Pellets, Pellets Everywhere

What are plastics and how are they made? How do they get into our waterways? How do novel materials like plastics define the age we live in? What materials might replace them? Featuring Nicole Heller, Curator of Anthropocene Studies at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Heather Hulton VanTassel, Executive Director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper. Encounter nurdles, small plastic pellets, mentioned in this episode in the exhibition The Stories We Keep: Bringing the World to Pittsburgh.

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Michael Pisano 0:09

You're listening to the Anthropocene Archives, a presentation of We Are Nature. In this special series of stories, we're delving deep into Carnegie Museum of Natural History's 22 million collection items, raiding cabinets and cases, sifting through objects and organisms in search of stories of stewardship, solutions, and scientific wonder. On today's episode, Prolific Pervasive Pellet Pollution, 400 million years of booms and busts, and revitalizing our river relationships. R Metis. And that's our with lots of Rs. Not only reducing, reusing, recycling, but reimagining, resisting, rewilding, and reinvesting. Regardless, our welcome aboard. Welcome to We Are Nature, a show about natural history and livable futures presented by Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I'm your host, accidental amateur microplastic collector, Michael Pisano. Today I'm joined by two intentional professional plastic collectors. Could you introduce yourselves?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 1:14

Yeah, my name is Heather Hulton Van Tassel. I'm the executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper. We're based here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We serve Southwestern PA, and our mission is to protect the water quality of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers, and we have an ultimate vision of swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters.

Michael Pisano 1:30

I love that vision.

Nicole Heller 1:31

Yeah, hi, I'm Nicole Heller. I'm associate curator of Anthropocene Studies. So I work here at the museum helping to bring in more stories about human interactions with the natural world and kind of the contemporary challenges we face and how we can create better health outcomes for people and nature here.

Michael Pisano 1:52

Excellent, excellent. Thank you both so much for joining me and for bringing us behind the scenes of the Carnegie's Anthropocene Studies Collection. I think because that's kind of an atypical museum collection, I was wondering if to kick us off, you could just tell us a little bit more about what's collected, what's in this section?

Nicole Heller 2:07

Yeah, yeah. So this section is very new. It's a new trend in museums to have curators like myself on phenomena like climate change or the Anthropocene. And so, in a lot of ways, my job is not so much to collect objects the way many of natural history curators typically do, but rather to kind of make sense and um and learn, use objects we already have in our collection to kind of make sense of the Anthropocene, to see what we can learn about how our environment is changing over time, and kind of work with people to interpret these objects we already have and help them make sense of our current times. But in addition to that, there's also topics, right, that come up in doing this work and thinking about what the Anthropocene is. Certain topics that we feel like are important, kind of markers of the Anthropocene that we want to start collections about. And so this is really preliminary. We've just been kind of dabbling in collecting new things for our collection. And um, and so some of those are what I've brought in today.

Michael Pisano 3:21

Yes, and we will get into that quite shortly. But I also want to loop you in because in addition to being a waterkeeper, I know you also have history with the museum. Can you just expand on that for a second and then maybe we can get into this question imagining forward about what research might be possible in the future with this sort of collecting?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 3:38

Sure, yeah. When I worked at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, I was assistant director of science and research, and that gave me a lot of perspective on the different types of things that humans collect over time, as well as understanding the idea of Anthropocene Studies and how it's all connected in what we think of traditional science, that search for knowledge, that understanding. And oftentimes we take that human aspect out of it when we're doing science, and the goal from my understanding when working with here was to bring the human back in. And so, as a waterkeeper, there is no way to disentangle quality water, drinking water sources, without that human element. What does it do to the human? Not just what does it do to our ecosystems, humans are part of it. And so being able to take that perspective into the waterkeeping world and being able to do the science, the community education, but always from a human perspective and how we're impacted, whether it's because we love nature or it's because we want to protect our own health, it's really important to have those key elements to understanding.

MacKenzie Kimmel 4:41

Today's collection items are housed in two small clear glass vials, each measuring 25 millimeters in diameter by 77 millimeters tall. Both vials contain uniform creamy white pellets, similar in shape and size to lentils. The pellets are slightly translucent, more so around the edges, lending them an organic quality. In the locations where they were collected, untrained or hungry eyes might easily mistake these off-white beads for fish roe or frog eggs. As Nicole puts it, they do look kind of tasty somehow. I can see why things eat them. Can you identify today's collection items?

