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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, listeners, we conclude our fifth anniversary Earth Week experiment. Our Brian Lehrer Show Plastics Challenge. Fifth anniversary because we first did this in 2019. On Monday, we invited you to challenge yourselves to notice how many times you encounter single-use plastics all week, and which ones do you think would be the easiest, or hardest to avoid.

What did you notice? Time to report back. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Did anyone write down the plastics you used? Keep mental notes. Was there anything that really surprised you? What did you find out? Especially, if you haven't done this exercise with us before. Did anyone physically hang on to your single-use plastics this week? How big did that pile get? 2212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Call in or text and just name one, or a few of the single-use plastics that you either can't avoid, or successfully avoid in your life already, and anything you have changed personally at any time, or have had trouble changing. 212-433-WNYC. If you weren't new to this this week, and just want to report on your observations about single-use plastics in your life, and your attempts to minimize them, that's okay, 212-433-9692.

Joining us again to wrap up The Brian Lehrer Show Plastics Challenge is Judith Enck, Founder of Beyond Plastics, an initiative that works on plastic pollution issues. She's also a professor at Bennington College, and former EPA Region 2 Administrator, meaning, she ran the Federal Environmental Protection Agency for New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and eight Native American nations, that's what comprises EPA Region 2. Judith, welcome back.

Judith: Oh, I'm so happy to be with you. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: I'll put mine on the table first. Few things I noticed, and some of these observations aren't new, but I noticed them again, and most of them are obvious, but garbage bags. I'll ask you in a minute if there's any way around that every few days. Lots of single-use plastics and things ordered for delivery. In one case, when I ordered a meal, and in one case when I ordered a product, both came with the outermost layer being a plastic bag that would presumably be used just once.

Lots of kitchen uses in addition to garbage, like a freezer bag, where the bag gets soiled enough by the food. That one I actually have eliminated in my life, but I noticed from the time that I did, I still have some freezer bags in my cabinet. Oh, yes, freezer bags. If you don't want to freeze something else in it, because it gets too dirty, it's a single-use bag.

I'll say, I went to a Yankee game last weekend, and I saw the drinks come in plastic cups that, in most cases, get left behind at the person's seat. That's probably thousands of single-use plastic cups after every game, because I don't think I saw even a recyclable symbol on the bottom of those cups. That's presumably thousands in every game in every stadium. Those are a few of mine. Listeners, how about yours? You want to jump in on any of those, Judith?

Judith: Sure. First, I want to say, we don't have to be perfect, because it's impossible to avoid plastics until we adopt new laws that drive innovation and change, which is pending in Albany. I don't have a good answer for you on the garbage bags, and you can get them made from recycled content. If you compost, your garbage won't smell as much. I do want to talk about the Yankees cup.

The New York City Council recently adopted a law with tremendous leadership from Eric Goldstein at Natural Resources Defense Council, that now allows New Yorkers to bring their own refillable containers, your own water bottle, for instance, into large stadiums. Who likes to waste money buying bottled water? I won't make the same case for beer, but you can bring your own cup now to big stadiums. That should be taking effect soon.

On the meal delivery front, boy, is that a challenge, especially, during COVID, people ordered out a lot. We wanted to support local businesses, restaurants. New York City has a law in place and other places should adopt it called Skip the Stuff, where you do not automatically get plastic utensils, and straws, and condiments unless you specifically ask for it. I think a much better piece of information for people is there are small businesses popping up.

One that comes to mind right away is called DeliverZero. If the restaurant is enrolled with DeliverZero, you can get your food delivered in reusable packaging, and then it gets returned to the restaurant, DeliverZero arranges to pick it up. It's washed and sanitized, and used hundreds of times. I think that is the future for food delivery. We've got to get the big apps like Uber Eats and Grubhub to embrace reusable packaging. People in New York City now have that option at select restaurants.

Brian Lehrer: That is good information on some choices that people can actually make, even though we know, and it's happened to me, that you purposely don't check that you want the plastic utensils. You're not supposed to get them, unless you asked for them, since that law went into effect in New York, and then you get them anyway.

Judith: It's going to take time. Talk to the restaurant, you can even-- That's a violation of law if they automatically give you the utensils and the condiments. we have the utensils at home, if you're eating at home. Talk to the restaurant and then report the violations through 311.

