Author Archives: David Evans

Sea levels may be rising, but Ana Teresa Fernández and her bucket brigade are doing what they can to combat it.Forming a 200-yard human chain on Ocean Beach, they drew 170 gallons out of the surf, hauled the sloshing saltwater off the beach and up to the old Cliff House restaurant, where it was carried into the dining room and muscled up a ladder to be poured into seven clear cylinders, all six-feet tall.

Air Date: Week of November 5, 2021

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Some cement factories are collecting plastic waste from consumer goods businesses and landfills to use as fuel to fire their kilns, posing the risk of polluting air with toxic chemicals. (Photo: Xopolino on Wikimedia Commons)
This week, Host Bobby Bascomb talks with Peter Dykstra, an editor at Environmental Health News, about the public health hazards of cement kilns burning plastic waste as a source of fuel. And in California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography is building a 32,000-gallon simulated ocean to study the effects of climate change. Also, a trip back in time to November 1492 when native peoples introduced Christopher Columbus and his expedition to maize, which became a major food staple across the globe.

Transcript

BASCOMB: It’s time for a trip now Beyond the Headlines with Peter Dykstra. Peter’s an editor with Environmental Health News, that’s ehn.org, and DailyClimate.org. Hey there, Peter, what do you have for us this week?
DYKSTRA: Hi, Bobby. There’s an investigative story from Reuters. They’ve looked into cement kilns, cement kilns are everywhere, especially in booming cities in the developing world. They’re responsible for 7% of all the greenhouse gases emitted. So that’s a huge chunk. And right now, those cement kilns are looking for a new source of fuel to fire up the kilns and they’ve hit upon plastic waste. And that can be a bigger problem than any problem they may be solving.
BASCOMB: Hmm. Well, that makes sense. I mean, plastic is made with fossil fuels. So it’s, you know, pretty energy rich and there’s so much plastic waste out there. It’s free, or maybe even in some places might pay to have it, you know, burned like that. But of course, you know, it’s not too good for air quality now, is it?
DYKSTRA: Right, and there are consumer firms that are funding projects to send their plastic trash to cement plants. It’s a dangerous idea, given the amount of carcinogenic fumes that exists in those plastics, now burning straight, from, in many cases, the developed world to the developing world, to all of our lungs.

Cement factories are burning plastic to fire up massive cement kilns like the one pictured here. (Photo: LinguisticDemographer on Wikimedia Commons)

BASCOMB: Yeah, I mean, looking at things like dioxins, heavy metals, carcinogens. I mean, it’s pretty, pretty toxic stuff.
DYKSTRA: And it’s been said that burning plastics in cement kilns doesn’t help lessen the landfill problem. It simply transfers the landfills from being on the ground to in the skies.
BASCOMB: Well, that certainly is a big problem. Well, what else do you have for us this week Peter?
DYKSTRA: It’s kind of a weird sci-fi sort of project. The Scripps Institute out in San Diego is building a 32,000 gallon tank that has a wind tunnel on top of it. And with all that, they hope to synthesize what happens in the ocean, and how the oceans can affect climate change.
BASCOMB: How will they do that?
DYKSTRA: There are wind currents brought in, water currents introduced mechanically into this tank, and we’ll see what happens as climate change begins to alter both wind and wave and current patterns. It’ll give a little bit more of an insight as to what lies ahead in our future, as climate change really takes hold in our oceans.

The surface layer of the ocean can tell scientists a lot when looking at climate change. That is one aspect researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography will study in their simulated ocean. (Photo: NOAA on Wikimedia Commons)

BASCOMB: So they can simulate climate change in this pool and sort of speculate what we’re going to be looking at then.
DYKSTRA: Right, and thanks for using the word pool because 32,000 gallons sounds like a lot, but it’s actually about 5% of what it takes to fill in a competition sized Olympic swimming pool.
BASCOMB: So it’s really not all that big then. It’s amazing what they can do in such a small space.
DYKSTRA: It is. Scientists can have fun with it and can give us some information that’ll help guide us through a particularly dangerous time in our environmental future.
BASCOMB: Indeed, well, what do you have for us from the history books this week?
DYKSTRA: November 5, 1492. And we all know what happened in 1492. Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And on his subsequent stop to the Bahamas, Columbus went to Cuba in early November, and he was introduced to maize. That corn was brought back to Europe and has since become a global staple for both humans and livestock.
BASCOMB: Well, yeah, there’s so much to that. I mean, that the Columbian Exchange brought tomatoes and potatoes to Europe. I mean, imagine Italian food without tomatoes, but before that, they made do I guess.