Nicole Heller 5:37

These are nurdles as they're known. It's a pellet of pure plastic resin. And this is sort of the feedstock that this is made in a cracker plant. Um we have one just north of here in Beaver County, the Shell cracker plant, and that um takes ethane and um converts it to ethylene. Am I saying that right? Yes. Thank you. These E, these e-chemical names. And um they are what are how big are they? Who wants to estimate the size?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 6:16

Yeah, so nurdles are considered a microplastic that's less than five millimeters in size. If you take your traditional Lego pieces, it's about the size of the nubbin on top or smaller. And what we're looking at are those pellets that we coined nurdles, and they are about a creamy white texture in appearance, but then they also have a little nucleus that's a slightly darker. Um, and I don't know if anyone's ever seen fish eggs or um frog eggs, but this is what they look like in clumps. And so if you take your idea of what the size of a little Lego nubbin is combined with fish eggs, that's exactly what we're looking at.

Michael Pisano 6:53

Yes. Can you talk about where these were collected from?

Nicole Heller 6:56

Yes, these two samples were specifically captured or um collected in 2021 by um River Keepers. Um, another uh the Mountain Watershed Association are also local river keepers. And um and so this one, L011, was uh collected on March 11th, 2021. Uh at we've got our latitude and longitude here, but it's basically at the Ohio River at Manaka along the shore by James Cato Cato. And this other one was collected um on June 24th, 2021, um, on the Ohio River across from um Kabuta, Pennsylvania, near the Shell ethylene cracker plant by Eric Harder, who's also with the Yakaganey Riverkeepers. So they um graciously uh offered these for our collection.

Michael Pisano 7:51

I imagine that these are really familiar sites for you in your day-to-day, right, with the River's water keeper. Um I wonder about kind of the diversity of plastic pollution you find in our waterways around Pittsburgh.

Heather Hulton VanTassel 8:03

That's a great question. We find all of the plastics in our waterways here in Pittsburgh. We can find, you know, entire like outdoor cases that people put their cushions in along our riverbeds, all the way down to microplastics that are smaller than the nurdles we're seeing here that are five millimeters in size. So if you can think of it, we can find it into our rivers. It all flows into our waterways. And unfortunately, it's not from littering most of the time. It's it happens from bad management of our trash is going from your home to the landfill, and it eventually finds its way into our waterways.

Michael Pisano 8:40

That was going to be one of my questions about how the nurdles in particular get into freshwater systems, right? So when I hear about nurdles in the news, it's most often ocean uh plastics, and I think ocean plastics themselves are a big story that gets reported on more often than maybe freshwater systems. The UN says that there are 200,000 tons of nurdles that find their way into ocean systems annually. They turn up inside fish, dolphins, whales, turtles, birds, they degrade into even smaller microplastics, which I'm sure we'll talk about. So I wanted to know is the ocean where the nurdles here in our rivers come from?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 9:15

No. Um, we are the source of the plastic pollution in our ocean. So here in our region, our nurdles are going to come from a variety of different sources. One is the transportation of the nurdles. So I don't know if anyone remembers, but a little over a year ago, May 2022, we had actually a train derailment happen in Harmer in our region. There was petroleum-based products in there that fell into our waterways, but we're talking here about nurdles. Um, and the train cars use nurdles as buffer cars between those petrochemicals. And that allows it to not explode at certain impacts. And so they are buffer cars. Historically, they've been empty, and now they found a way that they can also transport an inert type of product. Um, so one way is through transportation. They have to get from point A to point B, spills happen, poor management happens, and that's one way it goes too. Another avenue is similar to transportation, but that is we actually have facilities that use plastic production nurdles here, and they're gonna have to get it from the train cars to their facility, or vice versa. So that first and last part of that transportation also allows for spilling of our nurdles and trains and our roadways follow waterways because that is the easiest way to transport when we were making them. They had a natural way of the land to be able to create transportation really easily. Finally, we do have nurdle producers here in our region. In fact, we actually have the shell cracker plant that was mentioned earlier that started up last September 2022. And there's byproduct and accidental release of nurdles, and they are allowed to discharge directly into our waterways. I will say it is against the Clean Water or the Clean Water Act states that they cannot actually discharge these solid products, but it does happen. And there's another facility that does do nurdles, but they are Styropec and they are a polystyrene facility. What they do is take tiny little nurdle pellets, puff them up, and create our styrofoam. And they're actually right next door from each other. So that's another way that nurdles get into our waterways. And what's really interesting here in the Ohio River Basin, which we're part of, we're the headwaters of the Ohio River Basin. Our waters do provide drinking water to five million people when we think of them as headwaters. It flows into the Mississippi River that ultimately flows into the ocean. So we are the source of the nurdles' plastic pollution, the oceans, rather than the other way around.

