Single-Use Plastics Are Out: Join the Re-Use Revolution with John Charles Meyer & Julie Wedge

In this episode, I'm joined by John Charles Meyer, Executive Director of Plastic Free Restaurants (soon to be Plastic Free America), and Julie Wedge, CA Program Director of ReThink Disposable who work collaboratively to stop trash before it starts.

Tune in to:

• Learn about two amazing resources that can help your school, business or favorite food spot create less plastic waste by transitioning to reusable foodware (e.g. plates, cups, silverware, etc);
• Gain an understanding of why transitioning to reusables makes sense for profit margins, as well as for human and environmental health; and
• Get ideas for how to be the "squeaky wheel" and talk to the right people to create change in your community.

Resources:

• Plastic Free Restaurants
• ReThink Disposable

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Life can sometimes feel like a lot, but you don't have to do it alone. I strongly believe that we're stronger together. Here we're going to slow down, have real talks, make sense of things together, and explore ways to intentionally grow the life you want. We're going to talk about mental and physical health, relationships, money, work, and community. Welcome to Rooted in Intention with me, Garina Gomez. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Today we're going to be diving into climate change and environmental health. And I know that these things sometimes feel like these big issues and overwhelming, and that we have very little control over making change. But if you've been tuning in for a while, you know that I am a big proponent that little actions cumulate over time and they can actually make big changes, not just in our lives individually, but also throughout society. Because at the end of the day, I think that we are just the world is a sum of all of us. So today we're joined by two special guests, John Charles Meyer, who is not only an actor, producer, and previous political media expert, but he's also the executive director of plastic free restaurants, which we will hear more about shortly. And we're joined by Julie Wedge, who is the California program director of Rethink Disposable, a program of Clean Water Action and Clean Water Fund. John and Julie, thank you so much for joining me today. And to get us started, I'm wondering if you could share a little bit more about yourself and what first gave each of you that hope that individual or community actions could matter.

John & Julie's enviornmental awakening

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Okay, I'll go first. First of all, I want to correct the record on one thing. Political media expert is definitely overstating the case. I worked in the trenches of political media for 10 years in my 20s, but I don't think that makes me an expert. Yeah, so plastic free restaurants came about because I had spent the better part of my life pulling my hair out a little bit over the fact that I'd never really done anything particularly helpful for the environment. I'd always had a little bit of angst about that because it's always been important to me, but I never really worked in any field that was helping in any way. And then at some point, about six, seven years ago, I went into a friend's newly opened burrito shop in Hollywood, California, and plopped down my 12 bucks for a burrito and noticed that half of the stuff on his shelves for takeout was plastic and half of it was quote unquote compostable. And at the time I really didn't know much about the vagaries of compostable foodware. But I asked him, I said, What's the difference? I mean, why half and half? Why do you have both? And he said, Well, mostly it comes down to price. I said, Well, what's the difference in price? He handed me a sheaf of invoices and he said, You figure it out. So I sat down, ate my burrito, and did some back of the envelope math, and it turned out to be about 350 bucks a month. Which to a restaurant trying to find its feet is not insignificant. But on the flip side, 350 bucks to wipe out thousands and thousands of pieces of plastic every month was intriguing. And so it just sort of snowballed from there. And how could we make this attractive to donors? And how can we turn it into a 501c3, etc., etc., etc. So that's how we got where we are.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I feel like I've come to this conclusion in my life, but sometimes the anxiety comes from not taking action. And I think that's what I was hearing from what you're saying, John.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

