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ICYMI: “Breaking Down Plastic”
00:39:56
Los Angeles Times journalist Susanne Rust shares her eye-opening experience documenting her daily interactions with plastic. Despite being an expert on the topic, she was stunned by the sheer volume of plastic in her life, from single-use items to everyday essentials. Susanne and Sammy also discuss the current state of plastic regulation in California, including a much-criticized decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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This is an LA Times Studios podcast.
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Hi Boiling Point listeners. I'm Mary Knoff, one of the show's producers. This week we're running an episode called Breaking Down Plastic, which features an interview between Sammy Roth and LA Times environmental reporter Suzanne Rest. Suzanne has been reporting on microplastics for a while and she is an incredible resource when it comes to understanding how they interact with the environment and our bodies. If you missed this episode when we initially aired it, then I'm excited for you to have an opportunity to listen Now. I know from my own experience that trying to limit the use of plastics in your day to day life can be really hard. I definitely am not even close to where I'd like to be, but it's conversations like these that I find really inspiring. I hope you feel the same way. Enjoy. During one of the most severe windstorms Southern California experienced in more than a decade, the Palisades and Eaton fires ignited, leaving heartbreaking losses in our communities. Now, as we build back, we're building stronger, cleaner and more resilient in communities most vulnerable to dangerous weather conditions and wildfires. Southern California Edison is placing power lines underground, hardening the electric system by installing wires with protective coating, and adding advanced technology to help keep communities safe. So when Southern California faces the next storm, the next most severe event copied helicopters structures adjacent here at Pipe Road. We'll be ready. Learn more@sce.com disasterrecovery the LA Times Festival.
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Of Books returns to the USC campus April 18th and 19th, 2026. Join us for a weekend packed with hundreds of authors, celebrities and activities for all ages. Admission is free. Learn more@latimes.com fob that's latimes.com fob.
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From the Los Angeles Times. I'm Sammy Roth. This is Boiling Point. There are some things we've been taught we can't live without. Oil to power our cars, gas stoves to cook dinner, and also plastics. Lots and lots of plastics. Plastic is made from oil, a fossil fuel. That means plastic production accelerates the climate crisis. It's no secret why we act like this stuff is normal. For decades, profitable industries have sold us a bill of goods in the same way that oil companies denied the reality of climate change and gas utilities tried to hide the fact that cooking with gas can pollute the air in our homes. Chemical companies talked up the benefits of plastic. Remember that scene from the 1967 film the Graduate where Dustin Hoffman's character has just graduated from college and he goes to a party hosted by his parents, one of their Friends comes up to and says, I just want to say one word to you. Plastics. There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Hollywood knew even then that the plastics industry was on the prowl. Right around that time, actually, the chemical company Monsanto was sponsoring the House of the Future attraction at Disneyland. Wall curves and plastic. Monsanto's House of the Future is open to the public at Disneyland. The whole thing was basically a glorified ash advertisement for plastic. A four wing plastic shell makes a snug and solid five room dwelling designed for a family of four. But as useful as plastics are, they're also dangerous. And just like oil and gas, we need to use less of them. A lot less. No journalist has a better understanding of how hard that will be than the Los Angeles Times Suzanne Rust. Suzanne spent a week trying to keep track of her plastic use. She called the exercise soul crushing. Even as an environmental journalist who writes about plastic all the time, she just couldn't believe how often she found herself interacting with it. It was in her hair clips, her grocery bags, her phone charger, her window casings. It was everywhere. And she knew that even though this plastic was useful, even though it made her life easier, it would eventually break down into tiny pieces and come back to haunt her. Describing microplastic, she wrote, it's in our bodies, our lung tissue, our blood, and in the dark, tarry first defecation of newborns. It's been discovered in the deepest recesses of the ocean and in the snow of pristine alpine peaks and meadows. It's in the wind, in the dust, in the air we breathe, and in our drinking water and food. Microplastics evaporate from the ocean and land, then get picked up by the jet stream before being deposited on on our trees, crops, rivers and lakes. Close quote. Scientists are still trying to figure out what this means for our health, but the research keeps getting scarier. As Suzanne reported last year, microplastics may be a risk factor for heart attack or stroke. Some of the chemical additives in plastics have ties to breast cancer and problems with children's brain development. Fortunately, Suzanne has some ideas of how we can get started with shaking our dependency on plastic. Suzanne is an investigative reporter on the LA Times Climate California team and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009. Suzanne, thank you very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
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Hey, thanks for having me, Sammy.
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I actually thought one of the most fascinating and of course, terrifying pieces you wrote was the one where you chronicled just how often you come into contact with Plastic in your own daily life. Can you talk about what that was like, just to sort of ground this conversation, just how often you use plastic on a day to day basis?
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Oh, yeah, it was totally an insane assignment. I got on. It was for. We were doing, you know, one of these climate inserts in the summer and I talked to an editor about, about doing my own sort of personal diary of my plastic use. And I've, I've always thought of myself as very aware of my plastic use. I try to limit it, but when I sat down and actually started documenting my interaction with plastic, it was, it was overwhelming. And I think I said in the story something along the lines of like soul sucking. It was really eye opening. I mean, I, the first thing I did was to sit down at my desk and just look at the things that were around me and everything from my computer to my phone, to my AirPods to my hair clip, to my glasses, everything is made of plastic. And that's one kind of plastic. The kinds of plastics we use over and over and over again. But as I, as I went on through the week, I realized how much single use plastic I interact with every day as well. And I think that's where I got really distressed.
