 Good afternoon, everybody. Good to see you all again, meeting three of this new product's working group. So I just want to check in as we get started to see if anyone has any requests, sort of new business that you want to put into our agenda for discussion today. Otherwise, we'll be launching what we have and we'll have a chance later in the meeting to get into the discussions. We'll have time for discussion later. And so we have, if you could introduce yourself to the group since we know you're not going to have a meeting. My first course of student, I'm Sarah Reeve, I'm the Executive Director of Forge in Sullivan's District, sitting in for generalty. Right. Well, and thank you for, hmm, okay. That's okay. The full cast is here. So let's get started. When we last talked, one of the things we, we had an introduction last meeting on extended producer responsibility and the packaging. And this meeting, one of the things that we, I think as a group agreed we wanted to do was start to hear from the front lines, like who's doing this? What kind of work are they going through? How is it happening? And it includes both at the manufacturer level as well as at the solid waste level. And also hearing from our colleagues over in Maine that are working on a similar initiative. So with that, I'd like to invite Martin Wolf to join us at the table. I don't know if, in terms of preamble, if there's any other questions you have for us before you get started. But EPR and packaging and particular plastic packaging, which is 50% of all packaging. It's one of the plastic waste of him. It's one of the things we're interested in seeing how you all address that. We'll learn some lessons from the front line. Okay, very good. All right, that has been a question. I'll begin, if I may, with a brief introduction. My name is Martin Wolf. I'm the Director of Sustainability and Authenticity for Seventh Generation. And in that capacity, it is my job to design frameworks for product design, how to conduct our business, and for looking at and trying to influence the way commerce is conducted so that we can create a more sustainable system of commerce. Seventh Generation was founded in 1988 here in Burlington, Vermont. We now employ over 150 people and we distribute products through natural food stores, through supermarkets, mass merchants, and online across the United States and in over 20 countries around the world. In 2016, we were acquired by Unilever LTD and are independently incorporated, but wholly owned by Unilever. Unilever has, as its mission, to make sustainable living commonplace. So there's great compatibility between Unilever and Seventh Generation. And we manufacture laundry detergents, dish detergents, hand soaps, recycled household paper products, baby diapers, baby wipes, and period care products, all of which are packaged either in plastic or in typically recycled box board materials. Before launching into a discussion of some of the things we think need to be done to improve management of single-use products and packaging, I'd like to raise our vision to an overarching consideration, which is that of sustainability. Sustainability is defined by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development as meeting today's needs without diminishing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. And to achieve this goal of sustainability, it is necessary that the resources we have available to us today be available to future generations. And when we think about single-use products or any use of materials or energy, I think we need to think about that broader framework so that we don't take small steps that diminish our ability to sustain our economy. It takes steps that are always consistent with that objective. The current economic model, as you know, of extraction, production, distribution, use and disposal is not sustainable. Resources are finite, both in supply but also in disposal, not just in terms of filling up landfills but also filling our atmosphere with carbon dioxide to the point we're actually changing the climate on Earth or depositing materials in our oceans to the detriment of life there and ultimately to our own detriment. So simply put, we cannot continue to do what we are doing in a linear economy if we're to create a sustainable economy and more to the focus of this meeting if we're to meet the five objectives set forth for this working group. What we must do to meet those five objectives is to look at a transition away from a linear and unsustainable economy to one that is a circular economy where there is no concept of waste. So to give an example of that, if I may, I will ask you to think about how old you are and you don't have to answer that out loud but then I want you to think about something you were made of, for example, water. It is roughly 80% of the composition of our bodies or the carbon or the calcium in your bones and ask you how old are each of those materials? So if you answered you were 20 years old or 30 years old or 40 years old, whatever, think again, because you're not, you're somewhere between seven and 11 billion years old. So if you feel tired, there may have been a reason for that and I know some of my friends and I'll use that word loosely. I've said I'm as old as dirt and I say exactly. So how does that relate to what we were discussing today? Well, it's an example of a system that is circular where water created before the Earth was formed seven billion years ago, condensed onto this planet and was used by life four billion years ago, was used by dinosaurs, 150 million years ago, was used by our forefathers, our founding fathers, used by plants, by who knows what before it came to us. And we have to think about using the resources of this planet in the same way, in a circular way. So I hope I've made that point. So a circular economy consists of extraction, production, distribution and use, just like a linear economy, but then rather than think of disposal, think about reutilization. How do we get that material back so we can use it in future generations, can use it. Nature has shown us models in which there is no waste. The output of every insect, every animal putting us is an input to some other system in nature. And we need to think about how after we use what we call a single use material, it is recovered for reuse rather than discarded. Reutilization means that every product or package is either reused like a stainless steel water bottle, or at least to see that in front of your desk in the break, or it is recycled like a pet drinking water bottle, or if the material is bio-based, it can compost and go back to being inputs into bio-based systems. This does not mean we lose the convenience and utility of using a package or a product once, rather it means we create incentives and infrastructure and make sure they're in place so that every package or product is recovered after use and reutilized. How do we do that in Vermont? It will require actions by government, businesses, including materials manufacturers, product manufacturers of just seventh generation, retailers and restaurants, and it will require effort by our citizens. And hopefully I can provide you some insights and recommendations that will help you lead us to this circular economy. First and foremost, I think it's important that the legislature establish policies and requirements for reutilization of all materials sold into commerce in Vermont. We should not bring things into the state that are intended to be discarded after a single use. Everything should be designed with a future use in mind. Further, we should make sure that these requirements and policies are uniform across the state. So a citizen in Burlington follows the same rules and has the same understanding about what can be recycled in Barrie, who has the same understanding of what can be recycled as a citizen in Bennington. And if possible, we should look to other states. I did hear that someone from Maine is here. And we'll put them to make sure that policies are also uniform from state to state. That will help businesses conduct their commerce in a way that is more sustainable and easier to manage, significantly more easy to manage, as well as reducing confusion on part of consumers about what can be recycled, what can be recycled, et cetera. We should make recycling easy. Right now, it is a confusing mess. Consider, for example, requiring a bold, easily readable marking on recyclable plastics. What if there was a blue square or stripe on every recyclable plastic bottle so that consumers had a visual cue that this should go into a blue bin? What if plastics that were not readily recyclable had a yellow stripe and it was a corresponding yellow bin for more difficult to recycle plastics, like number four, five, six, that are not readily recyclable? What if it composts like you've seen me over at my kitchen window, putting things up and dragging them around, trying to see what symbols on them are not on them? I do the same thing. And it is frustrating because sometimes that could flood a magnifying glass to see that it's so small. And it shouldn't be that hard. It should have a visual cue to guide you. Same thing with compostable materials. What if we had a green stripe to indicate that a cup that looks just like a number one plastic but is a number seven PLA compostable plastic had a green stripe on it so that you would put it in the proper composting bin? I know I've gone to the grocery and I've gotten green plastic bags to put vegetables in that were compostable, which is great because I use them to line my compost bin in my kitchen. But I've also been to the grocery and had a green plastic bag that was a number four recyclable that would not compost. Well, what if one was green and the other was tinted to a slight blue color instead of the green color? So you would have compostable and which was recyclable. And this could be extended to other materials like plastic films. We have a white stripe, it could be recycled, et cetera. Make recycling easy. Make those numbers legible or get away from the numbers. One thing that's always amazed me, we have very clever scientists who can create dozens of different types of plastics that have tremendous utility and yet they can't count above seven. It just doesn't compute for some reason. Can I ask you a quick question on the stripe and how the symbols kind of thing? Who's leading at this? I mean, I would seem like Vermont wouldn't be able to do such a thing on its own. We get so many materials arrived here from some other place. So is there a national conversation going on that's organized around adopting a symbol system like you're talking about? So about a decade ago, the American Society for Testing Materials, ASTM, established a committee for plastics resin identification codes and the plastics industry has stymied their work for over 10 years. They don't want returnals to be recycled because it is not part of their business model. Hoping that it's changing. But I think working with large users like Coca-Cola, beverage industry manufacturers, we're a very small seventh generation, the possibilities, you know, Lever, and with industry associations like the Society for Plastics Industry, maybe we can get a common sense practical to make the system in place. Thank you. Another issue is maintaining the value of recyclables. One common complaint we hear is that recycled plastics have very little value. That's not entirely true. If you have a pure plastic screen like a relatively pure number one PET screen or relatively pure number two screen, they have tremendous value. In fact, seventh generation pays slightly more for its number two recycled resin than we would if we were buying virgin resin. The recycled material has more value because it's in high demand. What goes more used to go to China gets rejected is mixed plastics. Once you mix things together, if you're going to recycle them, you have to unmix them. Mixing them together doesn't make sense. There's a rule of nature, a law of nature called entropy working against you. So keep the plastics separate at the beginning and that way you will not have to disentangle them or sport them at your mirf. Mirf are amazing. They do an incredible job. But having people standing on ladders and picking bottles out of a moving conveyor belt does not seem like a 21st century solution to me. We need to create better ways of doing this either by preventing the need to sort at the beginning or by creating machine readable codes similar to the colored stripes that are human readable. Avoid toxic materials in plastics. Once a toxic chemical gets into a plastic and you recycle that plastic, you've now contaminated your entire recycling container. I would ask that you extend at 188, the Children's Safe Product Act to packaging so that children's toys that are packaged, the food we eat that is packaged does not contain toxic materials that then either leech directly into our food or get into our recycling streams. So it's difficult to recycle those materials. So in conclusion, I hope that the recommendations I've made here will help you in meeting five objectives with which you've been charged. In summary, they are make recycling easy, make the rules uniform, and keep toxics out of our recycling stream. I would be pleased to entertain any questions. Thank you. I'd like to jump in and ask. So one of the challenges I alluded to before, for instance, on this signal system we were talking about that hasn't yet been adopted nationally, our ambitions are sometimes thwarted by being a small player in a much bigger marketplace. So when you think of, I'm trying to think of how you see yourself in the marketplace as well. So are you limited by what you can go out and buy from other people or do you have things custom manufactured for you? So we are limited. Seventh generation thinking about the circular economy for its packaging uses the highest amount of post-consumer recycled plastic we can. Currently across all our packaging, we're at 86%. Our goal for 2020 was to be at 100% of the people meet that and to design all of our packaging so it can be recycled so that we can have that completely gets recycled and then we'll reuse it. Currently, we're at 97% of our packaging being recyclable. We have to rely on our material solution suppliers to get us pure enough plastics to make into our bottles and minimize the discoloration that occurs when materials get mixed and recycled. And sometimes we can only get up to about 80% recycled content because the recycled plastic doesn't have the same mechanical properties as a pure virgin material does. So there are issues but they can be overcome to a very great extent. Another anecdote that I think is very telling when