100%.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

How about you, Julie?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

I'm Julie Wedge. I am the Rethink Disposable Director in California. I came to this work pretty early uh in my life. I've always worked at the intersection of human health and the environment, public policy, and implementation. It's probably going to sound dorky, but I um had my environmental awakening back in 1988 when Al Gore was starting to talk about global climate change and the effects. Um, I've always worked in this space. I really enjoy working with Rethink Disposable and with Clean Water Fund because it works at the intersection of human health and the environment, really, you know, taking on toxics in our waterways and keeping us, you know, healthy, healthier as a community. And of course, you know, as John pointed out, when you go to restaurants, it's the front lines. When Clean Water Fund did our uh waste assessment study around the Bay Area, we found that 73% of the waste around the Bay Area was foodware. And that all comes from restaurants. Um, you know, it's one of those things that touches a variety of places. It touches the environment, it touches health, it touches the unsheltered, it touches education, um, you know, all the things that are important to us for in our society and how we, you know, how we view what it is that we do. So, and our health and our children's health. So I, you know, I like I said, I came to it early. I've been doing it for a long time. And yes, 100% action is the best antidote to anxiety. And also it's, you know, you discover when you take that step, when you move into that direction, you find that there's other people that are already in this space and you're not alone and you're not the only one. And so if you think that one person can't make a difference, we can demonstrate that's false.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

I think I'll add to the source of my anxiety is that, you know, a lot of people take their kids to soup kitchens to volunteer when they're growing up to go do some volunteer hours, do something like that. My folks took me to a recycling center. So at a very young age, I was gaining an appreciation for the amount of crap that people go through, especially plastic just wrangled me because I could see what it was doing at a pretty young age. And so it's it's always just I've always had a bit of a visceral reaction to it specifically.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

I think that John and I came from the generation of we saw we were the ones that saw the commercial with the plastic ring around the turtle's neck. And I think we all still cut our soda can soda can plastic and those types of things, you know, they stick with you when you're I think you may be overestimate overestimating our generation as a whole a little bit. I'm I'm not I'm you and I'm not saying it's our whole generation. I'm saying you and I come from the generation that got to see that. Some of us did something about it, others of us didn't.

How to move from single-use plastics to reusables

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I feel like the visuals that are very prominent that come to mind are is not just the plastic issue within the ocean, but also just the landfills and all the things that end up in places that sometimes are out of sight for us. So we don't realize how big of an issue it is until, and I think this is one of the great things about social media is around raising awareness. And I think sometimes I have mixed issues about social media because I think sometimes it could be too front in your face and we need a little break from it. But I do think there is power in making visible the things that sometimes seem invisible because the landfills are oftentimes in places in communities that we don't see how big the issue actually is. And with that, John and Julie, can you share a little bit about the role of your organization and how you're helping communities?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

I'll start by saying that Julie's organization has been doing this a lot longer than my organization has, albeit from a slightly different angle. And they have been instrumental in making my organization succeed in a lot of ways. They have boots on the ground and they have field reps who are doing a lot of the grunt work behind what my organization aims to do. Plastic Free Restaurants, which I founded five years ago, is a 100% volunteer organization. We don't pay salaries to anyone, myself included. And in some manner, we are basically just a pass-through entity for money. We fundraise from donors and grants to collect money to eliminate single-use plastic in school cafeterias and restaurants. And we work with organizations like Julie's Rethink Disposable and Clean Water Action to find those schools and recruit those schools and restaurants. To date, my organization has eliminated more than 14 million single-use plastic items from 66 schools, 90 restaurants, and 14 other kitchens in 14 states. We're proud of that, but it's not even a proverbial drop in the bucket. There are 98,000 public schools in the United States. We've done 66 of them. Not 66,000, but 66. Uh so we've got a long way to go, but uh we're learning as we go. So yeah, we're eliminating single-use plastic from schools and restaurants at other kitchens across the country, and we do so exclusively by purchasing the reusable foodware that replaces it. So we ask for invoices from the kitchen that's interested in eliminating its plastic. Those invoices demonstrate to us A, that it is indeed single-use petroleum-based plastic that they're getting rid of, B, how much of it they're actually going through in a day, a week, a month, and C what type of plastic and what manufacturer the stuff comes from. We track all of that for our impact. And once we've determined all of that and we've found a suitable, reusable replacement for them, and we've determined that they have a plan in place to be able to wash and dry those reusables, uh, either with dishwasher infrastructure or three sync systems or whatever they're doing, whatever type of kitchen they are, then we write a check. That's it. 95 plus percent of the money we have raised in our five years has gone toward our subsidy program. We have virtually no overhead. It's the only thing we do.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And Julie, can you share a little bit about how you're connected to the work?