Michael Pisano 11:45

Excellent. Thank you for clearing that up. Um, what makes our region an attractive place for plastics producers and manufacturers?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 11:52

Yeah, so our region is for a variety of ways that makes us a really good place to produce plastics. The first one is for Shellcracker Plant, they were able to amend permits, which means they are grandfathered into some hot, really high levels of environmental pollution allowances, whether it's air quality or water quality. They didn't have to go through a completely new perturming process. And so we can talk about loopholes if you want, but I don't think that's the purpose of today. Um they found a facility, a spot that's large enough to take them, a community that was looking for jobs, a community that was looking for economic development. Um, and finally, we have a lot of oil and gas facilities in our region. We have unconventional and conventional oil and gas in our facility. And when you think about nurtles, it's not just, oh, we have plastics, make single-use plastics. There's a whole system in Pennsylvania, is the system. We we frack for our natural gas that we then crack and turn into plastic pellets. Um, and when we do that, that all creates tons of toxins that are not just the plastic pollution, and that is gonna be the most impactful on our health. Fracking, we hear a lot about what the actual fracking does, but there's also a lot of wastewater that comes with it, and it's radioactive, it has a lot of heavy metals, it has PFOS contamination. And what do we do with that? Um, we put it to landfills, it leaks into our waterways. Um, we try to transport it, we can have accidents and spills. We try to inject it back into our groundwater, and here in Pennsylvania that's a challenge because we're our geology is not really set up for receiving that type of pressure because of the fact that we've been mining for so long, and it's just not a really good system. And so there's this whole world and system when it comes to plastics that's beyond just, you know, a Coke bottle or something. It's it's really this whole system, and then Pennsylvania having these small communities that are tend to be rural or semi-rural, that are just looking for a new way to survive. And so they become sacrifice zones, and we bring them in and we promise these things, these economic developments, and there's usually a bust that comes with it. There's a boom and a bust, and it leaves people in the dust again.

Michael Pisano 14:17

Booms and busts are baked into this region's reality. It's tangled up in family histories, it's tied to our ongoing personal and political dramas. It's like some mythical giant pendulum arcing back and forth, each fickle swing forcing Pennsylvania between poverty and prosperity. It seems inescapable, a set fixture of human civilization, maybe even inherent to human nature. But is it? What would it take to break the cycle of crisis? Natural history is full of events we might call booms and busts. Take the Devonian Explosion, also known less succinctly as the Silorian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution. Around 420 million years ago, the fossil record shows an incredible boom in life on land. Fungi and plants crept further and further away from the teeming waters to diversify and spread across uncharted landscapes. Millipedes and spiders and other arthropods followed to become the first established land animals. Soil became a thing. So did roots, seeds, trees, and forests. What happens when, suddenly, there are forests? Lots of things. There was more oxygen. There was less carbon dioxide. Actually, so much carbon dioxide was sequestered in plants and the soil that at the end of the Devonian it helped kick off a hundred million year-long ice age. But before that, as the spread of terrestrial life created more soil, it broke up more rocks, releasing nutrients that flowed into rivers and back into the oceans. An overabundance of nutrients flooded the water. This is called eutrophication, and resulted in blooms in algae and cyanobacteria. Generations of dead microbes and layers of weathered sediment drifted to the ocean floor. Their decomposition sucked up all the oxygen, creating anoxic conditions meaning no oxygen, meaning that other bottom-dwelling aquatic animals couldn't breathe. It's thought that this contributed to a massive loss in global biodiversity called the late Devonian extinction. Here in Pennsylvania, these anoxic Devonian deposits formed the Marcellus shale. The gas that's fracked from these 400 million-year-old rocks are the remains of dead cyanobacteria and algae and corals and trilobites and whatever other organic matter settled in the mud. But I digress. As you may have noticed, life survived the late Devonian extinction. It may even have been the pressures on life in the water that pushed our ancestors, the first terrestrial vertebrates, to evolve for life on land. There they would find a newly greened world full of novel opportunities. Explosion and extinction, boom and bust. It's an oversimplification, but I think we can learn something here. In any collapse, there is opportunity. Earth seems on track for another bust, or perhaps we're already living through one in slow motion. In some sense, the world as we know it has to collapse in order to make way for the next boom. It remains to be seen what exactly will bust. The state-sponsored system of fossil fuel extraction or Earth's biosphere. This is an opportunity for positive change, to assert that our health and happiness is worth more than petrochemical profits, that future life is worth saving, that future suffering is worth averting. When steel and coal and oil each collapsed here in southwestern Pennsylvania, people suffered economically. With plastic and fracked gas, the stakes are higher. Not only will we suffer downturn, but on each day we continue extracting and refining and polluting with gas and plastic, we continue to degrade the climate, and doom our future selves and our children to suffer hotter days, worse storms, rising seas, and a tidal wave of non-human extinctions. Change is coming. Will the next boom blossom from our attempt to make the planet livable, or will it rise from our ruin? So I'm curious, I guess, in your work, uh, like what else you think about when you look at our landscape besides the possibility of extraction? What other possibilities are here?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 19:13