we were acquired by Humilever in October of 2016 so it's just about three years and I was asked what our recycling rate was and I said, or our PCR content was, I said about 86%, actually at that time it was about 84% and the VP of sustainability turned to the Humilever packaging engineer and said, what is the Humilever packaging rate? And she said 1.4%. The VP of sustainability said, find out how they're doing it. And this year, just three years later, Humilever's announcing that they are at a 50% PCR content rate in North America. So the technology is transformable from small companies like 7th generation to behemoths like Humilever. One thing, I'm talking to representatives. Oh, not to interrupt this thought, but after. Okay, my thought was that I have read that if the packaged food companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, P&G all meet the recycling rate of 25% that they have promised by 2030, there will not be enough PCR material. I will point out that A, we don't collect much more than 10% of the plastics that are needed. And B, much of the plastics that are now being collected don't have a hole. So if we can collect them and keep them separated, we'll be able to meet the demands for higher levels of PCR content in the future. So help me with the obvious. PCR is an acronym for host, consumer, recycle. Thank you. And toxics in plastics. How recently learning how difficult it actually is to get products, build products such as a chair or pick one that doesn't have toxic chemicals in it. How is it very difficult for you to find on plastic products for your packaging that do not have toxic chemicals in them or some sort of acceptable amount might be where you are. And as you look into the circular economy having to pull those toxics out in a re-imagined piece of work. So using a toxic material to make a virgin plastic is often a choice. In our current linear economy, that choice is often driven by cost or convenience. You can usually find an alternative. Some states, for example, California, now have what they call alternatives assessments. Mandatory when the toxic chemical is identified in a particular product. As a company that uses very high levels of post-consumer recycled plastic, we have almost no control over toxics in the plastic. We use plastics that typically have very low levels to begin with, number one and number two plastics. But because of mixing in the recycle screen, we often get trace levels of valleys from PVC that got mixed in with the number one and two screens. And sometimes we get heavy metals. Sometimes we'll get DPA because of what we carbonate that might have gotten into the screen. But typically the levels are low enough that they are not of concern. So they are acceptable to us. And I guess finally for me at the moment is I think one of the prizes we may have by our eye on is extended producer responsibility. And this morning afternoon, you have spoken about remanufacturing, remaking, recycling. Where does seventh generation stand on EPR? We are strong supporters of EPR. We think that companies that design products do not, should not advocate the responsibility for those products in packaging once it leaves their loading dock. And they should be thinking clearly about what happens to that material after it's used. Thank you. Mr. Wohl, two quick questions for you to build off of Ramsey McCullough's question. Looking at the different schemes we heard a lot about EPR last week or two weeks ago, do you have a preference between Quebec and British Columbia in terms of the approach? I don't know enough about the two systems to be able to comment on that. Okay, and then you talked about design for being recyclable. It's something a lot of us have struggled with in industry to understand what is considered recyclable, right? Do you guys have an internal definition of when you're designing a package for what is really considered recyclable? Is that from your perspective or in the marketplace or do you have a benchmark for that? We use the Federal Trade Commission definition that a package is readily recyclable. If recycling facilities are available to roughly 60% of the US population. Okay, good. That's all. Thank you. I'd like to follow up on that. Yeah, do you know, so I was just trying to, you're putting a lot of effort into creating recent, using both consumer recycled materials in creating your packaging. Do you know what the fate of your packages are once they've gone off and consumers have finished using them? We do not. We have tried using various techniques to ask our consumers how much they recycle and then compare that to the conventional consumer and virtually all consumers say they recycle at roughly 60% grade. So you'd think that they're exaggerated. Yeah. Well, and if it's mixing your materials with a different sorts of plastic than were active, the earlier challenge you were citing that it's harder to get a high quality recycle waste if it's combined with other types of plastic. Yeah. On what percentage, perhaps a better way to ask it is, would you break down by percentages the types of plastics you use in your packaging? Not chemically, but by using film plastic for instance. Certainly. So most of our packaging is rigid plastic containers. These are 100 ounce, one of the bottles, 25 ounce dish liquid bottles and they are the bulk of our packaging by weight. I don't know the exact percentage that I can find out. We use plastic film on things like bath tissue, paper towels, period care products and such. And that works for me, I don't know for sure. It's probably close to 80, 20. I don't know precisely. So if I'm hearing right, it seems like you're proposing that in order for you as a company to impose some of those percentages on you, in order for you to meet that, those percentages, you need more recycling time. That is correct. And even if more recycling happens in a mixed use system, you still wouldn't be able to, because of contamination, you wouldn't be able to get to your limits. That would significantly limit us. Obviously it depends on how much can be separated out of the MRF, but more recycling should make more material available. But certainly the pure is the better off we are and the better off our consumers are. Okay, and so you, unlike other companies, you're self-imposing this percentage. What in here, what would you recommend? Because most companies don't give a benchmark like you have done. Do you have any thoughts on that or is that out of your... I'm not sure I understand the question. What do I think companies should use as a percentage of post-consumer recycle board? No, I mean that a lot of what you've shared with us is how to get more recycling content so that companies that are on the track they're on can have. Yes. But another whole thing that we have looked at is how companies who don't, who haven't self-imposed benchmarks, how would we influence them to increase? So one thought I had on that was if materials are sold into the state of Vermont, there'd be a fee, as is done I believe, in Ontario and British and that fee would be reduced if there are high levels of post-consumer recycled plastic in their packaging. So that would incentivize them to use higher levels of PCR. And similarly, I would impose a fee on non-recyclable packaging. Something could not be recycled. Then there should be a fee fee by the company to get it to discourage these materials, those materials. I mean... It's another question in terms of thinking through getting more clean content back to you guys to use for inputs. Are you supporting going to instead of a single source or a single one curbside bend, you want separate bends for probably doing it? Not necessarily for everything, but I think having some sort of consumer pre-sorting is desirable. One possible approach would be extending the model bill to all PET and HDPE containers, not just carbonated beverages and certain alcoholic beverages, so that we get the pure PET from juice bottles and from drinking water bottles. So that, because consumers bring these back and either through TOMRA reverse vending machines or at a recycling location, you get a pure stream. That material stays pure and, in fact, that type of stream seldom went to China because there's such demand for those materials domestically. So supporting the deposit system too on all the laundry bottles is what you're suggesting? Yes, okay. Have you, does 7th Gen work with, 7th Generation work with the solid waste districts, either here or elsewhere to hear about what happens on their end of things when they come into MRF or they come into their system? Yes, we do. We often go to the, Williston, MRF, and talk about what we are doing in terms of our packaging to make sure that it is recyclable at the local MRF. We often ask questions about whether, for example, we should advise our consumers to keep the caps on the bottle or take them off. In addition, we use a system called How-To Recycle or H2ON that is maintained by the, I think it's a sustainable packaging coalition, SPC, and would encourage a minimal requiring packaging to have SPC directions on it so it consumes that some information about how to manage the bottle. I had a question about premiums, so you're, I mean, 7th Generation has made a choice to increase post-consumer recycle materials in your own packaging. Can you say something about what the cost premium is to go to the use of this kind of material? Is it only for more expensive goods or can you compete in the ordinary marketplace if you impose that kind of higher cost structure on yourself? So you correctly pointed out that using PCR costs more in the packaging. The premium is in the order of a few percent per package. Packaging is typically a third or less the cost of a product. So you're talking about a one or two percent increment and that increment can be made up in other places in the product design, distribution, marketing. The companies have more than one lever to pull when they put a product on the shelf. Did you say unilever? Yeah. Yeah. The peanut gallery in your apartment. No, no, in fact, I'd like to make the joke. I don't know if you know the Greek philosopher, scientist, oh my goodness, his name just escaped me. But anyway, he said that give me a lever large enough like a new world. And I'd like to say now I have a large human lever. Good. And so if you're looking out like three, five years, what's unbridled for you in terms of package, waste management, where are you so you're currently working? And then I'd say secondarily, are there things that at the state level that we could be doing that would support that work? Certainly. So first, we believe there's a hierarchy in packaging and single use products and that is it is best to reduce the amount you're using. Second would be to reuse the material. Third would be to recycle it. Fourth would be to use it in something like composting, if it's a bio-based material. Then we would look at waste to energy because we have pyrolysis or chemical recycling as it's now being called. And finally, landfilling. Well, actually, and after that, incineration without energy recovery. So that's our hierarchy. So first we're looking at how we can reduce our use of packaging and make what we're calling naked products, things in which the product is sold without a package. Second, we're looking at reducing specifically our use of plastic packaging, seeing if we can use box board or other materials so that if they do get into the environment, they will volume degrade rather than act as contaminants and waterways in the oceans. And so I'd say those are two big initiatives right now. How the state can help us. As I said, improve the purity of the recycling stream, avoid mixing plastics, get toxic chemicals out of the plastics. We're all familiar with PFAS. We don't want it in our packaging. We don't want it in our food. We don't want it in our groundwater. And we don't want it contaminating our recycle. And increase the amount of recycling. Make it easier for consumers to recycle. Make it consistent across as many jurisdictions as possible. So it's easier for businesses. And with as many fellow states over to engage in these systems to increase the supply and keep things out of the environment. Are there any other questions from Mr. Wall? So thank you very much. Thank you very much. I mean, any help in this? Look back at what we've covered so far. And reflect upon, I'm already, so this is meeting three, six. And I'm already thinking a little bit ahead to beginning to outline our report and what areas we've already taken sufficient testimony to feel as though we've had to begin drafting report. And which we'll do with the help of the Legislative Council and areas in which we're not ready yet. And we want to make sure that we do some additional work that we target our time well in so that by roughly, I think before the fifth meeting, we will have some version of a draft to start circulating. So we'll have some editing time together as a committee, even while we continue to take some testimony and tune the report. But we're really only about a month away from our first draft or so. So it happens fast, but that's our schedule for the fall of the sixth meeting. So let me just pause and give people a chance to look back at your notes. And then when we have an agenda for today and things for next week, but I want to make sure that we don't overlay something that you feel like, yeah, I know that I need to hear more. And we're gonna get some helpful. The powers and duty for the working group, but we'll see in the subsection that the report is supposed to address all of these and provide the recommendations of the working group for each of these categories and the powers and duties. So the first one is evaluate the success of existing statements for requirements for the management of unwanted civil use products. To an extent, what Kathy and the agency brought forward was intended, I believe, from the agency's perspective to address that and the testimony that you provided similarly in subdivision two, to estimate the effects on landfill capacity of single use products that can be recycled but are currently being disposed. I believe the agency intended their report to address that as well. Likewise, summarize the effects on the environment and natural resources of failure to manage single use products appropriately, really propensity to create lettering effects on human health. I think the agency's submitted materials would address that as well. So for purposes of the report either boiling down the agency's report and for referencing them would likely suffice for the first three subdivisions. And we're gonna have some more testimony on health impacts today as well. So then you come