How businesses save money by transitioning to reusables

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Sure. Uh Rethink Disposable is a program underneath the Clean Water Fund and Clean Water Action. Clean Water Fund is tied to the Clean Water Act. It's a 53-year nonprofit organization that does work in a variety of places around water affordability, around groundwater, you know, all if it's water, we're there. Rethink Disposable was born 13 years ago when the state director at the time wanted to start seeing, you know, a reduction in single-use plastics. Like I said, we did this waste assessment study around the Bay Area, 73% being food plastic foodware waste. Uh, so our mission and our aim is to stop trash before it starts. And our collaboration with John and plastic free restaurants has been instrumental because, as he was saying, when you're dealing with restaurants, we work mostly in historically marginalized communities, lots of first and second generation restaurant owners, we work to obviously work to remove their plastic for dine-in. We've been singularly focused on dine-in over the last 13 years. We have found that in especially, I mean, the restaurant industry in general has such small margins that when you're asking them to even make, like John is saying, a$350 change, our average uh dine-in reusable change is about$350 to$500. I mean, it sounds like a small amount of money, but for a restaurant running on small margins, they can't afford that. So we've worked with John, we've worked with cities and counties, we've worked with, you know, individual donors, people that are willing to front that incentive funding so that we can purchase those reusables. Um, it's hundreds of restaurants now in the 13 years that we've been doing this all over the Bay Area, some in some in Southern California as well, schools, restaurants, venues. And, you know, it's what we still have yet to find a restaurant that hasn't saved money by making the switch, even just in DyNet. We did a uh project with NOAA over two-year period. And the output of it from California was we did a five restaurant study in the Fruit Vale in Oakland. All community-based restaurants, all very small restaurants. We did for everything from a you know full conversion all the way down to the conversion that I really thought was going to give us the first restaurant to not save money because all they switched out was straws and sauce cups. They are saving$674 a year. So that was fairly shocking that we could even save money just by replacing plastic straws and sauce cups. And it's about 43,000, 44,000 pieces of individual pieces of plastic uh diverted from the waste dream, never gone, you know, never purchased in the first place. Um, small things that, you know, people don't really think are going to make a huge difference really do make a huge difference. And how we accomplish this is we've got some folks that go out on the ground, we go restaurant to restaurant, we find the owner, we do a visual assessment first, right? We figure out are you using mostly reusables for dyne-in or do you have a plastic problem? And if they have a plastic problem, we'll, you know, talk to the restaurant owner, we'll sit down with them, show them the benefits, show them our case studies. We're a very data-oriented organization. And that's really what I love about the organization is because if you can show somebody the data that they really will save money, it's a lot easier to get them to make the switch. I'd love to say that everybody that is a restaurant owner cares about the environment and really wants to do something healthy. Um, but the reality is that it, you know, it's a bottom line for them. And especially in an economy like this, it's really a bottom line for them. Um, having those city and county partners, having partners like John and our individual donors to actually front that incentive funding has made an enormous impact in how the Bay Area is moving and what the Bay Area looks like. And in fact, we just wrapped up a five-year contract, four-year, four-year contract with Alameda County Stop Waste. 75% of the restaurants that we converted in Alameda County that are still in business are still using reuse practices. And the other 25%, lots of them just had changes of ownership or, you know, things like that. So we know that if we can make the switch, the savings are real because the restaurants are continuing to use reusables. There's also been a push nationally and internationally, um, as Clean Water Fund's Minnesota office passed the PFAS ban, chefs, interestingly enough, around Cookware are getting involved. We have a friend to Clean Water Fund and to rethink disposable specifically, chef two David Fu, who's phenomenal and just a terrific person. He's taken the pledge. He has no Teflon in any of his restaurants or his kitchens. And we're hoping to get, you know, more chefs to take the pledge. We're hoping to get more people engaged and involved and invested. We're hoping to get more people to understand that it's not just about, you know, you can talk about healthy food. You can talk about feeding your children healthy food. But if you're feeding them their healthy food on toxic plastics, the effect is mitigated. So it's really just education. But I think that as we start to see more and more studies, more and more people being concerned about microplastics. And once that ball starts to roll, it makes it a little makes our job, John and my job, a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

I would like to clarify one thing that I said earlier. I gave the example of the Friends Burrito Shop that was the spark for the idea behind this. When I did that back of the envelope math, I said$350 a month. That was the difference between single-use plastic and single-use compostables. We don't do that switch. We only do the switch from single-use plastic to reusables, which is infinitely less expensive because you don't have to replace the reusables. And one of the points that we like to make on our on our website, I think Julie stated that very accurately that it doesn't take a lot of money to do this. Um, one of the things that we like to point out is that$28 of stainless steel forks will eliminate 5,000 plastic forks from a school cafeteria every school year. 28 bucks goes a pretty long way.