Maize has become a food staple around the world after it was introduced from the New World to the Old World in 1492. (Photo: Balaram Mahalder on Wikimedia Commons)

DYKSTRA: And even though Columbus was a tip of the spear, coming from Europe, in the genocide of native peoples in the West, one other thing that was a gift so to speak, from North America to Europe was of course, tobacco. So it’s feed ya and kill ya, Mr. Columbus.
BASCOMB: All right. Well, thanks Peter. Peter Dykstra is an editor with Environmental Health News. That’s ehn.org and DailyClimate.org. We’ll talk to you again real soon.
DYKSTRA: Okay, Bobby. Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.
BASCOMB: And there’s more on these stories on the Living on Earth website. That’s loe dot org.
 

Links
Reuters | “Trash and Burn: Big Brands Stoke Cement Kilns with Plastic Waste as Recycling Falters” WIRED | “This Groundbreaking Simulator Generates A Huge Indoor Ocean” Read more about the Columbian Exchange

“My girlfriend tells me I smell like trash,” says Colin West. And he takes that as a compliment.
West spends 40 to 60 hours a week scuba diving Lake Tahoe to locate and remove submerged trash. On the day I spoke with him, he and a group of divers had collected 576 pounds of underwater garbage, including a massive monster truck–style tire. And since launching the nonprofit Clean Up the Lake in 2018, West and his team of ten full-time employees and contractors, plus an army of trained volunteers, have picked up more than 18,000 pounds of refuse. 
Their latest mission? To complete the first circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe via scuba diving, with each dive focused on removing waste. As the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, West dives for trash three days per week, ten to 12 hours each dive, alongside a crew of Clean Up the Lake employees and volunteers.  
The group’s Tahoe initiative launched in 2020; it’s supported by local sponsors like Tahoe Blue Vodka and the Tahoe Fund and will cover the waterway’s 72-mile circumference. It’s among the largest litter-removal efforts ever for the lake, and it couldn’t come at a better time. While lauded for its bright-blue beauty, Lake Tahoe’s deep-water clarity has plummeted by 30 percent from 1968 to 1997, according to the EPA. In 2019, scientists also found microplastics in Lake Tahoe’s water for the first time—a fact that’s particularly troubling given that the lake is a major drinking water source for Nevada communities.
Even with forces out of their control—the 221,000-acre Caldor Fire in fall 2021 and severe droughts impairing water access—West anticipates his crew will complete the circumnavigation this December. Along the way, Clean Up the Lake has done much more than rid Tahoe of litter. West is giving legs to a budding “give back while getting outside” movement: trash diving. (Think plogging but fully underwater.)
Trash collection isn’t new to the world of scuba. Since 2011, divers have removed more than 2 million pieces of marine debris through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors’ (PADI) Dive Against Debris program, a global scuba initiative to remove and log submerged litter, says Kristin Valette Wirth, PADI chief brand and membership officer.
In recent years, though, diving for waste has expanded inland to the country’s best-loved yet increasingly polluted lakes. West alone has received approximately 600 applications from interested scuba volunteers around Lake Tahoe. The Great Lakes also have trash divers tackling the region’s growing water-contamination concerns. These lakes, which make up more than 20 percent of the planet’s surface freshwater, are polluted with 22 million pounds of plastics each year, largely from local watersheds and shorelines.
(Photo: Professional Association of Diving Instructors)
Lake Tahoe and the Great Lakes may lack the colorful corals and enchanting marine life of the oceans, but these under-the-radar dive locales offer two main allures: mind-blowing geology and rarely seen shipwrecks. The Great Lakes alone boast more than 6,000 sunken ships.
“We have the best shipwreck diving in the whole world, hands down,” says Chris Roxburgh, one of the Great Lakes’ best-known divers. Roxburgh, a master electrician in Traverse City, Michigan, reached local diving fame through his jaw-dropping photos of Great Lakes wrecks. This fall, he appeared on the History Channel’s Cities of the Underworld to share this wreck beauty with the world.
Social media helps Roxburgh and dozens of area divers showcase the hidden wonders of Great Lakes scuba while illustrating the severe plastic plight lurking below the surface. Roxburgh’s home waterway, Lake Michigan, receives roughly half of all of the Great Lakes plastic pollution. With everything the Great Lakes have given him, both recreationally and professionally, Roxburgh now feels responsible for protecting and future-proofing these waterways. He shares footage of submerged Mylar balloons, wrappers, toys, and soda cans to inspire followers to get involved.