to the fourth to recommend methods or mechanisms to address the effects on landfill capacity of single use products that can be recycled but are currently being disposed in order to improve the management of single use products in the state, including whether the state should establish extended producer responsibility or similar requirements for manufacturers, distributors or brand owners of single use products. So I have heard several different proposals or methods or mechanisms. One would be the EPR programs, either the Quebec or the British Columbia model or the traditional models that are being used in Vermont. The others are things like what Scott himself referenced last week, the eco-modulated fees being used in Italy and some of the other European countries. Then similarly, what I think is more of a tax in the Netherlands, you have a lower fee imposed on you if you have a certain type of product or container as opposed to a less recycled type of container than there's a higher fee slash tax. You've just heard a proposal from Mr. Wolf, which has several components, either mandates for content or incentives for content of the material, mandates for labeling or incentives for labeling of the material, take back program fees. So that's a kind of a combination. It uses those eco-modulated fees, but also potentially has some labeling and or content requirements, potentially some separation requirements. So those are about three or four different mechanisms that you've heard, the methods that you've heard. I couldn't say I've heard a uniform voice from the committee on any of those. Michael, we've also gotten a handout from the first and that actually, the space of an EPR and a combined with a deposit for returnables as well, and a pretty extensive handout on, I don't know, I don't need to nod from in back, but I think it's Ontario, yes, where they successfully commingled, if you will, these two concepts. So I think the group needs to, and I think we will need your advice also if bringing that deposit concept into our management of single use plastic products is within our project description. Well, I think there is a couple of different questions first, you're supposed to recommend the products that you want the methods or mechanisms to apply to. And so I think if you wanted to apply to some products but not others, then you could differentiate and say a program or method mechanism isn't going to apply to those current beverage containers that are being collected under the beverage redemption system. I think you have opportunity to change the definition of what a beverage container is. I think Mr. Ackman referenced the lime bottles earlier. Pardon me. I'm not. But there's opportunity for other types of containers to come in. You've seen multiple bills on that over the years. And then, you know, frankly, the bottle bill is itself something in the extended producer responsibility program. It just requires the consumer to put a deposit down. There are programs like that for other types of products around the world. So, and Scott Cancel actually referenced it in his materials about how he can come up with hybrids of the existing programs, including bringing in EPR and bottle bill together. So I think that's within the community's jurisdiction or authority if they want to recommend that. And they have options. Good, thank you. Anything else you want to add to the materials list? Again, that's just a bottle of wine bottles and not a client of that issue. I believe there was, in the late 90s, a program and I've done some research on it relative to Florida and it was a one cent, two cent fee on all packages and I think there's something in Delaware called the Penning Plan. So if we're looking at financing mechanisms, sounds similar to the positive except the fact that the consumer doesn't get the deposit back, it funds recycling. So in terms of looking at other benchmarks, and we're going to talk about Maine later, that's a benchmark that I'd like at least to consider to report. I think that's basically what Delaware did when Delaware did away with his Pittsburgh container fee and moved to a time limited, they called it a fee but it was still a tax. And if it didn't go back to the consumer, went into a fund to capitalize the fund that was then used to provide under second services throughout the state. Another set of policies we've touched on that haven't dug into at all are looking at possible bands of some material like black plastics that are a challenge to the recycling system, toxic and meet some of the other criteria. So I think that's an area as we're looking at the suite of policies as well. And the other thing that we had talked about a little last time and maybe we'll talk about but I think kind of to Andy's point of what's the scope of what we're talking about and can we have a shared goal or understanding of where we're trying to get or what we're trying to focus on as a group to help us with the, which policies best let us there. That's a good question. One of the things I'll turn to Kathy on this. Energy work, we're often targeting a particular date in the future to achieve some sort of milestone as in percentage of renewable energy or reduction of greenhouse gases. So when you think about solid waste and the single use products in that stream, do you, I know we have a timeline for organics in 138 but is there a timeline or a series of milestones and are has in mind as you kind of play where the wrongs going? So two things in response to that. So generally with our statewide plan, we call it the paternal management plan and used to be the solid waste plan. We have a statewide goal that we would reach 50% diversion and originally this came out, oh gosh, 15 years ago and we have not yet achieved that unfortunately. So if you look at all the materials that we generate and what materials we dispose, what we recycle, we're at about 36% diversion. So we haven't achieved that goal yet. So that's kind of like the big goal. With respect to the nearer, and that's all materials. We look at just single use products which is a subset of all of that materials. We could define a specific goal for those materials. If you wanna look at the work that's being proposed right now in Washington State or in California, that's exactly what we're doing. California's saying 75% reduction by what, 23%. Yeah, so they get a mark out there. Figure out how you're gonna do this but this is the goal we have to meet. Some states are looking at all the material that you generate. It has to have a certain percent recycle content or possibility by a certain date. That's another goal out there. So there's another way in front of that goal. We've been thinking internally, like what approach should we be taking with this group of materials? And one of the concerns is when the materials are likely to get out into the environment because they're more likely to end up as litter, we might wanna treat those materials differently than the things that are likely to get either recycled or disposed. So the example to end holiday gave last time was the coffee container for that pound of coffee. Whether it's in a steel can or a rigid plastic can or a possible packaging material, all of those materials are likely to either end up in your trash or recycling bin. So why not use the one that causes the least environmental impact, which might actually be the non-recyclable material because it creates less greenhouse gas emissions. So how do you deal with that is you could deal with that if we were to have an ether program as to incentivize based on the environmental impact for those materials that are likely to either get disposed or recycled. For single use products that are more associated with probably convenience of food and beverages, we might wanna keep them separate and have a mandate. You either ban it or make it out of the material that can naturally decompose under natural conditions, not composting, that's high temperature. You don't get that in nature, but because we're getting all these micro plastics, you can't continue to have disposable items or even common recyclable items if they're likely to get out in the environment because that impact will still be there. So I think we need to have a two-pronged approach, well, actually three, and mandate recycled content. So can you go through those three again, please? So one would be have a program such as EPR that encompasses all print materials, paper and packaging because those other items that are likely not to hopefully get littered, whether they're recyclable or not right now, they're part of the EPR system and the fees would be based on their environmental impacts. You know, I think that's complicated and I think that's gonna take some time to sort out, but in the end, it would be well worth your time. Agreed, I'm just wondering if you knew all that. What do you think? You know, I think, you know, Washington and Oregon are leaders in that area right now and I wouldn't do it alone. I would collaborate with the other states that are leaders in this. And you said paper and packaging, so it's not just plastics, right? Correct, correct. If you look at this chart that we shared at the beginning of what gets thrown away currently, organic is the biggest part. That's why we have that 148. And then we have paper and plastic. So those are our big components of the waste treatment. We really want to pull stuff out of disposal. We have to target those materials. So that's the first step. The second step would single-use plastics that aren't part of the PPP would either have to be banned or be required to be made from materials that naturally decompose under natural conditions. So if you want to cut the plastic cutlery, so rather than trying to ban each and every one of these, which, you know, that's whack-a-mole, we'll never catch up, right? Just, you know, have a more umbrella-type program that faces it in, you know, just like universal recycling. We had time to implement these things. It's not going to go overnight with the light switch. That would just be chaos. But that would be the goal. And then the third goal would be? You can ask a good question. So are the impression I have of a lot of color for influences, regardless, even if it has corn and starch in it or something like that, that there are other stabilizers in there to make it into a better implement that make it so long-lived that when you open up a landfill it's sitting in there intact years and years later. Is that a representative anecdote or, I mean, I don't know the data on that. Yeah, I think my concern is not so much what happens to it in the landfill. What happens when it's out in the environment? Because the landfill actually is a, in my opinion, it's not about a safer place because then it's not causing the microplastics, the nanoplastics that get back to us or back to other wildlife or organisms. It's when it's inappropriately discarded and littered that then it's causing, it's contributing to the microplastic problems that we have to go up and look. But the following on Senator Gray's thought, maybe a little deeper, and something you said, either ban it or if it's compostable, I think was the word, in a natural environment. Right, I think it's the word compostable because compost usually means high. So what was your, okay, so what was your biodegradable? Biodegradable in a natural environment. And that would preclude then the cutlery that had some percentage of plastics in, okay. So biodegradable without any plastic component. Right. All right, thank you. And then you had a third category. Third would be requiring materials to have a post-consumer recycled content. Like Mr. Folt was referring to before, where the seventh generation is certainly a leader in that. But to help with the market of these materials and to encourage the use of recycled materials, if we have to have that closed loop. And as you think about that, is that for goods manufactured in Vermont, all goods sold in Vermont? Most of our laws are activities in Vermont, right, Michael? Yeah, it's the whole gamut, manufactured, distributed, sold, offered for sale. Okay. Is that similar to the modulating fee that you were talking about in your presentation for Excel this last one? Recycle content, I think, is not necessarily a base requirement. It's just like in order, you know, eventually just like California, Washington proposing that to sell single-use products or packaging that has to have a, if it has recycled material in there, you have to be using a certain percentage of recycled content in there. So the plastic container for your laundry shouldn't just come from virgin plastic. It should have a certain percentage of recycled content. Is there a specific program in California where you haven't seen because the weather solution hasn't passed yet, right? And I didn't mean to imply that it had passed, but these are what other states are looking to do to make a change. Do you have a sense of in California the state of that discussion? I mean, obviously, if we were piggybacking on California, that's a big ride to get. So I think they actually passed the recycled content for their beverage, the plastic beverage containers in their bottle mill, correct? Yeah, five bill of recycled content. So that first part passed. They will continue to discussion, and I can't remember the number of the bill. I haven't one. Central 54, Senate Bill 1080. Right, there's another bill that's looking at a certain percentage of recycled content by 2030. All right, can you see those numbers you can put in there? Senate Bill 54, Senate Bill 1080. Senator Allen and Senate member Gonzalez. Thank you. Not that you've been following them. No, I haven't been following them all the way. What are you spending the bottle bill to be under your number one? Kevin, who has an EPR? I'll call you because I know you're lost. EPR. So I think, first of all, when we look at different EPR programs, and you'll see in Canada, they kept their bottle bill, I think, as is, that's parallel with their EPR program. And we might want to consider doing that in Vermont as well. If we are to move materials into the bottle bill, we could look at that as what is the benefit from doing that, and what materials would gain the most by doing that. And eventually, what would be great is if we had the system that was more, this is really pie in the sky, but instead of what kind of beverage it was, it's more like what kind of container it is. I think that would take a lot of confusion out of it. And when you're talking about bottle bill, are you thinking of new products or expansion of your last point really? For instance, one of the most common questions I get is, why would we have beer bottles included in wine