Well, you know, I think one thing that most people look for is this solution of one thing to replace our one thing. And I think that is the biggest challenge. The world's complex, and there's a lot of, you know, unexpected, unintentional consequences of the way we've been doing that. And it's been using one style of fuel source, and that's fossil fuels. And what we're finding is it gets expensive, we're gonna run out, and the impacts to our public health and our environment are, in my opinion, not worth the way we're going. So I believe our future is not something that's gonna replace a one to one thing. It's rather than it's gonna be community based. What's in your community the best source of energy for you? Regions that might be solar, some might be geothermal, some might be you know biofuels if we can tap into that, some might be things that we haven't even discovered yet. I really believe we are capable of figuring things out, and we might make some mistakes along the way, uh, but we gotta do it. And I really do think there's a potential for the transition away from fossil fuels. And I say transition. Um, you can look at my outfit. I there's plastics in the shirt, I guarantee it. I have plastics in every part of my life. Um, I will still continue to buy plastics because you know what? That's what I need to do my life in the today's society. What we need to do is have our government and industry shift from their current perspective so that you and I, as individuals who are part of this society, can actually make decisions and purchases and create a lifestyle that is going to be sustainable. It is not on the individual, it's on the folks that are making the decisions and providing the materials. Um, and I think with research and the use of current knowledge and understanding that it's not going to be a one-thing fix-all, we could really see a good future.

Michael Pisano 21:05

Turning kind of the same question to you, uh, and thinking about that ecosystem of things that we need for transition, what are some of the things that come into the equation for you, especially in this region?

Nicole Heller 21:16

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think this importance of system-level solutions is so relevant everywhere, but in particularly in this region, right? Because we are a major player in the in the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry, and that has these impacts on global problems like global climate change, right, and ocean pollution. And um and it also has incredible um local impacts, right? And that's where Heather mentioned this earlier, but the justice dimension, right? Because these impacts from um extraction and um and combustion of making these products is is really felt most by local communities who are often under-resourced and um and experiencing extreme public health impacts that that will be with them for the rest of their lives. And so this need for a more sustainable economy, right, is is also really is about creating a just community, a just um really addressing the major environmental justice problems in this region and the kind of burden that has been put on particular communities to provide this resource that does fuel the world, right? But there's also you know a lot of value in this region and a lot of opportunity with um recreation and tourism. And um we at the museum we have a nature reserve, powder mill nature reserve, that's located near in the Laurel Highlands region, a really important conservation region in Pennsylvania, one of the 11 sort of designated conservation areas because of its beauty and its water resources. It has a lot of endangered species that persist there and an important migration corridor as well, as we think about how animals and plants are gonna have to move to keep track with changing climate. They're gonna keep they're gonna move right through this region. So I think protecting those resources and enabling tourism and maybe more telecommuting, more opportunities for people to work in these areas that are now coming online. And and so one of the things we need for that is better broadband access in rural areas. And these are, you know, you might not think, oh, broadband access is an environmental action, but it can be when we start to think about what what are the futures, what are the futures for work in our regions and how do we how do we create sustainable just communities that are gonna we still make some money too, right?

Michael Pisano 24:00

Absolutely. Um I wonder if there's anything that you've seen in the community that strikes you as an example of like, oh, this is a really great novel idea for um, you know, you mentioned recreation. What are the other things that are already kind of in motion that need maybe a little bit of support as opposed to maybe the support that the petrochemical industry gets?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 24:22