“Since I was a kid, my parents taught me to leave no trace and clean up trash along the beaches and underwater, so it’s something I’ve been doing my whole life,” he says, noting that local wreck-diving fame has given him a platform to fight for the lakes he loves. “I felt like I needed to put [content] out there to show people they can make a difference. Especially scuba diving. We get the trash people can’t get to.”
(Photo: Chris Roxburgh)
Some area divers, like “Diver Don” Fassbender of Great Lakes Scuba Divers and Lake Preservation Club, host trash-diving meetups in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Roxburgh typically goes with a small, hand-selected group, due largely to the liability and dangers, which are increased by the often-required clunky drysuits.
“If you don’t do it properly, your trash bag can get snagged, and it can become entangled in your equipment,” Roxburgh says. “The main thing is to not collect too much to the point it makes the dive unsafe. Always have a plan on how much you’re willing to collect safely, and don’t have ropes or strings floating about.”
Diving Lake Tahoe comes with its own unique risks. It’s the second-deepest lake in the world (1,600 feet) and sits at an altitude of around 6,200 feet above sea level. These elements make for tricky dive safety, and that’s before adding the variable of collecting garbage. West says Clean Up the Lake requires volunteers to have “at least advanced open-water certification with five recent dives.” Each new volunteer goes through rigorous preparation. So far, his team has selected and trained just under 100 volunteers. 
“They need to be comfortable when working in a team underwater, because we’re down there working,” he says. Each team of divers—two scuba, one freediving near the surface—follows GPS coordinates. The scuba divers take mesh bags to pick up small trash along the way and use custom hand signals with the freedivers if they stumble upon something heavy that requires a weighted rope system.
Then there’s the fact that they’re diving well beyond summer to meet that December 2021 goal. “The winters get f-ing cold, and the lake gets really cold, even in a drysuit,” West says.
(Photo: Chris Roxburgh)
Divers alone aren’t going to clean up 22 million pounds of Great Lakes plastic. And a 72-mile circumnavigation may rid Lake Tahoe of debris—they’ve already removed 8,000 pounds of trash through this circumnavigation initiative—but it’s not going to fix the main Tahoe pollutants: fertilizers and urban stormwater runoff.
Is the risk of trash diving worth the reward? Yes, says Meagen Schwartz, who studied environmental science at Indiana University and founded Great Lakes Great Responsibility (GLGR), a volunteer movement to de-litter the region’s coasts and waterways. GLGR’s newest push, the #GreatLakes1Million challenge, calls on area residents to gather and record litter, then share their work on social media to catalyze local communities. The goal is to pick up 1 million pieces of waste; they’ve collected 90,000 since November 2020. 
Schwartz lives in Alpena, Michigan, home to one of the region’s most vibrant dive spots: Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which boasts nearly 100 historic shipwrecks. While she doesn’t dive herself, Schwartz says trash divers have been instrumental not just to her movement, but to the plastic problem plaguing waterways around the world.
“They’re on the front lines. They’re seeing what’s in the more benthic region [the bottom] of the lake,” Schwartz says. “It’s also about raising awareness about the plastic problem. People can make individual changes, but it really needs to come from putting different legislation in place.”
Schwartz plans to use those 1 million pieces of inventoried trash to fight for change upstream, including data-driven petitions for new, more sustainable legislation. West hopes to do the same; Clean Up the Lake already has hard data from more than 80 categories of collected trash to showcase main pollutant sources and systemic problems.
Making real change is no pipe dream, and PADI’s Dive Against Debris program is proof of that. Take the small island nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific as a case study. In 2018, Vanuatu decided to ban nonbiodegradable plastic bags, largely based on Dive Against Debris data. The trickle-down effect was monumental.
“Vanuatu no longer required bags to be shipped there, reducing the country’s overall carbon footprint,” says PADI’s Valette Wirth, noting the removal of plastic bags sparked the need for new, sustainably made sacks. Through this community-driven microeconomy, Vanuatuan people created bags using banana and palm leaves. “Due to the success of the policy decision, Vanuatu became a champion country promoting international cooperation to tackle marine debris. This is living proof of how local action can have a global impact.”