bottles? No, that kind of thing. That's an excellent question, and that's where, and this is a broader discussion, I'm not saying it's an A&R's position, but you might want to consider how you deal with glass, for instance, as a container, in which system is it better to be in? To build on the conversation of expanding the bottle bill, I would, I question the capacity of the system, so I would like to have an explanation of what it will look like and how it will be handled, who can manage that, and we certainly need to hear from those businesses and organizations impacted by that expansion. And thank you for bringing that up, and just full disclosure, we're having parallel discussions with the bottle bill stakeholders right now, because the number of sorts that redemption centers currently have to do is getting to be quite high and quite challenging for them to perform, so we're looking for efficiencies, and in that discussion we're just, we have to make some assumptions, so we're assuming the bottle bill says as it is, but how can we make that a more efficient system? So that's just kind of on a parallel track right now. So you want the expansion of the bottle between noise and air and spill? No. That's right. No. No. No. So to comment on Erin's thoughts, the presentation that we got just as an enclosure from Beeper, again, the Ontario system, which actually marries an expansion of container deposits with EPR, and also speaks about the management concerns about, I mean, like right now our returnables are handled by Baker and Ferrell and to use the distributor's names, excuse me, but this Ontario system has it imagined differently, much more like our thermostats are, for instance, and I think if we had a presentation from Beeper on that combination, it would be very useful for us. Ian, when he said compared to thermostats, so how are you compared? How are we doing thermostats now? Well, thermostats are being taken back as an EPR, are being taken back as an EPR, that's roughly accurate, I think you could say, and but they're being collected not by a consortium that manages that collection, same with mercury-containing light bulbs, not a distributor that trucks them around in the state and then has to get them, pick them up and then bring them back to their site. It's a more global look at the collection, thank you. If I could just think of a comment kind of building on the capacity issue for the temperature centers, the Merck system does have capacity to handle many more containers. Our challenge is the lack of technology in both of the facilities, so with an investment in the technology in this morning, we can absolutely handle a significant number of additional containers in that system and then that does call into question and need for those parallel systems of both a container redemption system and a lube, essentially a lube-in system. And we've been looking at different technologies and building a new detergent-fired facility, TSWD, we've been looking at for the past 18 months and hopefully will be underway in the next couple of years and that would get the sorting out of, literally out of people's hands and be done by technology. So people would be more quality control versus the actual sorting. When you say sorting containers, what kind of containers, everything? Bottles, jugs, everything that Mr. Wolf was talking about, so anything that's PNT, anything that's HDP, as far as we were looking at film, like how we take film through the lube-in. What are some of the possibilities that the newer technology affords us that we just don't have in Vermont right now? So then we've gone across the country into Canada looking at what other people are doing and what would make the most sense. So knowing that there are a lot of containers that are making their way into the disposal system, what are some of those barriers and how could we put them out and make that clean stream so that Mr. Wolf was talking about. We don't have a lot of containers that are coming in the door at our mark, but when the way it sorts, we do see some, some leakage of some PNT in the HDPE stream and some HDPE in the PNT. Technology, optical sorting, remove that. So that's what we're talking about. So bottles, jugs. So I think quite a lot of, so you were saying you need not a lot of contamination coming through the door. I think a lube-in and stuff, so that's all the plastics all together. So what do you explain that seems mixed to me? Sure, yeah, it is. Mixed in contamination, I guess you're not saying. It is countered, that's right. So when we're actually very fortunate in Vermont to have a very educated recycling population, we do not see a lot of contamination at the generators, so five people in businesses. And most single stream or combined MRF systems coming in the door, they'll see anywhere between 20 and 25% contamination, things that just shouldn't be in that bin. And then they can sort that out through their technological devices within their facilities. We both have just people by and large, sorting. So because we have good compliance with the materials by people, I'm generating, I'm putting the by and large of the right stuff into my bin, that's not the problem for us, so the material coming out. It's when it gets to the lack of technology in the sorting system, in our work, and we have to send materials through press because they have to keep the belts running slow and have four people to pick out the material. And it's a hard job, it is a very hard job. So by adding technology, adding a sortation technology, we can get that end result that's getting shipped to market to be even cleaner, we can even more competitive because being in a small market, we have to be as embedded as possible in order to bring value to that material. And by adding technology, what we're looking at doing, and I know that N-Casell has got some great works throughout their system, really high tech stuff, doing the same thing, that will improve our competitiveness and improve the quality of material coming out of the system. And therefore also allows to handle many more containers in that system than we can now by just having people sort it. And just a quick question on glass, which seems to be particularly challenging like it's own story, right? Right. If there were more, just a question, I don't want to make people worry. If there were more types of glass bottles that have that deposit on them, would that be helpful to the system? I would say by and large, yes. And keeping in mind too that glass that goes through the container deposit system, the bottle bill system, has the best chance of being made into a new glass bottle. By and large, that material can either be made into a bottle or into fiberglass that has the highest potential for being actually recycled. And glass that goes through a merge system, traditionally, historically, does not have that highest use, it's used for other things, but not for a bottle. So if part of the thrust is to get more glass into a higher and better use than yes, directing it into a container deposit or bottle bill system would at least give it that potential. So we had some testimony in committee last year where they were some facilities, where Paul was actually taking sort of clean glass and there was a market that would pay them for the material. So as opposed to having it be a cloth center to dispose of, is that your impression for your facility as well? I don't know that we would be able to get paid, we can't get paid for our glass running out of the market for a container deposit system if there were more of the desirable glass, which the highest of those desired glass is the clear, if you can make it any color that you want. If you can get a good, clear, clean glass into that deposit system, it has a chance for marketability. And that clear glass carries the colorful glass along with it, but some of that color glass does have some applicability as well. The ground can be made back into beer bottles very easily, but it's that clear glass that has potential. I'm just adding a little to that, I think you're referring to the Northeast Kingdom Solid Waste Management District who was separating their glass through a dual-stream system. And I believe their glass is going to 2M, which is the same place our glass from the Rutland mark is going and made into a fiberglass product. That's correct. Is that correct, Quebec? It can, yeah. Well, that's, thank you very much. If you think anything else, people want to put it on the table, and have helpful conversations or just sort through what we heard so far. Just one further final request. Mr. Wolf was talking about your recyclability, is it 86%? Is that what? Your cycle will rate at 97%. 97, and then is that unilater is going to announce 50% this year? 86% is PCR input. And we're at 86% PCR input. Okay, PCR input. So I, that was commendable and very impactful for me to hear. I think that it would be helpful for the committee to understand what manufacturers are doing now, because 10 years ago it was 1%, and we've seen a 49% increase in unilever. I think that's huge. So I think it would be beneficial for additional manufacturers to come in and explain what it is they're doing. As we all know, manufacturers are in the business of making money, so they want to listen to their consumers and consumers say we want more recyclable products, so I'm sure they're doing it. We just maybe haven't heard about it. So it would be helpful to hear from you. Maybe through your associations, you can help us find some people here. So we are right up on schedule to call on the state of Maine. Hello, Elena and Laura. Oh, I'm sorry. Good afternoon. This is State Senator Chris Frey speaking. You're on speakerphone in room 10 in the Vermont State House and we have a single use of products working group and we've been following what you all have been up to a little bit and we'd love to learn more because not surprisingly, Vermont's facing a similar challenge and we're looking at what you're looking at in order to plot a course for ourselves here. So could you tell us about the work you all have been doing, please? Okay. Well, we, and if you have one report, that report is an opportunity for us to report back the opportunity to recommend an accessory. We ask for EPR programs, packaging and mattresses. And we are, and she has done, I could turn and she can give you an outline of the approach that we're talking about. And some of the particulars of that which basically directs to EP creating a packaging product stewardship program and packaging is the marketing of consumer products to help inform on, you know, starting with entities we were working on, we were hoping would show an interest and contribute with some information. And then we sent them all an initial request when we didn't receive too much, you know, for, and then we sent out a conceptual model which is also outlining the power point that you have there in front of you. And asked for groups to try to look more carefully at certain issues that we have outstanding. And then, you know, we're at the point now where we're looking to try to finalize the 16th. We'll need to submit something to the legislature. And what's your work product? A report or draft legislation or? Um, they have a piece that put their package there, materials and stuff that's not being, um, a good incentive. And so, um... Nice. A quick question. So what makes a product readily recyclable versus not readily recyclable? Yeah, that's the next thing one of the, you know, is the, what's, can you say a little more about the, how readily depends on, is it the degree to which it's easy to get that material recycled or that there's a market for material that's been collected and that someone's trying to recycle into the marketplace. I'm trying to figure out which step is the test of whether or not it's readily recyclable. Um, I think, I think a couple, because they have slightly different requirements, but we have a meeting and then access, um, that, you know, if it's not recyclable, that doesn't really make sense. Access may actually not be a characteristic. We focus on, we may just focus on the sortability and the market. And when you talk about the market, are you helping drive the market with a PCR requirement, for instance? Not a requirement, um, but, you know, mine is in things like PET for any recyclable content that you would need for deciding the use of recycled content. Work based on market share, you know, responsibility of manufacturer or producer's responsibility is, um, either up or down to include, you know, so if you use recycled content, you know, just, you know, 30%, your market share's going to bump down until you pay less. You don't get that benefit. Or if you have time, does that make sense? Yes, thank you. And we have another question here at the table. Hi, this is Lauren Hurl. Thanks for the presentation. Really interesting to hear, um, what you all are working on. One question I had was, um, so looking at a fee based model like this, are you looking at, um, are you setting the fees in a, at like a level that would actually, is there, that there's evidence of incentivizing behavior? Or is this really looking at trying to just make sure that you're covering the costs for the, running the program? Um, so citizens of a lot of, those incentivizing behaviors are likely, you know, packaging is not going to mean much to a unilever, right? Or to, you know, these big companies. Um, so, so we're going to try to, um, the other entities have so that, um, because is someone going to do something because Maine said that they're going to get a little extra credit on their EPR? You know, no, that, you know, that's just an additional factor that might be considered. It's not going to be a real game changer. Great, thank you. Um, I have one last question. That is, um, as you've been doing this work, I mean, I know that your early days on some people's of this, but do you have any, uh, aha moments that you would want this group here working on it to have in mind? Like, what's one of the more important realizations you've had as you've been digging into this? Um, I guess it's been, it was nice to have all that, how you keep track of it, um, is, uh, not obvious to us yet. So that's a big, um, outstanding issue. Um, I like that term, not obvious yet. Yeah. Great. Well, uh, yeah, Kathy. Um, I'd like you to explain a little bit of the role of the municipality in name for managing, MSW and recycling, because I think it's a bit different in Vermont and I think that would help us understand why, um, Maine is focused on the municipal reimbursement. Um, yeah, so Maine, um, I've talked to, uh, Jonathan Farron, where the municipality done, and, and so, you know, it's, you know, this