The hurdles of change

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, I'm hearing just one, how different players are coming together. John, plastic-free restaurants obviously has funding to support people to make the change. Julie, with the work that you're doing, you're helping people actually go through that process. And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about the hurdles that you still hear, or maybe the like mental barriers, blocks that prevent people from fully making that transition and what some of those real conversations look like.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Super easy answer. So when I founded this five years ago, I thought the financial burden of the reusable foodware was going to be the number one hurdle. It is not. It is hurdle number three. Number one is change. It is this is how we've done things since we opened our doors. This is how we've done things since COVID, whatever. If I change, then I've got to retrain my staff, I've got to rearrange my kitchen, I've got to install a new piece of equipment, I've got to rearrange my stock room, I've got to use a different supplier. It's fear of change. That is the number one hurdle. That is the reason why we need the Rethink Disposables and Center for Environmental Health and other nonprofit partners that my organization has linked up with to have the boots on the ground to do the hand holding with the schools and the restaurants and the senior centers and the meals on wheels and everybody else because people fear change. They just don't want to deal with it. The number two hurdle is lack of dishwashing infrastructure. A school district might come to us and say, We've got 20 schools, we'd like to get free stuff from you. And we're like, okay, well, how many of them have dishwashers? Oh, well, three of them. Okay. Are you able to make a$50,000 capital expenditure for each of the other 17 to purchase, install, and retrofit your kitchen to accommodate a dishwashing infrastructure? No. Okay, well, then let's get those first three schools started. Let's put those dishwashers in use. Let's demonstrate to you that you're going to be saving two, three, 10, 15,$30,000 a year, depending on what single-use plastic you've been using. And then once you can see that for yourself after a year or so, we can start talking about the other 17 schools and see A, if you think that it's worth that capital expenditure up front with your own money, and B, if there's maybe some state government money out there for you know funding to get those dishwashers put in. But those are the biggest hurdles. It's really change and lack of infrastructure. If you can get past those two, then it kind of becomes a no-brainer because my organization is here to, in most cases, literally purchase the entirety of the reusable foodware. And then why wouldn't you do it?

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Our biggest hurdle is getting to the decision maker. Once we get to the decision maker, all of the other hurdles that John just mentioned are the hoops that we have to jump through, you know, beyond that. And yeah, fear of change and how do we wash the dishes? Yeah, but it's but it's getting to that decision maker, talking to them, letting them know that yes, you really will save money. And when I say save money, I used the example of just straws and sauce cups. We have some restaurants that are saving$50,000,$60,000 a year. So it's, you know, it's pretty significant. I mean, our average is around$5,000 a year because we work with smaller restaurants. But you know, we worked with Gurdwara Temple in Fremont. John, I think uh we worked with you on that one too. And they're saving$46,000 a year. And they're reinvesting that, those funds into other sustainable practices at their temple.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

It is important to point out here, too, that those money savings are after accounting for everything. That is, after accounting for increased labor cost, increased water cost, increased electricity cost. All of that goes into those cost savings because the amount of money that they were spending on the single-use foodware dwarfs those added costs that come with the adoption of reusables. Uh, and there are other ancillary savings on top of not having to purchase the plastic forks and plastic styrofoam plates, like garbage hauling. You'd be shocked at how much money a school can save by suddenly reducing its garbage output by 80 or 90% because they're not throwing away all of their utensils and cups and plates every day.

How long can it take your school or business to transition to plastic-free options?