Avril E. Wiers, Careerline Tech CenterStudents in Careerline Tech Center’s Natural Resources and Outdoor Studies program are exploring the issue of microplastics, hard plastic fragments that are smaller than 5 millimeters across.Microplastics are ingested by wildlife and can end up in our food system where they leach harmful chemicals that can cause hormone disruption and cancer.Samples were collected from six beaches along the lakeshore of Ottawa County, from Grand Haven State Park to Holland State Park, with the state park beaches having the highest concentrations of microplastics.“You don’t really notice (plastic) when you go to the beach, but when you are looking for it, there is a lot everywhere. It’s kind of sad because it’s a beautiful place,” said Eli Steigenga, a student in the program.“I was actually really surprised by the amount of small plastic I found that looked like sea shells,” added Lily DeGroot, another student.Using the data they collected, students in both the morning and afternoon sessions of the program are engaging in a civic actions project to reduce the concentrations of microplastics. The morning session is focusing their attention on nurdles, which are tiny plastic pellets that are used as a raw material for plastics manufacturing.“I was surprised by how much plastic there actually is. You don’t notice it unless you are really looking for it. The amount of nurdles is insane!” one student said.The afternoon session is focusing their efforts on increasing recycling efforts at beaches. In general, Michigan has an average recycling rate of 18 percent, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, well below the nationwide average of 32 percent.Plastic in the environment does not biodegrade; it just breaks down into smaller pieces. That’s why it’s so important for plastics to be recycled properly.“If plastic doesn’t end up on the beaches, it can’t break down to microplastics,” student Aubrey Sibble explained.Students will continue refining their civic action projects by connecting with community businesses and organizations. At the completion of the module, students will present their work and celebrate their learning.“Throughout the project-based learning module, we’ve practiced collaboration and teamwork a lot. We’ve also learned how to communicate professionally with business partners,” Ava Carnevale reflected.The project-based learning module was inspired by the Inland Seas Education Association’s Great Lakes Watershed Field Course, a professional development opportunity to include student-led stewardship actions in their classrooms.Since 2016, this workshop has created Great Lakes stewards of over 100 teachers who, in turn, inspire curiosity through student-led stewardship actions in their classrooms. For more information on the Field Course program, visit schoolship.org/glwfc.The Natural Resources & Outdoor Studies program is a one-year career and technical program designed to introduce students in Ottawa County to the diversity of careers in natural resources, sustainability, environmental science, and recreation. To find out more about program enrollment, visit oaisd.org/ctc or talk to your student’s school counselor.— Avril E. Wiers is an instructor in the Natural Resources and Outdoor Studies program at the Ottawa Area Intermediate School District’s Careerline Tech Center.About this seriesThe MiSustainable Holland column is a collection of community voices sharing updates about local sustainability initiatives.This Week’s Sustainability Framework ThemeEnvironmental Awareness/Action: Environmental education and integrating environmental practices into our planning will change negative outcomes of the past and improve our future.

Look up images of ocean pollution and you’ll find islands of plastic items like cups, plastic bags, and other single use items. But microfiber from our clothing is also accumulating throughout the environment, and especially in our oceans and freshwater. According to one 2016 report, the fibers are not only ending up in our water supply—they are found in fish and other marine life too. A 2021 study found microfibers in the stomach of a deep sea fish that lives in a remote part of the South Atlantic Ocean, highlighting just how bad the microfiber pollution is around the world. 

More than 70 percent of textiles used in the U.S. ends up dumped in a landfill or  burned instead of recycled. Threads from the washing machine or a landfill then eventually make their way to waterways. 

Enter sustainable fabrics. One company in particular, Lenzing, an Austria-based sustainable fiber producer that developed TENCEL, which are fibers that biodegrade rapidly in comparison with other regularly used fibers like polyester, creates fiber from raw material from wood. The plant base makes the fabric compostable, and materials are from a sustainably managed forest. 

[Related: The secret to longer-lasting clothes will also reduce plastic pollution.]