is part of stewardship work, much of your recycling training. Yes, I, um, Jim McCollum here, I'm looking at the general schematic readily recyclable page, and we're just talking a lot about municipalities and, um, yeah, and yes, as you have noted, Maine municipalities, um, different responsibility largely than Vermont's, but thinking of municipalities in that way where we likely are thinking cities and towns. Um, and I immediately jumped to municipalities as being, um, solid waste districts. And so then, um, given that thought, because you likely are familiar with our solid waste districts, you talked a bit about Vermont's system, does that make sense for us in, in, in your, in your modeling, um, to, to, uh, substitute that thought of our solid waste districts if not substitute, um, include, would be a better word, uh, for reimbursement through the system, um, which, uh, actually, uh, comes through the, the product, the producer stewardship organization. Probably answer that better than I can. Thank you, that works for me. All right, well, um, we have to, uh, say thank you and goodbye. Thank you very much for, um, participating today. Of course. Well, good luck. Thank you. So, really, we have a call that we need to make promptly at, uh, 2.20. Yeah, I can't let him know we're about seven minutes behind the schedule. Thank you very much. All right. So, but it can take, um, a, uh, a very, all right, so we are all, we are all back and ready to go. Uh, thank you very much. And the floor is yours. Great, well, thank you very much for inviting me to a class this. Uh, my name is Pete Myers. I am Chief Scientist and Board Chair of Environmental Health Sciences, a science-based organization located in Charlottesville, Virginia. And I'm also at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I've been working on these issues, specifically endocrine destruction, for the last 30 years. Published many things in the scientific literature. My, uh, work has been, has received awards from the National Institute of Health, from the Endocrine Society. Um, and, um, it's been quite a ride as we've experienced. Uh, it's slow. I can add more if you want, but I can also just get into the show. I'm here to have unfolded over the last 30 years about how plastics can interfere with health, with human health. Um, this is an issue I've been working on for a long time, as I said, in the onset. And we've learned a lot over that time, Chuckie. But I'm going to begin with a very personal story, if that's okay. Please. Um, but this is my granddaughter. She was born, uh, in January by Caesarean section prematurely. Eight weeks early, weighing two and a half pounds. My daughter was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night because she had developed a condition of preeclampsia, which is malfunctioning in the placenta. It's a life-threatening situation that often forces an immediate Caesarean, and that's exactly what happened there. Now, she spent two months in the neonatal intensive care unit. And, frankly, it was the plastics and other equipment in that unit that saved her life. No doubt about it. Without that, she would not be alive today. But it turns out there's another side to the plastics role in this story. Um, how many of you remember the Paradise Fire in Paradise, California, November 2018? 88 did. Um, when those houses burned, plastics burned up and entered into the smoke that went from Paradise to the area where my daughter was living. You can see the brightest white plume there going from Paradise down to Oakland, California. Um, that happened literally when she was in the beginning of her third trimester. Um, and this is what the air ever, and in addition to the usual particular matter of the vehicles, there were plastic fumes in it because of all that had been volatilized and burned in Paradise. Uh, when that happened, I immediately asked what was the relationship between the smoke? I mean, when the early birth was forced, what was the relationship between the smoke? And, um, preeclampsia, and I quickly, but it's literally the teams of sound articles in the published literature that actually have been written by someone like colleagues in the field showing that smoke and specifically plastic fumes and plastic in the mother are risk factors for preeclampsia. Now, as a scientist, I know one can never conclude from evidence like that that this caused her pre-become by daughter's preeclampsia, but it's entirely plausible. And so what does this leave us with? Um, here we've got these materials that are doing miraculous things for newborns, and yet they may be caused by the very materials that are saving their lives. So how do we get in this predicament? What do we really know about human health risks of plastics? And what's our way forward now that we understand there's a yang and there's a yang of plastics in the lives? Some of you may have seen this advertisement from the American Chemistry Council a couple decades ago, and earlier from the pond, better living through chemistry, plastics is an important part of your healthy diet. I think that's a lot of the stretch. But that was a series of the decades where the modern discoveries and inventions of chemistry were making our lives better. And it was unfolding at time when the scientists I do hadn't even yet started. And so we didn't understand some of the risks that we were taking on by allowing these miraculous materials to penetrate every part of our lives. What we really didn't understand at the time in the 50s and 60s was that hormones guide the turning on and turning off of genes. And that's crucial for development. Genes are turned on or turned off by hormone signals. And it turns out that endocrine-destructing compounds, which is a science that I've helped found 30 years ago, for endocrine destruction, at a scientific meeting in 1991, endocrine-destructing compounds hack that signaling system and they get genes turned on at the wrong time or sometimes they prevent genes from turning on in the first place. And that type of interference, that hormone hacking can have profound effects on what the fetus ultimately becomes. And it also actually can have effects throughout our lives. Plastic toxic. Well, one of the elements of plastic toxicity is the basic building block, the monomer of plastic. Sometimes those monomers are overtly toxic. Dysphenol A, for example, BPA and it's red, red, the B, B, P, F, B, P, F, B, P, whatever are monomers that are overtly toxic because they bind with the S-gen receptor and other receptors and hack hormone signaling and alter gene behavior. Sometimes it's very awkward times. So that's how monomers can interfere. But it turns out to make plastic achieve the character of the material to where plastics of chemical engineers need to make useful products. You have to add stuff to plastic. The best example there is that polyminol chloride PBC plastic is rigid if it's pure PBC. But you start adding to it compounds called phthalates and as you up the percentage of phthalates from 0% to 40%, you go from rigid to the squeeze-ness of a rubber duck. And parametrically let me strongly recommend that you all read a book called Slowed Death by Rubber Duck, which is all about that dimension of plastics and PBCs and the additives in this case which are called phthalates. There are many additives in addition to phthalates that are added to plastic and they each have their own material and chemical characteristics and many of them we know are toxic and can lead to change gene expression. Then you've got what are called is this moment in the sense? Can I ask you a quick question? Before any of these substances get into the marketplace, is there any kind of toxicity testing for instance? Yes but now there is for some of them but when this was happening when for example BPA in the 1950s came into widespread use there was none. And I will get to the strengths and weaknesses of the testing protocols now in my talk. So the third source of toxicity plastic are what are called non-intentionally added substances with the awkward acronym of NIAS. NIAS are reaction byproducts. When you make a plastic it changes when you chain together the monomer causing a series of chemical reactions and they don't all go to completion and sometimes there are intermediate products that hang around sometimes always in curies in the raw materials that have substances and unfortunately there are thousands of them and they vary from batch of plastic to batch of plastic even with the same monomer because they depend upon the contents of the raw materials and unfortunately while we know what some of them are by chemically we know that some of them are toxic and we don't know how many of them are toxic because it's very difficult to test for toxicity if you don't know what it is and isolate it and then perform tests on it. The fourth source of toxicity is that plastics actually absorb and absorb toxic compounds. Chemicals adhere to the surfaces of plastic particles and then can be transported into fish for example and chemicals can also be absorbed by plastic particles and also be transported up the food chain in that fashion so you can hear these four different bottom line sources of toxicity in plastic when I started working on this issue endocrine destruction and plastics not all endocrine structures are plastics but many of them are. We were in the medical wilderness in the early 1990s but very soon science started to yield really important results this is a book by a noted historian of science Sheldon Crimsky who wrote that in this book endocrine destruction was the fastest scientific revolution he had ever witnessed in his entire history of reviewing scientific progress. In 1996 we wrote a book about this which became a popular bestseller but the professionals weighed in soon thereafter this is a report from the endocrine society and the endocrine society is the world's authority on how hormones work. When you have a hormone related disease endocrine related disease like prostate cancer diabetes infertility you go to members of the endocrine society to try and help you treat what you're experiencing the endocrine society is also the home to the world's leading researchers on hormones, on endocrine action and on endocrine destruction activities and since the late 1990s they have been leading the world in helping scientific societies and scientists and medical professionals understand what endocrine destruction is about and a lot of the material that's emerged on plastic toxicity via endocrine destruction has come from members of the endocrine society. In 2012 this unexpected source of wisdom on endocrine destruction emerged the CRO forum now CRO forum is the chief risk officer's forum of the reinsurance industry and they did a review of the financial risks that their clients run and their clients are insurance companies for insurance companies insurance companies insurance companies and they issued a report in 2012 recommending that their client the insurance industry review agree they are insuring companies that either manufacture or use endocrine destructing compounds and lower their financial exposures because of that the manufacturer in use. The World Health Organization in 2012 published a report along with the United Nations Environment Program concluding that endocrine destruction is a global public health threat they did not mince words and they the endocrine society published several additional statements on this now in 2019 and actually in 2016 four members of the endocrine society including me on that third one received a major public award from the endocrine society for outstanding public service because of our efforts to help members of the society and the public at large understand the health risks that this issue creates here's a list of just some of the endocrine related diseases for which there is published scientific literature indicating endocrine destructing compounds probably not certainly but probably play a role in the genesis of those conditions these are today's epidemics hormone related cancers infertility, diabetes and the strength of the evidence varies from condition to condition but frankly it's going stronger and stronger for each of them with each year one of the most dramatic of these is declines in sperm count some of you will see have seen the press about this most recently in 2017 when a major article was published by Dr. Shama Swan from Mount Sinai Hospital with their international colleagues documenting a 50% decline in human sperm count over five decades continuous decline in western countries and disturbingly there's no sign of it slowing down it's still the decline is still occurring at the same rate it was five decades ago when it first was detected while originally the data were mostly from the developed world now there are making coming in from the developing world particularly in China where over the last two decades the declines are faster now than there were and what's the relevance here to end this discussion and plastics one of the key suspects in this whole issue are a collection of family of plastic additive phthalates which I mentioned earlier there is excellence of really superb animal data showing that exposure to phthalates in the womb lower sperm count in adulthood admissions all of which are collectively known as the phthalate syndrome or in people as the testicular disgenesis syndrome and in people while there's no certainty because it's really hard to get certainty with people there's multiple lines of evidence indicating that phthalates are contributing to lower sperm count also testicular cancer in young adulthood failure of the testes to descend properly in at first and also birth defect of the penis known as hypostasias and these conditions all stem from the same apparently they appear to stem from the same causal mechanism which is failures of some key cells in developing male reproductive reproductive tract which means differentiating properly at the right moment in development one is that exposure to each disease including through plastics is globally ubiquitous not all the same in every place but there's no place that hasn't experienced exposure and it's growing the second is that low doses matter a lot I'll give you an example of that the third is that events in the womb of the male reproductive tract to differentiate properly can lead to health consequences that play out over the lifetime of the individuals such as testicular cancer in young males lastly to the point of the question that was asked a few minutes ago the testing methods that have been used to assess safety by the regulatory agencies are deeply flawed now I will return to each of these points briefly exposure is ubiquitous there's