writing side uh thank you very much donica and elizabeth who provided support to the team and uh once more great job guys and a round of applause to all of you thank you