Yeah, I'm I mean, Nicole mentioned recreation, and I feel like here in Pittsburgh, we have this idea that our rivers are dirty. If you go swim in it, you're gonna grow a third leg. Um, and all these horrible and really fun stories that go along with our rivers. Um, 50 years ago, our waters were devoid of aquatic life. They they were highly contaminated, they weren't something you wanted to swim in. But our waters have drastically improved. They have a long way to go, so I'm not gonna hit sit here and say we're done, we're not even close. Um, but what I am saying is you can recreate on our waterways. Uh, all three of our rivers here in the Pittsburgh region actually have a bald eagle, which is a high-level food ecosystem um predator, which means that the whole food chain is working, from the macroinvertebrates up to the high predators there. And so when you're thinking about our waterways, they're improving. And so I would love to see people recreating and enjoying our waterways because there's nothing we can do to protect our water if people don't feel connected to it. Our waterway is here. This is the reason why Pittsburgh exists. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a through rivers. Um, and we've done horrible things to it. And we're changing for the better. And so it's it's time for us to take back the waters. Don't let them be owned by the industries. They're ours, um, and really they're no ones, but we want to protect them for our future generations. And the first way to do that is just connect with them. Walk along the rivers if you don't feel comfortable kayaking. Kayaking, open swim. Um, there are periods of time that you want to avoid the waterways, and that's during uh CSOs or overflows from our sewage systems. But outside of that, you know, you're not gonna grow a third leg. Um so just find your way back to the water, find that connection, find that natural calmness that water can bring, um, and do it to where you feel comfortable, whether that's just looking at it or actually dipping your body in.

Michael Pisano 26:20

What if you felt so comfortable and so excited by that idea that you wanted to give back and have kind of a regenerative force to the time you spend with the water? I wonder, you know, what Waterkeepers does and how people might get involved in that kind of part of it.

Heather Hulton VanTassel 26:35

Yeah, so Through Rivers Waterkeeper, we do a variety of things that really create connections back to our waterways. We have a great program called Through Rivers Watch. And this is where we work with community members and it's free of charge, and we train folks on how to understand where pollution might come from, what is a watershed, how does water flow, what does pollution look like, and then how to report it. Um, and so we don't make them know to be like, oh, I see this, this is the type of pollution it is, this is how serious it is. Rather, however, you're around waterways and you do it often enough and you notice something that's different. Innately, you know it, right? You might walk by something and you're like, that's weird, that's odd, that's not normal, and then you move on with your life. Our goal is for that person to stop, take a photo, document what they see, what they smell, even what they hear, because that could be industry or something like that. Um, and report it to us or report it to the Department of Environmental Protection here, or both of us, whoever they feel most comfortable with. And that way we can get a really good hold on where pollution sources are coming from and we can actually stop it, including nurta pollution. And so creating that empowerment of those communities really helps them say, oh, I can say something, or I know what to do if I see something. We also do a lot of just really fun things about getting people out on kayaks in our waterways, telling them about whether or not we do in the warm weather months, we take samples of the water looking for E. coli, and so we measure those limits and give green lights or red lights on whether or not it's safe to put your body in the water. Um, and so just like little things like that. You know, being involved, getting educated, understanding that everything you do on land will impact your water quality in some shape or form. And so getting those people to reconnect to the water that is not just something you look at when there's fireworks at, but rather it's something you feel connected with. Um and you get your drinking water from it. You know, people here in Pittsburgh get their water from it, whether it's the Allegheny, the Monongahila, or the Ohio River. Mine's from the Ohio River, which really means all three of them provide me my drinking water. And so it's just really important to understand how useful that water is just to your everyday life.

Michael Pisano 28:54

Uh yeah, pretty foundational. Um, and I clearly we can do more to connect back to it, and then hopefully, like you say, kind of that enables a different sort of relating to and supporting. Um, you mentioned kind of like citizen science and you know, data reporting. Um, and in general, I kind of think about also that as uh whether done by you know professional citizens in combination, that data is also helpful for policy and informing those sorts of decisions. So we haven't really gotten into what better nurdle policy might be. Um, and I do kind of want to touch on that. I want to make sure I know there's like a push in some places to classify nurdles as hazardous because they're not actually. Is that true?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 29:36