really interesting research for example looking at phthalates which I've mentioned several times phthalates are pollution worldwide including in the depths of the Amazon forest even though they're not used in the Amazon forest this is French word you see that negraries, field stations buttoned down there at the bottom even far into the forest they were finding levels of phthalates levels of insects and to this case that were sufficient to interfere with female reproductive success and also female immune functions this is just one of hundreds of thousands of papers that show exposure is ubiquitous and of course we know it from our own lives we bring plastic into our homes the food packaging utensils we actually bring instruction compounds in on computers and in couches and other common consumer products and these contribute to human exposures very directly the second key issue in this revolution is that low doses matter a lot some of you will have heard recently your neighbor state has been paying attention it was a lot over the last year the first chlorinated compounds for example on dairy farms which were preventing farmers from selling their produce and milk because the water is contaminated by sewage runoff perforated compounds are linked to many health compounds health outcomes including cancers including obesity including poor immune system functions and other things perforated compounds are incredibly persistent that's why they picked up the name forever chemicals these are used commonly in plastics just today there was a press report talking about perforated compounds being found in artificial turf because it makes the graphs of artificial prints more reliably as it's being created and actually they're discovering perforated compound water adjacent to discarded turf that has been taken off field where it had been used for five years before it wore out exposure to perforated compounds is incredibly widespread found in polar bears found in people in the US one of the principal sources of exposure actually not plastics although plastics contribute through the use of perforated compounds as flame retardants used at airports and so those are hot but it's another big source of exposure appears to be the standard practice using sewage sludge which comes from sewage water which has taken water in from the sewage system which is contaminated by some of these other activities and then spreading that sewage sludge on farmland and contaminating the farmland as a result and if that's happening in Vermont today you should be paying attention and I'm sure it's happening but low doses the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences issued a conclusion a couple months ago is 0.1 parts per trillion we're used to hearing discussion and toxicology of parts per thousand or parts per million and sometimes parts per billion and the construction compounds often are active at parts per billion and I'll mention this later but in this case 0.1 parts per trillion according to the nation's top toxicologist Linda Bergman advance to the room don't stay in the room I mentioned the problem of testicular cancer in young men here's another example this is work done with this phenol which is the monomer used in polycarbonate plastic and there are several other sources of exposure which I could get into but that's a common one this slide is a healthy male mouse it's about my age in mouse years so well along everything in this mouse this is the control mouse is normal we've got functional kidneys the bladder is small but visible and it's a male if that mouse has been exposed to this phenolate 20 parts per billion to the mother when the mother was pregnant with that male this is what it would look like this is what it did look like at my age in mouse years the kidneys are no longer functional the bladder literally would have exploded in the next few days if the animal had not been sacrificed it hasn't changed the sex so it's still a male but what's happened here is the following the urethra is the tube through which we all pee it connects the bladder to the outside world and the urethra in the male passes through the prostate gland and there's some pee patches of tissue in the prostate that are hypersensitive to this phenolate exposure and what it does changes in that tissue how genes are turned on and off later in life so right when the animal is born unless you have some really sophisticated tools to measure changes in gene expression you won't be able to detect an effect but if you wait until the animal is again my age in mouse years that tissue has changed and in fact what happens is the urethra constricts at that point as the urethra is passing through the prostate and the animal can no longer pee so it's bladder explodes this is a picture of four generations of a family great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and granddaughter and now there is strong evidence showing that if grandmother is the only person directly exposed except for fetal exposure when she is pregnant with grandmother the great-granddaughter can be affected as well without changes in DNA sequence it's not a mutation the mechanism appears to be changes in how the genes are controlled it's called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance there's a lot of study on this this version of that just came out this spring showing a really troubling variant on this in essence with this one what happened was that the animal this is not a plastic substance but another there's been a parallel finding in plastics this is with glyphosate which is part of ground up the effects were not visible in the great-grandmother or the grandmother they only began to appear and intensify in the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter and I can guarantee you thinking of tests, use of examined consequences none of the regulatory agencies have ever even imagined the challenge of looking for these types of effects these transgenerational effects so that brings me to the issue of testing methods are deeply flawed some very sophisticated European scientists just used a broader rate of assays tests to look at a random sample of plastic products in their lives and these were single use plastics they were assortment of different types of plastics and they found quarters of looking at various types of toxicity they didn't assume what they were going to find they just did the tests and they found this there's the reference if you're interested in seeing it for me one of the most troubling findings was that one of the worst plastics was something called polylactic acid plastic PLA which is made out of cornstarch it's one of those things that is marketed as a biobased plastic and what appears to be happening and something we need to pay attention to is that while the monomer the polylactic acid is probably safe the additives that are used to make it do what the chemical engineers want it to do the material characteristics they need those additives are toxic somewhere in the mix is something toxic which is making PLA plastic toxic and a colleague of mine Carnegie Mellon has recently concluded that bioplastics are probably more in need of additives than the petroleum-based plastics for several different chemical reasons and so we really have to be careful because we cannot assume that biobased plastics are safe so there's some real painful realizations that come out of watching this science unfold for 30 years one of the most important is that most chemicals have not been tested but the tests that are used are flawed and outdated there's some core assumptions that are really wrong that are underlying the structure of the tests and the analyses that come out of those tests because there's so much riding on keeping products in the market they're probably manipulated they often, not probably they are manipulated to hide the toxicological problem so I could go into each of these in depth in terms of the tests being flawed and outdated some of the regulatory tests date back to the 1930s they are not using modern science from the 21st century they're just not using them some of the laboratory some of the regulatory labs are starting to use those tools but none of them are currently part of the regulatory process of testing what is safe and what is not I want to spend a fair amount of time on this issue of how flawed the assumptions on which these tests are based are and there are two key issues one is something I'll call the Paraceltis problem that Paraceltis was a 18th century that said basically the dose makes the poison and whose victim justifies using high dose tests to make sure that even low doses are safe and so I'll come back to that momentary the second profoundly failed assumption is now called the cocktail of that let me explain each of these in more detail this is a photograph of Fred VomSol after Fred VomSol University Missouri in 1994 he showed me a graph of his results that dragged the rug out from underneath all regulatory testing as far as I'm concerned here was the beginning of those results and it was with a compound cobalt diethylsilvestrol which is a famous environmental estrogen and what you see here is that the control had a cross-stake weight of almost 200 parts per billion nanograms per gram the cross-states were decreased so that's standard toxicology tested high doses here's what Dr. VomSol did which is unusual he started testing at lower and lower doses with his black curve he found there was no difference between the 20 nanograms exposure and the control but beneath that he found statistically significant differences in red between the control and the experiment so in low doses the cross-states size was bigger compared to the cross-states size of high doses why is that important it led to an epiphany for me basically it led me to conclude and VomSol and I have worked together on this ever since you cannot use high dose testing to predict low dose results different things happen at low doses and just the opposite happened the cross-states size is expanded compared to what happens at high doses but let me ask you a couple of questions are low doses really low what toxicologists call low doses to them normal doses parts per million that's the range of doses they normally work at parts per million parts per thousand parts per million these results are parts per billion and what that means what is a part per billion well some friends of mine colleagues I developed this description of a part per billion it's one pancake in a stack of pancake 4,000 miles high sounds like it's a really low amount but let's turn that around if you have a drop of water it has one part per billion in it one part per billion of this signal how many molecules of this signal do you think will be in that one drop of water trillions you're right 265 trillion 2.65 trillion some of you will recall we won't go into the calculation but bottom line there are billion times more molecules of water 2.65 trillion molecules of DPA in that water and when you have systems that work that are simulated by a small number of molecules that's a lot of damage that can be caused here's a more visual example of the problems of high-dose testing this is research done by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences the one research scientist named Riva Neubold she was working with a strain of mice and the one on your right is the experimental mouse and the one on your left is the control mouse she determined that their tauric intake rate as they grew up was the same they also had the same activity levels so what's the difference the experimental mouse on the right was exposed to one part per billion at birth of a synthetic estrogen that altered how stem cells behaved so that the mouse grew up with more fat cells so that's what happens at low doses what do you think happens at high doses so what about a thousand parts per billion what would happen if that mouse had been exposed instead of one to a thousand parts per billion it would have been thin compared to the control mouse it would have lost weight different things happen at high doses than at low doses and you can't predict from high-dose experiments always what happens at low doses I'm going to give you one more example of this which is in the form of a graph and it's the mathematical phenomenon here is called non-long intensity and I won't bore you with the details but the concept is very simple different things happen at high doses than happen at low doses and high-dose experiments do not predict low dose results this is work with Tomasutin which by Wade Wilson at the University of Missouri where he exposed breast tumors in culture to Tomasutin which is a standard treatment to control breast tumor growth and you can see that Tomasutin at parts per thousand did what Tomasutin is supposed to do it suppressed the growth of the tumor compared to control so those red asterisks mark where the treatment is different from the control you see the first two high-dose treatments it's different the tumor growth is suppressed and then no longer different and so what toxicologists do when they want to determine what dose is safe is they look for the first dose where there is no difference between the control and the experimental and they call that the no-serve adverse effect level the NOEL they don't do any more testing instead what they do is they use a series of safety factors to estimate they divide by 10 because animals aren't little people and they divide by another 10 because kids aren't little adults and they divide by another 10 because adults because we all have variations we're all different and then they call that the safe dose the reference dose that's literally how it's done with countless chemicals how it's always been done everywhere in the world okay did I hear a question I'm just grabbing that seems to be arbitrary assumption what do you mean divide by 10, divide by 10, divide by 10 absolutely it's an arbitrary assumption totally but it was decided that well if it doesn't have an effect at the NOEL then a thousand times the need to NOEL clearly is safe underlined but here's what Welchens found when he petted over the entire dose range he found at the predicted safe level that growth of the tumor was enhanced just the opposite as what happens at high levels and it turns out physicians know about this this is well known in endocrinology and in medicine because that's called the thymocipin flare it hurts when women thymocipin is in that range as they're beginning to get the dose or if they stop pating it and it drops down into that range it hurts because the tumor is growing okay so in this case it's a very graphic very clear demonstration of why the assumption that low dose effects can be