“We take wood from sustainable forestry and use a highly efficient system of processing all raw materials to produce fibers that are able to return to the ecosystem at the end of their life cycle”, said Robert van de Kerkhof, a member of the managing board at Lenzing Group via a press release. “The textile and non woven industries have to change. Our goal is to raise widespread awareness of major challenges such as plastic pollution.” 

The relatively easy rate of breakdown could be crucial for ocean waste if more manufacturers lean on using biodegradable materials instead of synthetic fabrics that create microfibers. Researchers with the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego tested the fibers and published a study in October highlighting how the wood-based material was able to biodegrade quickly in the ocean. 

The scientists placed clothing made from synthetic material, like polyester in seawater for more than 200 days. Over the course of the soaking period, scientists  did not observe any biofilm or biodegradation—the polyester clothes slowly broke down into plastic microfibers in the water. 

“Plastics then undergo processes of fragmentation or deconstruction into smaller pieces… “[These materials] may take anywhere from decades to centuries for most types of plastic [to breakdown’,” the study’s authors wrote. 

[Related: Bamboo fabric is less sustainable than you think.]

However, clothing made from Lenzing’s TENCEL fibers were placed in seawater for only 21 days and showed signs of breaking down in the water including a biofilm around the material as it began to degrade. 

This  TENCEL clothing did not create the same microfibers when broken down– the researchers predicted that it would break down entirely in the water within just a few months. 

The researchers pointed out that though using recycled plastic to make new clothing is a short term solution to plastic pollution, they worried that the constant introduction of plastic into the country’s waterways would only contribute more to the plastic microfibers in the environment, polluting drinking water and clogging the digestive tracts of sea animals.

“Arguably,” the authors write, “the negative impacts of microfibers accumulating in the environment may outweigh the impact that the larger plastic item could have otherwise had.”

A new, more stringent review of the environmental impacts of a massive proposed plastics plant along the Mississippi River in St. James Parish will likely take more than two years.Environmental groups are cheering that scrutiny, arguing it could provide a more realistic assessment of the environmental damage the plant would do to an area they say already bears a heavy burden of pollution. But some local government and business leaders are trying to rally support for a project that could create about 1,200 permanent jobs and pour millions of dollars into the local economy.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had already approved permits for the Sunshine Project, a $9.4 billion plastics plant that Formosa has been trying to build for three years, but it rescinded them a year ago. Environmental groups filed a lawsuit claiming the environmental study was inadequate, and the Corps acknowledged errors.Now the Corps of Engineers is conducting a more thorough review called an “environmental impact statement.” It’s only the fourth such review the New Orleans district of the Corps has conducted since 2008.Martin Mayer, the Corps of Engineers’ regulatory chief in New Orleans, said the EIS process has “an average goal” of rendering a decision in two years. It will involve multiple opportunities for public input so that no “stone goes unturned,” he said.”I mean really the goal of the EIS is to get everybody’s input,” Mayer said.The review means construction on the project won’t be starting anytime soon. The clock on that two-year estimate isn’t likely to start until the spring when a public notice is expected to be published.The Corps still needs to reach an agreement with FG LA LLC, the Formosa affiliate behind the project, on the scope of the work. FG also needs to hire a contractor to do the analysis under the Corps’ direction.’On the wrong side of history’Dubbed the “Sunshine Project” and located just downriver of the Sunshine Bridge, the plant would make pellets and other raw materials that are used to make everyday plastic products. Many state and local leaders have praised its potential economic benefits: It is expected to create 1,200 permanent jobs, thousands more temporary construction jobs and generate tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue.But the plant has triggered lawsuits and regular protests from a dedicated group of local residents and environmentalists. It has also drawn attention from out-of-state political leaders and the United Nations.Critics have claimed that Formosa’s toxic emissions would land on already overburdened Black communities, like Welcome and Romeville, in the Mississippi River corridor. They also argue it would create a massive new source of greenhouse gases at a time when much of the world is trying to fight climate change.The plant would also be built near a graveyard suspected of holding former slaves and become a major new source of the kind of disposable plastics already fouling the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico and the world’s oceans, these critics add.