Um, yes. So nurdles are considered pollution. So we'll just put it out there. It is a violation to the Clean Water Act, or here we have PA clean stream laws. Um, so that is considered a pollution. It's often a violation to the Clean Water Act to discharge them into our waterways. However, there is this caveat that it's not hazardous. So the style of response to nurdal pollution isn't necessarily what we believe is the appropriate response to nurdal pollution. We do know that nurdles are not inert. They're not just gonna float around and do nothing and live their like little plastic life and be, you know, non-harmful to the environment. Rather, there's lots of evidence that's starting to show that nurdles will actually soak up toxins in the waterways and then carry them to other places. We have our wildlife, especially birds and fish that are gonna eat these nurdles up that can also be consumed or consumed by something else that we consume, and we have that whole food chain reaction. And you know, the micro the plastics themselves, they are microplastics, but they're gonna keep breaking down into microplastics that you can't even see. Um, and that is way more ubiquitous in our waterways than we can even fathom. And we are now just starting to understand the negative impacts that is happening to our own systems, our whole body, you know, long-term health impacts that it's gonna be. They actually found that the average person has a credit card size amount of plastics in their body. And so, you know, these plastic pellets will break down to smaller pieces of plastics, but they will not break down into biodegradable portions and put themselves back into the, you know, the world that they came came out of. And so it's really important to understand that they are hazardous. It's just more complex than if I ingest this, will I immediately die? type of concept. But rather there's a really long-term impact on our environment, on our health, and we really need to start noticing that and having our environmental regulators accept that and do something about it. Um, there's also other loopholes when it comes to the idea of plastics with hazardous materials. I personally think that I do want plastics to be hazardous, but something that's actually not listed as hazardous, which would be in every other sense, is the wastewater from fracking. So what after you frack, you have all this water that you pulled out of the earth because you extracted the natural gas, and now you have the water. That water is a slurry of radioactive material because our grounds are radioactive, so it's gonna pull it out. That's just the way it is. Um, there's PFOS contamination, there's heavy metals, all sorts of really terrible things for our bodies for consumption and it and exposure, not even consumption. And there is a loophole in our policies that does not classify fracking waste as hazardous, which means it can be wild, it can be accepted by landfills, um, it can be transported, it doesn't have to disclose everything that's in it. Um, there are these ideas of beneficial reuse. Um, right now it's not happening, or it's not supposed to be happening in Pennsylvania, but other regions are using fracking brine for de-icing. Um, again, radioactive. Um and so these are just really horrible loopholes that exist when it comes to plastics and its whole system not being shown for the impacts that it can have. And it's simply because of the financial economic contribution it makes and the lack of willingness to move from plastics.

Michael Pisano 33:28

And I think that's a great kind of note to shift us out towards zooming out a little bit. Um, I would do want to talk about kind of plastics uh in the cultural sense and in the economic sense, the way that they're embedded. Um, and you know, speaking about them, about the kind of like slurry of chemicals that we've created that we inject into the ground. You know, trying to make policy around these things is challenging in part, I think, because these are not only tied up with economics, politics, power, uh, privilege, you could go on with that element, like that aspect of it, but they're also novel entities, which I know is something that you think about a lot as part of your scholarship. Can we just start by kind of identifying what that is and then zeroing in on plastics from that concept?

Nicole Heller 34:12

So the Anthropocene as this idea of a global new global epoch that we're in, this new period of time when humans are really transforming the Earth system. And and it kind of shows up in a lot of different ways, and there's sort of major processes that we're tracking at the Earth scale to understand this transforming planet and um and really whether it's safe, right, for our survival and for other species. And so there's a project called the Planetary Boundaries Project, which comes out of the University of Stockholm from uh the Stockholm Resilience Center. And in about 20, in 2009, they defined kind of nine planetary boundaries, so kind of things to watch in our planet that will help us understand like, is the planet still habitable and livable? Is it safe? Are we kind of operating in a safe space? And um so they divine nine of these indicators um climate, biodiversity, fresh water. Um there's nine of them, atmospheric chemistry. I can't remember them all, but one of those is novel entities, and that's really kind of substances, chemicals that are 100% made through human processes, right? They're totally novel on the planet, which itself is really interesting, right? There's a lot of these totally novel substances. They might be chemicals, pesticides, herbicides that we've created, as well as it can even sometimes be genetically modified organisms, as well as uh plastics and this use, this, this, these ways that we're transforming naturally occurring hydrocarbons into these chemical products. Um novel entities, I think it's it's a it's one of these really emergent areas of work, right? And when in 2009, when this uh Stockholm Resilience Institute started this project, they tried to estimate kind of where are we in um, are we in the green zone? Is it safe? Are we in safe operating space for these nine indicators? Or have we kind of exceeded that threshold of safety? And at the time they really couldn't say anything about novel entities, they just didn't have the research or knowledge to know kind of what is the safe operating space, and and what do we know about how rapidly these kinds of substances are being created and sort of showing up in our planet, getting into our oceans, into our sediment layers, into our ice, into our bodies, right? And flash forward to 2023 and a little bit of time for more research, emerging studies. And now they're estimating um in 2009, there were sort of three indicators that were in this dangerous space. And now uh 2023, there are six indicators in the dangerous space, and novel entities is sort of the one they're most concerned about in the sense that they've they've said it's transgressed the farthest across this boundary that is is considered safe.