SPEAKER_02 20:37

We're excited about a project we're on right now with the national parks. We have Jamaica Bay and Mammoth Cave and Petrified National Forest. And all three parks, we discovered it was an obscene amount of water bottles that they had at their park. So I suggested that we look at logoed stainless steel water bottles as a replacement for their water bottles because they sell the water bottles anyway. And we were installing water refill stations. So instead of selling the plastic water bottles, sell a little water bottle with your logo on it, and people can use the refill station. The challenge on that was that uh of all three parks, Kentucky sells their plastic water bottles at a much lower cost than New York and California do. So we had to find a stainless steel reusable that was$3.50 or less. Uh, and we did. And now uh Mammoth and once petrified places all of their orders, but Mammoth Cave is now a hundred percent water bottle free in their gift shops and their cafes and everything else. If you want water at Mammoth Cave, you have to purchase a little water bottle and use the refill station. So it's really exciting, you know. Like I said, it's a big change. Those are big changes for um, especially a governmental agency, but you know, how much of a difference it's going to be. To make just to their park in you know and not selling all those plastic water bottles, people not throwing them away as they do with plastic. It just sort of ends up everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Can you share what the transition looks like in terms of timeline and effort in different settings, whether it's a restaurant, a coffee shop, or at a school? Because I imagine that a lot of people to what you all were saying is sometimes it feels like this big thing to carry on and maybe give people the reality into what that might actually look like from what you've seen.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Plastic-free restaurants has had applications that took more than two years to get from inception to award. And one application that actually happened the same day. The day the application came in, the subsidy was approved. It really mostly depends on, as Julie said, the decision maker being on board or being involved in the initial conversations, and on the organization applying for the subsidy, having their ducks in a row. We aim to make our subsidy application as simple as possible, and actually recently made it even more simplified. But we do ask for certain things, as with any grant. You know, if you're asking for free money from somebody, you've you've got to demonstrate that you're worthy of it in some measure. And so what we ask for is the most recent three months of invoices showing the single-use plastic items that you plan to eliminate, whether you're eliminating them entirely or eliminating them in large measure. Some restaurants still or schools will still use some single-use plastic for special events. Doesn't have to be 100% removal for our subsidy. But they need to have those most recent three months of invoices. I've had places send me an invoice for a single day or a single purchase. I've had implete places send me invoices from three years ago. I've had people send me invoices for things that were not single-use plastic. You know, it just sort of depends on whether the person making the application is organized. Beyond those invoices, there's not a heck of a lot to the application. Who are you? What's your position? Who else is a decision maker in the chain? You know, how many students do you serve? How many meals do you serve? Et cetera, et cetera. And then please send us the invoices. And then we synthesize all that information. We figure out the daily usage based on the invoices. We'll usually follow up with some emails saying, hey, can you send us more information about this single-use cup that you're using because we can't find it on the internet? Can you send us a link or whatever? Because we do want to know the manufacturer, the type of plastic, the per unit weight. We track all of that for our impact and we want to know that up front. So we make sure that all that information is there. And once it is, that's pretty much it. We will either purchase the reusable foodware on behalf of the school or restaurant, or we will reimburse them after the fact if they have already purchased it or if they would prefer to do it that way, or if, in some cases, uh, with restaurants, if they have chosen some reusable items which contain virgin plastic. Our subsidy is 100% of the cost of the reusable item if that reusable item does not contain any virgin plastic. We don't allow schools to do anything other than stainless steel because we lab test the products that we allow them to choose from. And so with schools, it's 100% every time. Restaurants have free reign to choose whatever reusable products they want. But if they opt, for example, melamine bowls or you know, hard plastic reusable cups, then our subsidy for that is only 25%. So in that case, we would reimburse after the fact. But the money and or the delivery of the reusables can happen in as little as a week after the the application is approved. Yeah. It it can be very short and it can be very agonizingly drawn out.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Ditto. I mean, it's I we haven't had anybody that's taken two years just because we don't wait that long. If somebody's just really not getting back to us or not at all responsive, um, we have a a three-contact role. We contact them three times after we've discussed this with the decision maker. We send them a proposed purchase effectively. These are the items that we think that will work best as replacements for your plastic based on the aesthetic of your, you know. I mean, we we take into account the aesthetic of the restaurant. We take into account, you know, who they're who they are, what you know, who their clients are, who's eating there, what what does it, what's their food, we know, what do they serve? And then we just grab the, you know, the best possible option for them. And like John is saying, our our biggest hurdle to replacement is the availability of replaceable items. A lot of times, if a manufacturer is out there listening to this, if we could get reusable takeout portion cups that weren't plastic, it would be amazing. Because even in places in California, you know, we have compostable regulations as well and laws as well. And the compostable, they have not yet found a proper replace fiber-based replacement for if I go to the tacuria and I get you know a soup, they can't put that in a fiber-based thing. By the time I get it home, it's gonna be all over my car. But yeah, John summed it up pretty nicely. It it all depends on the decision maker. But once that's done, yeah, I mean, once it's done, then the order is placed and it's you know, usually about a week to a week and a half. We go, you know, we get everything in, sort it, make sure nothing is broken, you know, replace any kind of broken items. And then we do a delivery, and it's like Christmas, and it is fun because I would say at least 40 to 50 percent of the decision makers actually don't believe that we're ever coming back with any items. So when we come back with the actual items that we told them that we were going to get, and they see the quality of the items that we purchased and that it's something that they can incorporate and that they're going to save money and that that we didn't also then hand them an invoice for$450 or, you know, whatever we utilize to to make the switch, it's like Christmas. And everybody comes in and all the, you know, all the staff comes in, and it's really like delivery days are the best because everything, all the frustration and all of the headaches and all of the back and forths and all of the everything that you've gone through for whatever amount of time that it's taken you to go through that, it's like, yay, it's here and it's you know, and they get to open boxes. And like I said, it's like it's like Christmas. And then then we have advocates in the food world, in the food service world, right? Then we have restaurants and chefs and decision makers and people that go, no, no, no, I'm really saving this money for, you know, for real. And so it's nice.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Christmas presents sound like so much fun. And it's interesting, Julie, that you shared that some of the decision makers didn't actually expect things to come in because I don't know, I feel like that just shows sometimes our hesitancy for like, oh, this seems too good to be true type of thing. And just for all the listeners out there, yes, there is free money to help your coffee shop, your restaurant, your school make that transition. And Julie, I'm wondering if you can share the people that you usually support through this process. Is it something that you typically go out and look for folks, or is it something that folks can come to you and be like, we need help with this transition? Can you help us?