Brian Lehrer: Alice in the East Village, I think is trying to really go as far as she can go on this. Alice, you're on WNYC with Judith Enck. Hi, there.

Alice: Hi. Thanks. I compost in two ways. I put the vegetable in the Union Square Compost, and then the other, I put in the boxes that they have outside. I take glass to reuse places. I wash out plastic bags, and I never buy garbage bags, because the garbage, I just use the bag from the kitty litter, and the kitty litter is all flushable. To me, it's not that hard. I don't understand it. I bring containers to places, and if they won't use them, I often don't go there. I don't support them.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for all of that. I heard you react, Judith, to that garbage bag option. Do you have to have a cat? [laughs]

Judith: No, but I think the key on the garbage bag issue is, if you compost, your garbage is not going to get that wet and smelly. You can use any kind of paper bag for garbage. It doesn't have to be a giant plastic bag.

Brian Lehrer: Good one. I'm going to play a clip from after your appearance on Monday show, when we were setting up the Plastic Challenge, because after you were on, we got a caller who really got a little scared about one of the things that you said about heating up plastics, that is food that comes in microwavable plastic bags. Let's take a listen to what Rob in Randolph, New Jersey was concerned about.

Rob: One thing that Professor Enck said that really threw a chill through me was the, not using plastic inside the microwave. I buy these green beans that are coming in a feed-in bag. I'm wondering how bad that really is, and how much damage I'm doing to my health, and the health of my family.

Brian Lehrer: Judith, I couldn't answer his question, because I'm not a scientist in this realm. You didn't mention specifically the leaching from plastics that are used in closing microwaveable vegetables. Do you have a take?

Judith: Oh, I sure do, and I appreciate this call. Heat can increase the leaching of chemicals from plastics, and 16,000 different chemicals are used in a variety of different plastics. I really want your listeners to understand that it's a mistake to put plastics in the microwave. I'm talking about plasticizers, which make plastic more flexible and durable. One of the most common is something called phthalates which is linked to a number of health problems even at low levels.

Phthalates have been linked to increased risk of cancer, diabetes, reproductive disorders, neurological impairments. I am not saying that if you microwave your green beans, so the green beans are healthy, that you're going to have that health impact. I am saying that phthalates, even at low levels, have been connected to these health problems. Look, many years ago I used to put easy, quick microwaveable dinners in the microwave, and it tasted like plastic, and that's when I stopped doing it. I really want to emphasize that heat can increase the leaching of chemicals. Don't put any plastic in the microwave.

That also applies to any kind of bags for roasting, or for steaming, do not heat those bags, either in the microwave, or just in boiling water. Particularly, if it's something that you eat a lot, some chemical leaching is not good for you ever, but if it's once a year versus once a week, that's something you really need to pay attention to. I think on Monday I mentioned avoid microwavable popcorn, because the inside is coated with PFAS chemicals that also leach.

Brian Lehrer: Should your friends at your old employer, the Environmental Protection Agency do studies and risk assessments of things like green beans in microwavable bags to see how much health risk there actually is? I don't know if it's been quantified based on your answer.

Judith: It would be helpful if the EPA, or other regulatory agencies did that, particularly the FDA, but there is enough independent science that links particularly problems with phthalates, and all the illnesses I rattled off, I haven't seen anything that says, "Okay, if you microwave plastic once a month, once a week, what is the health outcome?" We definitely don't need to wait that long to know that it is not a good thing to be doing.

Brian Lehrer: We are with Judith Enck, the Founder of the group Beyond Plastics. As we wrap up our fifth anniversary, Brian Lehrer Show Plastics Challenge for this Earth Week 2024, fifth anniversary, because we first did this in 2019, where we invite you to notice the single-use plastics in your life during the week, and call in with what you noticed, and Judith's commenting on ways to reduce them.

We're going to get into a little more of the politics as we go. I'm going to ask you about a plastics industry commercial, Judith, I don't know if you've seen it--

Judith: Oh, I've seen it many times.

Brian Lehrer: [crosstalk] for the moment. On MSNBC of all places, that I saw this morning, so we're going to get to that, but first we're going to get to Michael in Manhattan. Michael, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Michael: Hi, Brian. I have become aware of, and I actually took Judith's class, and mentioned this at some point. Prescriptions in America in 1922, there was 6.7 billion prescriptions filled. If I have to assume that the majority of them were delivered in the orange plastic bottles that I think everyone's familiar with, and they're made from number 5 plastic, that polypropylene juice. Is that correct?