Michael Pisano 37:24

Right. Um I wonder within that study, um, or just within either of your knowledge, uh, you know, I think often there's like a reliance in when we're looking at sustainability on new technology, innovation, something else, right, to come in and replace what is damaging us. Um I am curious, honestly, if there are any promising alternatives to this material, which as you said is ubiquitous. We're all wearing it. The cameras, the microphones, the table probably has hydrocarbons, like you know, everything. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. Um is this something that can at least in part be uh addressed, mitigated by more novel substances? Is this an old lady who swallowed a fly problem? Um, what where do you each kind of fall on that?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 38:10

I mean, I I want to ask the question though. Um, where were we before plastics? We had solutions. We had now it was a slower society then. And so what would our lives look like without plastics? And it's slower, right? It's different. And I think that's the challenge is resetting what our society is supposed to look like. And there are more and more compostable plant-based, plastic-esque things that are coming out, and that's a really good alternative. And some of them might be a mix of plastics and plant-based products, and that's a great transition period, right? So it doesn't have to be all of a sudden we're doing one thing or doing the other. What transition can we have that might be steps so that way our system, our whole society can adjust to that change. And and so, you know, there it might not be that perfect, like replace B with A. We might be replacing, you know, A, which is plastics, with Z, and we have to get through the alphabet before we get there. And that's okay. And I think that's the challenge is changing that people's perspective of them waiting for the holy grail solution. I don't think that exists. If it does, that's great. Let's do it. But um, you know, I don't think it exists. And so shifting our expectation for one will be a huge help in us understanding how we can move away from plastics.

Michael Pisano 39:31

Towards harm reduction, is that kind of any steps?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 39:34

Let's make the steps. And you know, the more steps you make, the more investments we're gonna make into alternative solutions, right? Because we're using, we're investing back, we're purchasing, we're putting that economy into better alternatives. Um, and so that also goes back to why are the plastics so ubiquitous? They're subsidized. Like they aren't as profitable as people think they are. And if we took away those. Subsidies, we would be forced to start finding alternatives. We would be forced to start thinking differently. And so maybe we can take those petrochemical subsidies and put it into ways to find other alternatives. And that goes then back to lobbying. The petrochemical industry is has the most money in lobbying. And that is the challenge because us tiny little nonprofits or even giant nonprofits aren't even able to compete with that. And so we need decision makers to stand up against the petrochemical industry and make the change in decisions on how our funds are being spent at the government level, how our taxpaying dollars are being utilized to subsidize our certain society that we've come to know. And the only way to do that is to get constituents, the voters, to actively speak out against it and desire to want to change.

Michael Pisano 40:53

Love it. What would you add to that?

Nicole Heller 40:54

Great, great points. And I it is important to recognize that it's not like a problem that's plateaued, right? It's increasing and plastic productions is increasing, and they're good, there's a good chance it's gonna increase in the Ohio River Valley. And so I think kind of really working on those sort of system level solutions, again, it's an industry-governmental thing that's gonna reduce the waste that's happening and reduce the um in immediately, right? We've got to get on a trajectory of reducing plastic pollution and waste. And there's a lot of uh good reports out there that kind of um summarize these options. So it's not like an unknown. There is great science and technology about how to reduce the waste in this uh production, including designing products to be better recycled. Like I'm looking at your pen, like maybe there's a way that it could be designed so that it could be recycled. Um, I also think material sciences is just, I think it's one of the most interesting things, right? Or like, what are these alternative materials? Because at the end of the day, plastics is a fossil fuel product and it's always going to have an impact on our climate system and to have this local pollution. Um, but what are some alternative materials, right, that maybe could don't have those negative impacts, like fibers being made from mushrooms or um, you know, banana leaves or um taking grass or paper. You know, there's a lot, and there's a lot of like waste out there, right, from other manufacturing that just generates a whole bunch of corn husks or other kinds of waste. So I love the idea of these sort of re um circular um feat, you know, where you take the waste from one product and you use that to create another. And so little, there's little things as well as the much larger systemic work that we can do.