Tips for how you can take steps today to reduce plastic waste and pollution

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Both. It's both. We do have people out in the field in the places that we have contracts, we get a list of food service businesses and we go individually to each of those food service businesses and like I said, take a visual assessment, look at what they're using, how can we be of assistance? And then we, you know, talk to the decision maker if they're up for it. We create the purchase plan and and what have you. So so there's that piece of it. But we do also on our website have cleanwater.org. We go to Rethink Disposable California. We do have on our website a form that you can fill out, says, you know, yes, I'm a restaurant, yes, I want help in can you know with converting. Can you send a specialist out? And if we get those requests, we of course send a specialist out. We take a look at what they have, figure it out. If it's a place that we have contract, then, you know, that makes it easy. If it's not, then I call John.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Or listeners that might be students or maybe school administrators or a business owner, what would you both say are maybe some of those beginning steps that they can take right after this episode?

SPEAKER_00 30:31

If you're talking about how to get their school cafeteria or their university or their local restaurants to switch, be the squeaky wheel. That's how you get started. Be the squeaky wheel, be the annoying customer, be the person who attends the university and talks to the administration, be the kid at the high school who goes to the school board meeting and says, I don't want to eat off of styrofoam anymore. Be the squeaky wheel. It is the single most important thing in this process is for us to have someone on the inside who feels passionately about this. It doesn't have to be someone with power, it just needs to be somebody who's willing to be annoying and loud.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