predicted from high dose experiments is deeply flawed and so what Welchens did was they let's use the same assumption 10, 10, 10 and they calculate the supposed true noel from that and then what's safe well vanishingly low is almost close to zero and incidentally this becomes interesting because when women take thymocipin not all metabolize in their body it goes out through their pee it gets into the sewage system it gets into drinking water so we need to know how far we can go to regulate that because low doses can't be predicted from high dose experiments it's applied in the face of a standard assumption by regulatory testing that you can do that, that the dose makes the poison that is true for a range of chemicals but Linda Bergbaum the head of the National Institute of Environmental Sciences writing an editorial about a paper that explored this issue in which I was the co-author of concluded in the environmental health perspective the country's leading journal on these issues that this sort of pattern should be the default assumption for endocrine disrupting compounds including those found in plastics let me show you what that means here is a graph showing what the FDA estimates is the current safe level for ingesting viscino leg 50 micrograms per kilogram per day this fits they participated in the study to try and test the legitimacy of that calculation and the FDA's own data showed that there were low dose effects of 2.5 micrograms per kilogram per day that green bar the FDA included that because high doses of BPA didn't produce the same effects the effects were biologically unrealistic therefore they chose to ignore the low dose effects even though they were statistically significant they used their assumption that high dose tests can predict low dose results to rule out their data which doesn't sound as like science to me so if you look at the low dose effects and you ask what is the likely safe dose using these data well they don't have a every dose tested has an effect so they don't have no observed adverse effect level they have a low observed adverse effect level the low L to estimate what the current tolerable daily intake should be of BPA there it is it's 20,000 times lower than the current one that's how the statement the FDA may be in many of its estimates what's safe and what's not for endocrine disrupting compounds they don't like these data they argue against them the endocrine society the world's leading professional association is charged with thinking through the science for physicians and for scientists agrees with this in fact it was the four members of the endocrine society who made this calculation so we've got those two profoundly a lot of assumptions that paraselt this problem very quickly the cocktail effect think of this guy House the first thing he asked you before he gives you a prescription he asked you what is your doctor already giving you what other tests are you what other drugs you're taking but regulatory testing never asked that they always test chemicals one at a time and there's lots of data showing that that's a deeply flawed assumption for establishing what's safe and what's not okay so let's move to a different subject briefly that has to do with global plastic production in millions of tons here's where we are now in tons per year here's where we're headed by industry's own estimate almost quintupling over the next 30 years so whatever problems we're having now with plastic they're just going to continue to grow if this curve continues um so I want to tell a brief story how's my time going you're fine thank you okay great so I mentioned that I published a book along with Theo Colmore and Diane Duminowski on these issues and when it came out I did a lot of public lecturing on it and I used to enjoy going to audiences and my friends and some people who didn't agree with me and one dark and stormy night I was lecturing in Camden, New Jersey to society of plastic engineers in other words the people who make this stuff and use it and figure out how to make a product out of chemicals most assuredly there were people angry in the room at what I was writing and Camden I grew up in Baltimore I was close enough to Camden so I knew that that's where they used cement overshoes if they didn't agree with me so I did the lecture um unusual happened there were people in the audience who were prepared to ask me tough questions and that's good I learned from experiences like that and I hope that the audience learns from my responses so that happened it was over I survived everyone left except for two big guys in the back of the room and they started to walk towards me and I literally became afraid and they walked up to me and they said Dr. Myers we like what you're doing and I looked at them and I said what and they said no we like what you're doing you're making certain commodities plastics unsellable in the market and we've got the replacements and we're going to make a lot of money and I never thought of it that way but it turns out for the last 10 years I've worked to help chemists make money by using the science that's come out of the seal to design safer materials because there's now a big market for that billions of dollars in sales you go through any drug store and you see products labeled BPA free because moms don't want to expose their kids to endocrine-structing plastics so I took that as a mandate and began to work with chemists to help them understand the science and help them design safer materials and it's been a really interesting part of this journey you remember the three R's reduced, reduced recycle at least one of those has a profound flaw to it but the recycle we're all learning how inconsequential the effect of recycling is on plastics less than 9% recycled and less now given China's decisions and policies, not only in China but increasingly in Southeast Asia they're not going to take our junk anymore I think it's time to acknowledge that as a colleague of mine Jane Lomka has stated, recycling is really the fig leaf of ramming consumers we think that's all we have to do and we just continue our lifestyles as we have again recycling doesn't scratch the surface of this problem so we can't pretend that it's going to solve it the odds against us today are staggering, they're not impossible and I would propose that there are at least three essential components the new three R's that's moving forward one is re-designed as I mentioned, we understand so much more chemistry and molecular biology and the mechanisms of what causes the ketosis than we did before why not work with the chemist to make safer products and do the testing before they even get to the market turns out it's economically efficient because then they avoid investing a lot of money in a product that ultimately they have to run off the market so re-designed the second is reform, let's use modern science 21st century science to reform how those tests are run that determine what's safe and what's not we know again, it was so much more than we used soon, we can do it much better but we need to replace current tools with 21st century science and lastly all this new science in public interest that gives us a chance to recharge the energy levels of people trying to make these changes trying to support the reform of regulatory actions reform of how decisions about what's safe and what's not are made and to provide market incentives to chemists who are using this to re-design their products so we can do that actually Europe, I hate to say is much farther ahead of us on this some of you may know Europe takes endocrine destruction very seriously just before dissolving in April and going into the 2019 election fight the European Parliament voted on a resolution 447 to 14 to encourage the European Council to stop twiddling their thumbs on this and adopt the policies recommended by 21st century science including especially the endocrine society and the new president of the European Council who is a physician who just left office a couple of months ago has made endocrine destruction one of her key points of reform so we think we're going to see even faster progress there than it's been happening here although I don't underestimate the power of the market to cause significant change but at the same time we shouldn't force mothers to be chemical engineers have all that knowledge to go shopping for their kids and speaking of their kids there's Sierra again my granddaughter she's now over 15 pounds she's not out in the woods yet but things are looking a lot better than they were in January so what about the toxicity of plastics well frankly it's a lot worse than we imagine certain years ago it's contributing to a wide range of epidemics we don't know how much the microplastics is contributing to that we already know that the chemical plastics are contributing and we know that we need to reduce our plastic burden and redesign in chemical that's going to help solve the plastic problems that we know about and will also I think reduce the potential harm of future microplastics as that that frightening graph of rejected plastic goes forward I think I'm certainly afraid that the plastic industry will continue to ignore the unintended consequences of their innovations they've done it over and over but the odds against us reversing these mistakes while daunting are not impossible the solutions are definitely there they've just been on the they've just been slow in gain momentum which I believe is well along now and will help change this picture significantly. What role does the Vermont Assembly want to play? I don't know but I'm sure to be happy to be able to help but let's just make sure that we do without letting today's solution become our responsibility and with that let me recommend a free newsletter that we publish every week on Mondays which is an aggregation of news about plastic from around the world is called into the plasticine answer is coming out I originally thought I thought of this name into the plasticine and finally went with it although I must admit I debated calling it just into the obscene which also seems perfect so thank you very much for your attention I'm happy to answer questions great thank you very much right there questions from the and ubiquitously so the question is are they small enough at this point to I can't remember the real word but to pass from for instance our digestive system through the wall and into our bloodstream are they small enough to get from the bloodstream into an instance so what's happening there so I I do science presented by people specifically studying microplastics the Danish excuse me the Dutch National Science Foundation has put a couple million dollars into these studies asking questions exactly like that and the answer is yes they are penetrating into the blood center penetrating into the brain they're getting into the alveoli we don't know repeatedly we don't know what the toxicological consequences of that penetration are it may not be enough yet to become more important than the chemicals that are already getting in there the chemicals are already there okay it may be that as even if they aren't there isn't enough of that there already the graph of future production of plastic is really disquieting because it's only going to get worse I would say if we deal with the chemical problem we deal with most of the problems of microplastics and anaplastic except for the asbestos like effects where it's more of a physical irritation mesothelioma et cetera that a toxic effect we are conclusion by the scientists who are doing the work funded by the Dutch now after just literally a few months of doing the study is bottom line yes they're in places we don't want them to be but we don't know yet what the health consequences are thank you very much along those same lines we had some testimony last winter about micronanoplasics carrying other things so they end up being like a raft from the environment pick things up and then transport them can you say a little bit about that yeah actually I mentioned that the resources of plastic toxicity where I think ads store to the surface of the nanoparticles or microparticles or they absorb they are absorbed by the particles helping go into the interior there were several discussions that had the meeting last week in Amsterdam for me the most interesting one was the bacteria that accumulate on the surface of microplastics that are bacteria that often are implicated in human epidemics again we don't know the scale at which it's happening today but as you again you look at that exponential growth of plastic production where we are today and we are already asking these questions today what can it be like in 30 years when there is 5 fold greater production we need to be asking that question now in order to solve it today so it doesn't only continue to get worse ok well thank you any other questions from the committee alright well thank you again for helping walk us through the health impacts and for the presentation and if we have any follow-up questions we will reach out please do we are in Troutville Virginia alright thank you again thank you we have some time left but I think this would be our last presentation week for today and we did some work on the outline elements in the report and more questions on how ERP might be developed we've had some requests from manufacturers or companies that are addressing plastics in their business to provide us with more information we know that and I had said to one person who was asking me a witness that we're not just bill that impunes anybody and says oh we don't think you're paying attention to plastic and it just says we've learned enough to know that we need to pay more attention to plastic and so there'll be a chance for some people involved in using plastics etc like today to share more about what they're doing at that next meeting but I always try to come back to the question of what questions do people on the committee have and and then we can match that up with and is there anyone from whom you would really make sure that we hear so let me pause there and those are real questions are there questions you have as you think about where we're going that you'd like us to get to or need or are there people that you say oh yeah I think we should hear from this organization or that particular person I feel unclear on the question that I keep going back to whether we should expand the bottom of the bill or not and I feel unclear that some people say that recycling on places can't take it as everyone can and then unclear it doesn't so we address the increase in maybe not expansion but increase in the returns and as the restaurant owner there's some facts on my ballpark guess restaurants don't