Michael Pisano 43:00

There absolutely are, and I think that maybe brings us to maybe a concluding question for me, and it's a little muddled, so bear with me. But I I think what you're talking about to me also goes to like the narratives, and this also ties into subsidies and the lobbying market, right? Like plastics, fossil fuels, and the lifestyles that they enable have been sold to us really hard for a long time, right? And it's ubiquitous, it's as ubiquitous as plastic is the idea that our lifestyle is entrenched and we need it, and there's you know all sorts of things. That's another whole episode. But I do think that there's a power to finding new narratives, right? And for me, it's like one of the most pressing narratives to find that I think would be influential in this scenario. Like a lot of people maybe are using plastics and not worrying about it because they think we're doomed. I don't know if you would agree with that, but like it's kind of a like, what does it matter what I do? This single-use plastic isn't going to sink the ship, it's not going to save the ship for me to not do it. What kind of turns that narrative tide for you? Like, what do you see as maybe uh, or what would you say to someone who says, ah, like what does it matter, you know?

Heather Hulton VanTassel 44:14

I I mean, maybe you can say that what we have today is doomed. That's true. It's not, it's 200 years from now, our our world is not gonna look like this, and that's absolutely true. But I do have hope that humans will still be here. Um, and I guarantee if humans aren't, plants and animals will be, and they will live on beyond this whole issue of petrochemicals. But I do believe that we we can survive, and but we have to act as a global society. And I think you know, really helping people understand that if we can work together, the chance of having a positive outcome is much higher. And there's sure, there's some science that does not look good, that is pretty, you know, dark.

Michael Pisano 45:06

Scary, sure, yeah, true.

Heather Hulton VanTassel 45:07

Um but we don't know what it's gonna look like. And if we if we don't do anything about it, it will be dark. But if we do something about it, it might not be. And it'll just be different. And um we can change what that different looks like if we make global decisions about thinking about humans and animals and water and air as a shared resource, as a shared, you know, community, that we're all on this together, we're all gonna be impacted by together rather than, you know, I live in Pittsburgh and I only care about what happens to Pittsburghers. That's not true. What I do impacts everybody globally, every little thing. And so I think if we don't think about it as like this this dark gloom thing that will happen, but think about what we can do that changes that future. And I I think trying to help someone see that light and if they feel connected to nature and people, I think that that helps. Um, but there's always gonna be negative dances, and you know, that doesn't stop me from wanting to do something better, and so they can sit in their dark little hole and do whatever they want to do. Because I don't at the end of the day, I don't think the majority of people are in that space.

Michael Pisano 46:22

I don't think so either. I think those are just some loud voices that we hear a lot of because it sells a little bit better than maybe the excitement about change towards a more just and you know uh exciting world. But anyway, to you, the same question.

Nicole Heller 46:36

Yeah, I mean, I'd just add that I mean, we I like to think about it like what does it mean to live a good life, right? In this moment in time that we're in. And and that's as we um the challenge for any of us is to rise to being willing to think about these issues, to take them seriously, and then to decide, how do I live a good life in the face of this information, right? How do I, what does it mean to be a good creature in this moment in time? And um yeah, and then we are in kinship, um, and we're in deep webs of interconnectivity, and that's how we live our lives. So how, so I just think I would say to that person, kind of like, how's that working for you? You know, how happy are you? And like, I think that we get it feels good to do the right thing, and um and sometimes we can't afford to do the right thing or we don't have access to those resources, and we can't, and that's where we have to fix our society so that we can all do the right thing, and and we need governmental regulations, we need governmental policies that help us do that. And um, but but it's to me, it's it is a it's an ethical question, right? About how to lead a good life. And when you know something is hurting so many people, and and and it and you could solve it through some changes in your life or at least be a little less part of the problem, you know. I I just think that that actually feels good. And I think when we connect with each other in those ways and we do those actions, we see each other doing it, and then we feed off of each other, and our sense of efficacy grows, and our sense of um transformation grows. And so I think it's like we're always modeling behaviors to others, and so how do we live in a life, live our lives in ways that correspond to our own values and and model respect for the people and other critters around us.

Michael Pisano 48:34

Beautifully put many thanks to Heather and Nicole for leading us through and beyond the puzzling world of plastics. You can learn more about stewardship and recreation on our waterways at three riverswaterkeeper.org. This is the last episode of season two. I hope you've enjoyed diving into the Carnegie's collections with me. Many thanks to all our guests, and many thanks to everyone. We Are Nature is produced by Nicole Heller and Son McCrae. It's recorded at Carnegie Museum of Natural History by Matt Unger and Garrick Schmidt. DJ Thermos makes the music, Mackenzie Kimmel describes the collection items, and Garrick Schmidt and Michael Pizzano, that's me, edit the podcast. Thanks for listening.