You know, it's it's all about education, education. And, you know, it comes down to just there are so many resources in the reuse space these days. And um, so you know, just reach out to one of us and we'll help you through the process. If even if you're just thinking about it and you don't even know where to start, you just know that you want to do something, reach out to one of us. We'll, you know, we'll figure out if our organization is the right organization or if some other organization is the right organization for you to be engaged and invested in this. I mean, we have to reduce plastics. We know we have to reduce plastics, we see it in our day-to-day life. It's becoming far more prolific. We're seeing far more articles. I mean, I'm sitting here right now with UCSF's summer 2025, The Plastic Within. Um, it's conversations around plastics in our bodies is everywhere right now. And so, um, so if you're feeling overwhelmed or if you're feeling like you don't know what to do, and if you are a business owner and and you want to make these changes, but you don't know where to start, I would suggest go to plastic-free restaurants, come to Clean Water Fund. You know, there's there's always ways that, like I said, we we know our community and we can plug you in in the best place for what you want to do and and to bring you into a place of action.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

I I would like to follow up on that with one thing, which is that Julie just said education, education, education. Yes, I would agree with that in the sense that it's important for people to understand what the toxins and plastics are doing to our bodies. And yes, it's important for people to understand that there's free money out there and there are organizations that are dedicated to doing what Clean Water Action and Plastic Free Restaurants are doing. That said, five years ago when I started this and I was trying to figure out when I started Plastic Free Restaurants, and I was trying to figure out how it should work and what it should do. I was pretty determined that it would not be first and foremost, or really at all, an education and advocacy organization, because I found a lot of nonprofit organizations doing that, many of them in the plastic space. And yet, here we are, 2025. We make more plastic and consume more plastic than ever before in the history of mankind. So clearly, the education and advocacy by themselves are not turning the tide. Do people know in their gut, in their heads, plastic is bad? Yeah, probably most of them do. Are they doing anything about it? By and large, they are not. So yes, education in the sense that it's important for people to realize that there are resources out there and that this really is poisoning your body. Yes, that's important. But the finger wagging, like, we shouldn't throw this in a landfill, I people just don't care. And maybe the single greatest moment I've ever had in giving a presentation in any kind of organization or school board or anything else was actually at my own kids' school board meeting when I threw out there the statistic that came about in a study released, I think, in January of this year, that found that more than 100,000 nanoparticles of plastic enter your body from drinking a half-liter bottled water, a half liter store-bought bottled water. When you drink that, you are putting more than a hundred thousand nanoparticles of plastic in your body. And I threw that out there to school board meeting, and there was literally a school board member drinking out of one of those bottles. As I said it, she just kind of went down in front of her and like, oh, maybe I don't want to drink that after all. It's a nice moment. Yeah, I mean, you gotta you gotta people get people to wake up. When I talk to school boards now, the environment has nothing to do with it. That is 100% of why I founded this organization. I care about the environment. Most people at school board meetings don't really care about the environment. It's not why they're there. Their eyes roll back on their heads. But if you lead with we're poisoning your children, that tends to get their attention. And if you follow that up with you're going to save money, school board, if you switch to reusables, suddenly they're very much paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah, and I want to piggyback on what John says on what John just said, because not only are you drinking a hundred thousand nanoparticles of plastic when you open that plastic water bottle, but I also want to talk about the manufacture of it. The statistic that I throw out that that causes people, you know, just to be completely blown away is that 50% of all plastic ever produced. So in the history of plastic, since the birth of plastic, since plastic became a thing, 50% of all plastic ever produced has been produced since the year 2000. So half of all of the plastic has happened in the last 25 years. So the proliferation of plastic is really the main issue here. And and yes, education from my perspective is when I do talk to those decision makers, when I am at their door, when you know, when we are having this conversation, it's like, look, this isn't, I'm just not, I'm not here as an environmentalist. I'm here as somebody that wants to support your business. I'm here as somebody who wants to save you money. I'm here as somebody who wants to make your food healthier for the people that are eating it.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

And our our single biggest partner outside of Rethink Disposable is an organization called Center for Environmental Health, which is purely focused on health. It's focused on avoiding toxins. And so they've been a great partner with us at schools in helping us identify and flip and recruit schools to stop poisoning kids with polypropylene forks and polyethylene-lined cups and polystyrene foam trays.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah. And I think there's an intersection of what you both are saying. But before we hop off, I'm wondering if there's anything else you want to leave listeners with.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Well, we said this a little bit already, but just to reiterate that go to your principal, go to your school board, go to your favorite restaurant, go to your university procurement office, talk to them about this stuff, be the squeaky wheel in that sense. Uh, you know, that's that's important. You may hit a brick wall, you may not get anywhere. But if you do, try a different angle. Try it. If the principal won't listen, go to the nutrition services director. If the school board won't listen, go to the superintendent. Try a try another door.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

