[Applause]
by some food other items and I come come
back home figuring out what do I do with
all this packaging material I buy peanut
butter and I have all this other trash I
get the peanut butter it's got a
beautiful plastic jar soft plastic has a
recycling code on the back there's a
label on it made out of paper or maybe a
plastic coated paper or maybe it's made
out of plastic glued with some sort of
synthetic glue on that jar then there's
a lid turn that lid a harder plastic no
recycling code no idea if it's
recyclable open the lid there's a liner
cardboard with the thin piece of plastic
on it
I still cannot see my peanut butter
because there's some sort of metal foil
or maybe it's a metallized plastic film
that's glued to the top of the jar that
I have to peel open to finally get to my
peanut butter so I trashed the foil i
trashed the labels I try to find some
way to reuse the jar but frankly this
and all these plastic shopping bags were
just piling up at a far faster rate that
it could ever find anything to do with
them so then I would find someplace at
home to put them to store all these bags
and boxes and foils until finally I
would haul them off for the tracks trash
collection I'm a chemist I'm actually
grateful for all those multi-layered
foil packages and plastics chemists
designed every one of those layers for a
specific purpose to keep out oxygen that
makes the food go rancid or to hold in
flavors or to be grease resistant I can
buy and eat food that is far older and
has come from a far greater distance
than any human has ever done before and
that plastic is far lighter than glass
or metal so it also saves energy in
transporting this food to me is from so
far away I can even see how that plastic
peanut butter jar
started out in nature yes that plastic
was once part of nature I can see the
crude oil coming out from underground I
can see how it's separated into lighter
and heavier fractions and then one of
those components is heated super hot to
break it up into little pieces and then
another process strings those pieces
together into a super long chain longer
than anything that was underground and
those chains can be made into a plastic
peanut butter jar indeed looking at the
world through the eyes of a chemist can
be a weird experience so plastics were
originally designed to be a more
sustainable alternative for things like
buttons that were made out of ivory
tusks their incredible durability was
fantastic for something that should last
for a long long time you know some of
these plastics you might have to wait
till plate tectonic shifts take place to
subsume that landfill material deep into
the Earth's core
the ultimate recycling center the
original chemists who design these
materials certainly did not have in mind
for me to use a plastic bag to carry
something for a few minutes and then
just throw it away I just want to buy
food I don't want to buy the trash I
find all the stressful labels and the
never-ending trash pile to be ugly and
stressful why can't I just buy the food
and not the packaging I don't remember
my grandparents having to deal with this
level of stress frankly when I grew up I
grew up in a place that was too poor to
say no to other people's trash people
were didn't have the time and resources
to say no to fight waste disposal sites
I realized I need to start finding a
different way of looking at trash when
you look at a recycling code you might
see this and I see this
this is a very salacious crude oil
transformed into something entirely
different what I discovered when moving
to this new community is that my trash
was being taken about an hour away to a
poorer community all those multi-layered
blaggs and plastics they can't be
recycled in fact now I know that most
recycling codes are just wishful
thinking there's not even if chemists
have come up with a process to actually
convert these materials into something
of value without just burning them that
doesn't mean there's an economically
viable process out there to do that and
certainly not one nearby and even if
there is a process nearby it's far
better to recite to reuse that material
than it is to recycle it so when you
look at this waste management pyramid
you notice that recycling is near the
bottom and for good reason recycling
makes sense for something like my homes
metal roof when after decades of keeping
my house dry it fails it makes sense to
melt it down and create a new roof but
does it make sense to do that for every
little greasy foil peanut butter wrapper
I realize we need to find a better way
we need to get rid of recycling entirely
find a different way to bring what we
want what goods we want to are our doors
then we look at the bottom of the
pyramid this is where everything that
can't be recycled and that's not
released into our land air and water
actually goes so much waste ends up in
landfills and of course no one with a
time and money is going to want that
landfill anywhere close to them so in
looking at all this I thought and
especially in coming here where the
landfill is hours away I realized I had
to come up with a way to go focus on the
top of this pyramid the reduce and the
reuse find a way to not generate that
trash to begin with
once I started seeing how much trash I
bought I just couldn't stop seeing it it
was everywhere
I had a cloth bag but even vegetables
were covered in petroleum wrapped in the
stuff how is it gonna get around this
first I bought mesh bags for loose
produce I started making a point of
going to our amazing farmers market the
farmers would even take back my my egg
cartons and my rubber bands to reuse
them
I bought a stainless steel mug and
ultralight titanium cutlery to bring
along many coffee shops around the world
have refilled my stainless steel mug
with no-questions cloth has replaced
paper napkins and paper towels both at
work and at home and on trips and now
trash no longer accumulated to such an
extent every week I realized I could
replace a lot of things with plastic and
paper could be replaced with metal and
glass
here are my mesh bags but how could I
reduce all this packaging waste that I
keep producing for the food could I buy
peanut butter without the labels and the
lids and the plastic foil etc that's
question was how I discovered bulk food
shopping
I bought and weighed and labeled all
these beautiful glass jars I take them
to stores all around this town and fill
them with tea or this is my empty peanut
butter jar because I eat it so quickly I
can get a photo with it full I could
even find peanut butter without the
labels freshly ground into my jar and
now you didn't need the additives to
keep the oil from separating because
that peanut butter was in my
refrigerator within an hour of grinding
it at the store it really elevated my
peanut butter sandwich making at home
and now once I set up all my glass jars
in my pantry I was amazed at how
beautiful and calm the space was
actually I have to admit I'd come home
from work and sometimes just open the
pantry door and
stare no more screaming labels no more
trying to figure out if that how much
rice was in that box I realize didn't
have to buy the trash to get to the food
I could just have food so what I
discovered is that zero waste practices
can bring peace and beauty to your life
even apart from all the other examples
my husband I managed to reduce our trash
loads so that now we go to the the
county dump once a year with our bag and
try to drop off recycling here and there
along the way but frankly we still have
to buy some trash and figure out what to
do with it we can't we haven't figured
out a way to get rid of everything and
so I started thinking about we have the
power to change this when I think about
why is it that I can get this massive
abundance of things delivered to me is
so cheaply from around the world
I think containers you see these special
containers these standardized containers
on rail cars going through town that
container can be transferred from that
train to a ship to a truck it can be
everything can be tracked electronically
and at the end the user isn't trying to
figure out what am I going to do with
this container because it's just part of
the system that brings things from where
they're made to where they're needed why
can't our entire system be containerized
why can't these massive shipping
containers not be filled with lots of
small containers also in standardized
sizes so we get the large container ship
and then we fill it with special
lightweight containers that are
specially designed to keep lettuce fresh
for example without that plastic film or
insulated for chocolate to not melt on
route or make it airtight so we can fill
it with inert gas and thereby keep fried
foods fresh for many years well yea many
years after they come out of the fryer
then when these contain these small
containers arrived the store the store
might spread out the lettuce for you or
you might just buy the entire container
yourself and bring it home and then
throw it into your recycling bin
but now that recycling bin is actually a
reuse bin that collection allows these
tiny containers to be recycled and
reused reused over and over and over
again so we can build an economy that is
based on the top of that pyramid the
reduce and the reuse and get around
entirely that landfill and recycling
piece then chemists can focus more on
designing materials that you actually
want to buy and we can buy and take home
only the things we actually want thank
you
[Applause]