Judith: Correct.

Michael: It's not easily recycled. It often contains a lot of additives like lead and cadmium, and it's thrown into landfill. In Europe, I had a friend who moved to Europe recently, and I asked him to look into their method of delivering prescriptions. He sent me back a cardboard box, which contained blister packs of pills. You just pushed them out as you needed them.

Not only the added benefit was that on the top of the cardboard box, the medication, and I can't tell what else was put in [unintelligible 00:14:05] I tried to start something called Stop The Orange Menace. I actually put up an email stop.orange.menace. I don't know, I went out on Earth Day and I gave out papers asking people to write to their Congress people about this and-

Brian Lehrer: Michael, I-

Michael: -find solutions in this country.

Brian Lehrer: I want to jump in for time and get Judith to respond on these number 5 orange prescription plastic bottles.

Judith: Yes, we are contacted a lot on this. Thanks for the plug for my class, which is available online to auditors. The orange menace thing could apply to a number of problems in the United States these days, but, yes, it's billions of these little orange number 5 plastics. In most communities, you can't recycle it. I've spoken to my own pharmacist and said, "Can you at least have a drop-off recycling program?" She said, "No."

Interestingly, I was just contacted by a company recently that is manufacturing aluminum prescription bottles made from recycled material, and when you're done, you just pop it in your recycling bin like any other aluminum. I asked the guy a bunch of questions. He said it is FDA-approved. He worked in the pharmaceutical industry for decades, and was appalled by the volume of plastics used by pharmaceutical companies.

I'm not endorsing a particular company here, but I do want to tell you I heard from this company called Pillumina, P-I-L-L-U-M-I-N-A, and they say that they are ready to get into pharmacies, and customers need to ask for it, so that might be an option. Pill bottles are complicated because you have FDA regulations, so it's not covered by packaging reduction laws that we're working on, but I'm encouraged that at least one big company is giving us an alternative to plastic pill bottles.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you for your call. Let me go through a couple that came in via text message about things that people noticed this week in the Plastics Challenge, or things that they're citing as difficult to get rid of. Listener writes, "The Plastic Challenge made me very aware of the huge number of scrubby kitchen sponges we go through, and how we know it's time to throw them out when they start to shed microplastics into our water, cookware, and bodies, presumably." Listener writes, "We just cannot find a comparable sustainable alternative that's as durable, flexible, and effective as the traditional sponge." Thought about that.

Judith: Yes, that's a problem. Again, we don't have to be perfect. There are zero waste stores and refill stores popping up all over New York City in the country. Some of these stores offer equivalent sponges that are not made from plastic, do not shed microplastics. I often will also sometimes just use clean rags, and throw the rags into the laundry.

When you have stubborn pans like I'm sadly multitasking, and have been known to burn dinner from time-to-time, you really do need something that has some power to it. Steel wool and I have seen in my supermarket, like metals scrubbies, not plastic, and they-- Well.

Brian Lehrer: Alternative. Listener rights in response to Michael's call on the pill bottles, "CVS and Rite Aid have take-back boxes. You can drop off unused medication along with the plastic bottles." That doesn't tell us that they actually recycle those plastic bottles, or reuse them-

Judith: Right.

Brian Lehrer: -but at least you can drop them off instead of putting them in your waste stream. A number of the texts, a lot of texts that we're getting have to do with how food is packaged. Berries, lettuce greens. One listener writes, "Get mushrooms out of plastic." What about all of that? We also have a question about these very thin-- That text is already gone from my screen, but I'll summarize it. These kind of very thin, what appear to be plastics, but are they even plastics, that sometimes lettuce and things like that come in, in the supermarket, but supposedly, they're degradable.

Judith: Yes. Not long ago, we could get all of our lettuce and our greens with no packaging at all. You still can in many stores. The stores are really, in terms of product positioning, the first thing you see, if you want greens, I call them plastic coffins for lettuce greens. I am concerned about storing greens in plastic for a long time.

I find it very easy to just reach for the lettuce and the greens a little further down the produce aisle that does not come in plastic coffins. While we're in that part of the supermarket, I want to say, a lot of people have questions about the thin plastic produce bags. It would be nice if some stores would give you the option of paper bags like it used to be. I bring cloth reusable bags with me, and I'm a busy, forgetful person, so I just leave bags, like collapsible bags in my purse, or in my car. I know not everyone in the Metro area drives the car to the supermarket, but if you leave it in the car, you're more likely to remember it. Then, I just toss in the reusable produce bags along with my regular bags, so I don't forget.