As part of a series highlighting the work of young people in addressing the climate crisis, writer Patricia Lane interviews Laska Paré who creates beautiful and useful items from recycled plastic.Laska ParéLaska Paré turns coffee cup lids into soap dishes. No — she’s not a magician. This 33-year-old entrepreneur started Flipside Plastics as a circular economic enterprise, recycling plastics on Vancouver Island. Get top stories in your inbox.Our award-winning journalists bring you the news that impacts you, Canada, and the world. Don’t miss out.Tell us about your project.About $8 billion a year worth of plastic is thrown into landfills and will remain there for millennia. Flipside Plastics is a pilot project to see if we can interrupt plastic’s common life cycle of use-waste-pollute with a model of endless reuse, so it is never wasted and, therefore, never pollutes. We started very small in the spring collecting the lids of disposable coffee cups, shredding and washing them, and turning them into well-designed soap dishes. We have more orders for the soap dishes than we can fill and are now looking to scale up. What people are reading Before Laska Paré found a suitable workspace, she was teaching herself injection moulding in her condo. Photo by Jasper ParéWhat inspired you in this direction?I was distressed by the daily garbage buckets full of disposable coffee cups and lids at my previous workplace. I started a campaign, which I called “Mugshot,” encouraging my colleagues to “kill plastics” by taking a “mugshot” of themselves with their own cup. When I started my own business, I wanted to contribute to a healthier planet. Then COVID-19 hit, and we could no longer use our own cups for take-out. The waste really bothered me. Paper coffee cups can be recycled. I wondered if we could recycle lids.I needed something small to test the idea that we could remove plastic already in our economy from the waste stream. Coffee cup lids are easily washed, lightweight, and small, making the reuse process easier. With the help of a grant from the British Columbia government, I hired a small team and arranged for a volunteer to use his cargo bicycle to collect coffee cup lids from four local Victoria coffee shops. We shred and wash them and when market research revealed interest in well-designed, premium-priced soap dishes, we started to make them from recycled plastic. We are now at the sales end of the first year of our business and have a shortage of source plastic to meet the demand. Coffee shops really like these products because they are able to reassure customers concerned about plastic waste. Coffee consumers using disposable cups find them reassuring, too. Laska Paré turns coffee cup lids into soap dishes. No, she’s not a magician. This 33-year-old started Flipside Plastics as a circular economic enterprise, #recycling #plastics on Vancouver Island.  Taking a break in one of the buckets on the bike trailer used to collect the plastic coffee lids from Victoria cafes. Photo by Braedan DrouillardWhat is next?Scaling up might mean more specialization. I might outsource the collection and use recycled reusable plastic pellets. I don’t know the final products yet, as market research is underway, but there seems to be potential in things people see every day, such as coasters, high-end bath kit sets, or small pieces of multi-use furniture that would let them see a sustainable future is possible with their help.What makes your work hard?I cannot sign a standard five-year lease when I have not yet proved my concept and I must locate my machines in areas zoned for light industry. There is very little space available for small manufacturers and it is fiercely expensive. Politicians, bureaucrats, customers, and suppliers are supportive. But when the rubber hits the road, the changes are alarmingly slow. What gives you hope?My volunteers are senior business people who really believe in this concept. My staff is so passionate and driven and we are all so determined to succeed. Their tenacity is infectious. I am participating in a business accelerator program run by the federal government and that is encouraging. We will figure it out.What drew you into this work?I grew up in a small town — Strathroy, Ont. The community had a shared ethic of borrowing rather than buying, and as one of four kids in a single-earner household, we mended and made do. My mom was a genius at repurposing garage sale finds and making art out of junk. Avoiding a high-waste consumer lifestyle is part of who I am. When she is not working, Laska can be found outside adventuring … and picking up plastic waste. Photo by Jasper ParéWhat worries you?The usual uncertainties of starting a small business have been magnified by COVID lockdowns and the cost of everything skyrocketed with the breakdowns in supply chains. But these concerns are all the more reason for us to learn to stop wasting. Think of the good we could do with that $8 billion if it did not go into the landfill and pollute. Do you have any advice for young people?Trust your ideas, especially if you can’t shake them. There were lots of logical reasons for me to not do what I am doing. I kept thinking, “Someone else can do that.” But the concept just stuck to me. Here I am. I have learned so much and every day I make mistakes and learn more. My skill set is so much richer than it would have been. I am very happy.What would you like to say to older readers?Recycled products often carry a premium price, and it is tempting just to go for the cheaper option. But not paying the true cost of our stuff is one of the main ways we got into this mess. You can begin to change that now. We can either pay now or future generations will pay much more dearly.