go to the convention centers and so that's why I keep going back to you're sorry I didn't quite hear what you said restaurants don't we don't put our cans in the trunk of the car we do some of us do with liberals because they're 15 cents and so that's why I keep going back to is that low hanging fruit is a lot of what I'm hearing it seems like we aren't doing what we already do what we already have in place we're not doing and so my question is do we need more money for marketing and listening to so people know what we already have in place or do we need better systems what we already have in place instead of I'm not saying don't expand but it just seems like there's some low hanging fruit there so so even if we're not expanding the ballot bill how to increase the effectiveness yes and I know that one of the things that people have said is we talked about I think a couple of weeks ago or if you were setting the nickel today and you wanted to adjust for inflation from 1972 I guess it was when we started or something like that it would be 32 cents a lot so that is not going to pay some maybe that but all right yes although done on that too I would love to understand what's not working in the current materials management plan where we're at 36% I think we've made strides but what's getting to our goal right and you fix the current system or are there improvements that we can make and Kathy do you have I'm guessing since you were in this field steadily and maybe the solid with districts too do you have thoughts about that last question I mean not for now but I think a lot is the universe that you're looking at we're just looking at blue bin materials we're at 72% but there's a lot of things that we touch during our day that aren't recyclable that get disposed and so remember that first presentation of the 155,000 tons of single-use products only half of that half of that is recyclable or compostable or compostable so there's a chunk of that that we shouldn't rightfully put it in the blue bin so it comes out of there other folks other questions I'm still struggling with what's the goal and I know we had some discussion about different elements that we're going to consider as a report one thing that I'll suggest straight out of the California legislation the first goal in that bill is to have packaging under percent recyclable compostable or reusable and there was some general agreement around that goal so I don't know where we are trying to create a goal through this process or just evaluate a bunch of different structures but I'd be interested because that would potentially get towards the idea of okay if we agree on the definition of recyclable and manufacturers are committed to recyclability compostability reusability does that to your point 50% is not even recyclable right now that's the concern so does that frame in a different way where we're not just talking about these massive systems that we're trying to evaluate and create is there a goal that we can work on and then work on with what pieces fit under that because right now it just seems like we're working on at least different systems anybody else I might be able to provide a little bit of clarification on the laudable system because I exacted that laudable staple for meeting last week and I was really aware of what's wrong with that system so from what I understand it's not only the amount of source that are causing the issue is that commingling is mandatory at this point and that will require a legislative change in order to do that so only that some of the bigger brands like Cove Pepsi are part of the Vermont commingling agreement where everybody can be mixed together and some of the other smaller brands have to be sorted separately and a lot of these redemption centers don't have the space to handle more volume and then the amount of fraud into the system from not only New Hampshire but that doesn't have a bottle that people from New Hampshire bring their material if I return it here the amount of online sales have increased from buying things on Amazon or directly from Sam's Club they're getting it shipped right to their home and that nickel isn't being calculated into the system so there's some accounting issues with the current system that all need to be addressed and I don't know if that's all some that need to be addressed before expansion could even be really considered possible. Yeah so lagging up to an hour or so ago I mentioned the deferred submission of the Ontario marriage if you will between container deposits and extended producer responsibility and as I read that it actually solved a bunch of the concerns that we have currently around our present bottle bills we know how the sorting issues and and so on so I really think that that's something that this committee ought to learn more about and presentation by VBurg of that might be very useful for us if we're going to help us decide whether we this is something we want to do or might recommend in the future what have you or just cast aside the other thing going back to our charge and I think the thing that we aren't looking at right now but is very much included in our charge is film plastics and film plastics did play a role in the bill until we gave them away appropriately such as dry cleaning bags isn't really a good word but dry cleaning film plastics they're not dry cleaners aren't the villains here there aren't any villains it's just that we've got this material and shrink wrap another huge film plastic probably dwarfing dry cleaning film plastic and maybe dwarfing that is the agricultural plastic so we just don't I think we need information about that and this group needs to make recommendations about film plastics in general and what to do about them I think we need we need a presentation about that I think we all recognize at some point school has got to stop making some decisions but I think this is a major category and thinking agricultural film plastics and the explosion of hemp we now have miles and miles and miles of new agricultural film plastic being stretched out 18 inches apart in all in our in our agricultural land brand new this year and that's going to get greater and what's going to happen to all that plastic so that's my pitch in terms of where we'll end up I don't know if we'll end up but in terms of our job it's to report out and we don't have to necessarily not expecting that we have a vote and we all can consent to CSA is the thing we most recommend and B is in place and C third etc I think rather than have to prioritize everything we can sort things out and sort of outline our understanding of the challenges rather than necessarily if we have recommendations certainly you know that would include but I don't think we have to solve the plastics challenge more than describe it well and help to on additional future work on the issue I think when we were putting together working it wasn't for the idea that in six meetings we would feed it all out and make solutions but then we would take in and verify what elements are there to work on and help become a session and prioritize working those areas so it's feeling like it's I don't want people feeling bummed out that you haven't thought about this in three weeks and solved the plastics crisis again and we were to come so great so for each thing that people thank you I'm making a list and we'll between now and next meeting tune up the agenda and of course always I'll just say this one again too is there's anyone you would like to hear from we're open to hearing from everyone we want to make sure we have full fair balance testimony so always make sure that you at the agenda or one quick thing on representative McCullis I think we could probably invite the consultant who wrote that Ontario report themselves to call in I think that might be a better way to get the answer directly so happy to look into trying to connect with them on process I'm wondering if I mean it sounded like A&R has some good thinking on some specific ideas I'm wondering if like people should come back next meeting if there's maybe still some learning that helps you know write up a brief pinch of some of the ideas we have to start working from on paper so if different people have specific proposals that they'd like the group to think about that might go into kind of the and if we get to the report of having laying out some of the benefits and maybe concerns the legislature could think about you know if that's as far as this group's going to get but I think that might help us to work on it does seem like getting to the question of what are we trying to achieve which maybe have time to discuss now so we all have clarity of the solutions are put on the table towards this shared goal and vision and like the scope of what we're talking about are we staying siloed in single use products or are we like Erin suggested looking at maybe a broader so if we had clarity so how exactly to focus any ideas we might want to thank you I think one thing that might be helpful to all of us is now that we're three meetings in and we've had a fair amount of testimony would be to your point of identifying one or two things things you know and just writing out a paragraph on one or two things you know so like distilling it down of the things you've heard what is what seems particularly important and I think so we meet two weeks from today if people could do that one pick your top whatever it is three two something like that pick your top things and just state in a paragraph what it is you're seeing as a problem and maybe a way that you're thinking about either addressing that or if you want to ask if we need testimony to help dig into that further like it's still an open question but I think it's probably a good time to be sort of turning the corner and starting to say here's for me top three things challenges to work on and here's here ways that I would think we might want to propose working on them and then if we ask people to send them in to my parent by a week from this Friday I'll catch up here on this calendar if someone's already there 18th and then we can redistribute them to the whole group so that I would ask people to send them in by the 18th and then on that might by the end of by close of business on the 18th if you and send out to a group all the comments, proposals notes whatever we're calling it you would see that way people can dream through them and will help us put us in a better spot for starting to make some decisions about what's in and what's out for the final meetings so as I was saying four weeks from today we need to be moving towards having a draft starting to the drafting process so that we can take further testimony, clarify the things and edit as a group what we have as an document so on the 18th of October at 4pm I will send you a copy paste of document that has everyone's paragraphs that have been turned in by that point okay great we have multiple requests to testify the next meeting okay do you have multiple requests to testify at the next meeting Mike and I have received six four five six seven eight eight okay can you briefly read off what they are so we'll have a sense of good people are knocking on the door I'll go just in order of the mess on the table okay can't go chronologically over the class so Kevin Kenan the executive director of PMA project management alliance okay okay paragraph I'm sorry this is the this is their position okay sorry Todd general manager of barrel distributing corporation I testify on behalf of the long haul sale and efforts association at the next meeting 15 to 20 minutes we have Katie Riley consumer technology association trade association for consumer electronics the scheduled for next meeting BPI get involved with this working group the North America's leading certified compostable packaging and that was Rhodes Yepsen Mr. who's the EPR person who couldn't make today's so you can make next week next meeting 12 30 or 1 p.m. Dylan Thomas with the recycling partnership would like to testify Rachel Caprillion from adults who is here and works with some she would like to testify at the next meeting later if possible and then we had Chas Miller also requested through Mr. Hackman to testify okay and we have not scheduled our 6th meeting yet so I'd like to have that mail down before we leave today too our 6th meeting our final week so let's I'll work with Michael and Mike on the scheduling of the witnesses we've invited Claire, didn't you ask to speak next time yes but Todd, who's the general manager of federal distributing he's going to testify on behalf of the association okay he is our witness just want to make sure we're leaving you out thank you so let's look ahead at the calendar can you remind us of the November dates our next meeting is here in room 10 same time 12.30 to 4 on the 22nd of October so two weeks from today so the meeting after that is November 12 and that's the same time 12.30 to 4 and that will be in the tax department building on the 3rd stage street on the 4th floor that's where we'll be because this building most likely will still be shut down and then we have two options for the final meeting the two next logical options that follow our two weeks steps we can do November 26th which is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving this room is available or the week after that December 3rd this room is available okay how are people's availability for Thanksgiving right yeah well okay it was nice what is our official date for the report 12.00 12.15 okay so show of hands who would prefer 11.26 who would prefer 12.3 I already know for a few people 1, 2, 3 I think it's also better for 10 12.3 12.3 would be better for 10 okay so let's do 12.3 and that will also add a little time for additional drafting prior to that meeting and then by then we should have basically we'll come into a for the final report to be going through and we can be tuning find a draft report do you want that to be 12.30 before saying anything in this room yes please 12.3 12.30 here okay great so thank you we have plenty of people to hear from let's all do a little thinking on paper and share that with one another and that will help us start to do the sorting what we've heard about but are going to exclude because we can't do all things before and then we'll witness this lined up and we'll have some discussion time based so we'll have a group of witnesses I think that will be on the shorter side for the test one we're going to hear and we'll leave us with ample time to do what everyone's contributed to in writing okay great anything else that we haven't touched on issues logistics so we're finishing 11 minutes early that's always a good sign don't like to finish late so thank you very much everybody