Brian Lehrer: One more from a text message, and then we're out of time. We can keep going on this for hours, because there are just so many single-use plastics examples that people are chiming in with, but listener writes, "I just can't kick those single-use floss picks, because I don't like regular dental floss." I'll add Judith that, I think, regular dental floss in most cases is plastic too. Plus, it's got the microplastics coating depending on the brand.

Judith: Yes, and PFAS, because that's what makes it slippery. Boy, this is a conflict with our dentist, isn't it? Our dentist tells us we have to keep flossing, and those little picks really are convenient. What I'm shocked at is, how many of them I see littered on the street. I guess the only real alternative is the water pick. Where you just you splash the water on your teeth, that's what I use, and really good brushing.

Brian Lehrer: I know my dentist recommends the water pick as-

Judith: Yes. It's expensive.

Brian Lehrer: -very effective. I don't know that, that means don't floss, but I know they recommend it.

Judith: It probably doesn't. You're going to get calls from dentists, I guarantee you. I tend to use the water pick more than flossing. I will floss if I have like a very large seed in my teeth that I can't get rid of.

Brian Lehrer: I said I was going to ask you about the plastics industry TV campaign. I saw a commercial this morning, as I was taking in some news and comment on Morning Joe on MSNBC. There was a commercial from plastic something.org. I didn't catch it, but it was an industry association. It was all about the great ways that the plastics industry is developing new, more recyclable forms of plastic, so that we can have lots of convenience in our lives, and it'll be good for the environment. Would you like a little rebuttal time to that?

Judith: Yes. Especially since I don't have the millions of dollars to counter program. I think the plastics industry knows that people have serious concerns about the proliferation of plastic. They've gone on a public relations offensive. I did hear yesterday, in the last three months, they spent about $600,000 just advertising on social media. I don't know the cost of their ad buy. It's a very misleading ad. I see it all the time. It ruins my evening.

The reality is, plastic recycling is only 5% to 6%, because by design, most plastics are not recyclable. Keep recycling your paper, metal, glass, and cardboard. Let's be honest about the failure of plastics recycling. Then, the other thing I think they're alluding to is the new public relations push of something called chemical recycling, which is even worse.

I think we're seeing the ads a lot in New York because Assembly Member Deborah Glick and Senator Pete Harckham are very close to passing a comprehensive packaging reduction law that would require 50% reduction in plastic packaging over 12 years. Lots of information on that on our website. We're doing a lobby day in rally in Albany on May 14th. You're all invited. I think there's probably a heavier push in the New York market than other parts of the country.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe you should clarify, and by the way, I'll throw in that in response to the person with the plastic scrubby sponges. A few people have written, "I use a cloth dish rag and it can work really well." Just saying to that listener, at least a few people are saying that. On what you just said, and we have 30 seconds left. Some plastics, even when they actually get recycled, when we put them in the recycle stream, some plastics are recyclable, some are not recyclable. Even some with numbers on the bottom are not recyclable locally. Can you give us a 30-second quick course on that?

Judith: Yes. Typically, only number 1 and number 2 are recycled, but unfortunately, a lot of them are exported to other countries where it creates problems. I want to mention tomorrow there's a screening of a wonderful film called The Story of Plastic, which talks about how the US is exporting so much plastic to other countries.

This is a screening tomorrow at the Queen's Botanical Garden at two o'clock, part of the Climate Arts Festival. This is an Emmy-awarded movie that looks at places like Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and now Turkey and Africa, where the US is exporting a lot of plastics, and creating profound problems in those countries.

Brian Lehrer: Nice. At Queen's Botanical Garden, and then you can walk around, and see the plants and the flowers, which is actually-- Two o'clock.

Judith: Two o'clock. Go, go. It's going to be amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Fantastic time of year to go to the Botanical Gardens too. Judith Enck, Founder of Beyond Plastics, and Professor at Bennington College, and former EPA Region 2 administrator covering New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and eight native American nations. Judith, thank you for participating again in helping to guide our fifth anniversary, Brian Lehrer Show Plastics Challenge.

Judith: With pleasure. Thank you.

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