I usually encourage people to take, you know, at one time before the pandemic, uh, in in the before times, Starbucks used to, I mean, their whole line of reusable cups was so that you bring your cup in and they fill your cup that was, you know, manufactured by them. You know, start doing that again. Start asking your your local coffee shop, hey, can I bring my reusable in and will you fill that? Um, talk to your local restaurants. I've I've actually brought mason jars into my local restaurants. And if they want to give me a styrofoam takeout, I go, no, that's okay. I'm just gonna put it in my own container. Thanks so much. You know, so I mean, don't be shy about bringing your own containers. Don't be shy about your reusables. Don't be shy about and and if you're going to fairs and festivals, one thing that, you know, we keep pushing, and it's top of mind for me because I just went to the Renaissance fair here in Northern California, reusable, you know, water refill stations. You know, encourage people coming to your festivals to bring their own water bottle and then provide them with a water refill station. It's not expensive, it's an easy thing to do, and it's uh and it makes all the difference in the world in in even your own fair or festival or or whatever space. You know, it's a little bit harder with restaurants and your takeout stuff because you've got health department issues and you know, those kinds of things. But I have definitely taken reusables and put my takeout in my own reusables. So there's small actions, there's stuff that you can do at home, you know, eliminate plastic at home, eliminate Teflon at home, eliminate, you know, eliminate those things that are uh that are poisoning your bodies and poisoning your children's bodies and pointing, poisoning your parents' bodies if you're you know somebody that's a caregiver. It just it's an endocrine disruptor. It's in this UCSF. I'll just share this one thing with you because I think that it's really kind of crazy. Um, it actually will cause, and I'm taking that from right here, it will actually cause cellular shifts in your body. Oxidative chemical stress. Research suggests that microplastics cause an increase in chemicals called ROS. If not neutralized, these reactive molecules can damage DNA proteins and other vital parts of the cell. So, I mean, you're talking about respiratory systems, you're talking about your reproductive systems, you're talking about all of your systems. This these microplastics can rewire in inside of your body. So it is an incredibly important thing to do plastics reduction, and not just for environmental reasons, but also for health reasons and also for, you know, for your community, for your kids. Trash reduction is never a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

One of the pages on Plastic Free Restaurants website is resources, and there's a section for consumers and just a list of places where you can get plastic-free items like band-aids, crayons, deodorant, dishes for kids, dishwasher detergent, flour deliveries, hair ties, laundry detergent, lunch boxes, shampoo, sunscreen, toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. All plastic free. So real easy steps to do stuff in your own home too.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Those are great resources to connect with. And yeah, I think the knowing the realities of how harmful plastics are, not just for the environment, but to our health, Julie, like like you were saying. And I also just want listeners to not feel a bit more overwhelmed by all of this because I think sometimes that's a lot of what we're hearing, and just really highlighting that reduction. And that can mean starting with like a 5% change can make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

And we're not, you know, let me let me also be clear. We use plastic-free restaurants for the silverware and plates and you know, and things like that. But there are things in restaurants where, you know, there are restaurants that use melamine. There are restaurants that use the clear plastic or sometimes colored plastic cups. While those aren't great and they're not our first recommendation, reuse is the key, right? That's the floor is reusable. And then, you know, you can graduate up to better reusables versus worse reusables or whatever. So I want to get away from people thinking it's all or nothing, right? It's it's reuse first. And then, you know, the better reuse products of stainless and glass and ceramics and and and things like that. But if you can't make that change right away, it's really more about not getting something that you're just going to throw away. It's really about getting something that you can reuse.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

John and Julie, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your expertise and resources that are out in the community. You obviously have a wealth of knowledge and you're available for people that might want to make this transition at either their own school or their own business or in their community. Again, info will be within the show notes. And if you haven't already, please leave a review. Let us know what you thought of this episode, and bye everyone. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Rooted in Intention. Until next time, and remember to keep showing up for the life, relationships, and community you want. Now go grow the life you want from the roots up.