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B
I think what was most remarkable for me about reading that story and seeing your reactions to that was like, oh my God, this is Suzanne Rust, who writes about plastics, like basically full time. And even she is stunned and overwhelmed by how much plastic there is. Like, even, even you didn't realize, like that says something, doesn't it?
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Yeah. And I, you know, it's funny, I mean, we could do a whole, like, conversation about psychology, but I think I had my head in the sand before I really decided to sit down and document it. You know, I would, I would go out and I thought I was making choices, but it actually wasn't until a film crew started following me around that I realized, oh my God, I'm at the grocery store right now and I'm getting salad for my family and I have to choose between a plastic box I'm going to throw away right after I use this lettuce, or get that plastic bag that's there available for me to scoop in. But there's no way I can avoid plastic here.
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I want to ask you about these lawsuits that have started to get filed by state and local government against beverage companies and against oil companies that are involved in producing the raw materials for plastics. But before we get to that, just ground us in the health impacts for a second here. What do we know or what are we starting to understand through the science and the research into plastics and microplastics and even nanoplastics, which from what I understand from your reporting, are microplastics. But even tinier.
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Yeah, some of the science is pretty old. So even back in the early 2000s, I was reporting on things like additives that are in plastics, things like bisphenol A phthalates. These are chemicals that are used in plastics to make them maybe bendy or to make them stronger or to give them color.
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And that's BPAs, right? Bisphenolase.
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Bisphenolase BPA, exactly. We know those things can behave like hormones in human bodies and animal bodies. And so very little amounts of them can actually have huge effects, just like hormones do. They can affect brain development in growing fetuses. They can do things like have small effects on genitalia. We're still trying to figure out what that's all about. But so we know about that, what we are starting to find, and this was the research of biologists, wildlife biologists, marine biologists, who started doing research 10, 15 years ago, just looking at the organisms they always do and finding what are called nanoplastics or microplastics in them. Just little pieces and shards of plastics and that sort of set off this whole motion where people started looking. Do we have these in human bodies? Right, because we're constantly exposed to plastic and we're finding that just about every organ, just about every fluid in the human body, all of our tissues have these microplastics or nanoplastics in them. And we're talking our hearts, our blood, our lungs, our brains. Anywhere you look, you find them. And so we still don't know exactly what these particles do. They could be completely benign, but I think most people's money is on probably not. When you have just a physical something, for instance, in our carotid arteries or in the, you know, vessels that move blood around the body, they could, they can be there. And we don't know what the chemical effects are or what the long term effects are, but we know they can slow the movement of, again, blood around our bodies. Scientists are trying to figure out what the effects of these microplastics and nanoplastics are. It's still new. But, you know, clearly as time goes by, we're finding more and more and more of these things in us because more and more and more plastic is being made and we're being exposed to more and more and more plastic.
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So, I mean, it sounds like it's probably a question of not whether it's bad for us and for other animals that are consuming this stuff, but a question of how bad it is.
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That's correct, Yeah.
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I mean, I just on a sort of just gut level, the idea that we've got all of these tiny plastic particles moving around inside of our tissue and inside of our blood and inside of our other fluids, I mean, it just, it makes you kind of want to squirm. I mean, it's kind of horrifying to think about.
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Absolutely. And you know, one of the things last year that came out was this business of that nanoplastics and they're able to go through that blood brain barrier.
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B
Right.
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And they're finding it in brain tissue. Like, I'm not a scientist, but, you know, my gut tells me that can't be good.
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B
I've seen this statistic before and I'm sure that some folks listening to this have before about how we each consume a credit card's worth of plastic. Where does that come from? Do you know anything about that?
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Yeah, I was just actually reading about it and I want to say it was basically we all consume, I think it's something like 5 grams of plastic per week, which is kind of like a credit card's worth of plastic per week.
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B
Per week. Okay, gotcha. So you mentioned a few minutes ago that we're just. More and more plastic is being produced, we're consuming more and more plastic. Has there been any real progress made in producing alternatives to plastic or in, I guess consumer or corporate efforts to move us away from this scourge of plastic? Or are we really just kind of stuck right now?
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A
It's debatable. There are certainly like pilot projects starting in many places trying to find like plant based materials that can be used to create plastic. So people have looked at potatoes and kelp and there's a lot of promise around those materials instead of using as. We didn't talk about this, but plastic is, comes from fossil fuels. Right. That's as a petroleum feedstock that makes most of the plastics we use. Some people are looking for alternatives, but whether those could be scaled to the same level is, I think, questionable. It's also, those kinds of plastics are expensive at this point. Right. They're very niche. And as far as I know, there are no government subsidies going toward, you know, making potato or kelp plastic at this point. But it may be something that we see growing over time as people, as people look for alternatives. But there are, even in California there are laws that are now on the book to try to reduce the amount of plastic that we use. For instance, there was this whole issue over plastic bags. In 2014, we banned them. But then it turned out that there was this loophole and we actually started creating more plastic waste as a result of these heavier plastic bags that we were getting at grocery stores. But we now have a law that's getting rid of those as well. But that did have a meaningful effect on the amount of plastic that we were seeing for a while there. So I think states, municipalities and others are trying, you know, sort of piecemeal to cut out plastics. But there's, there's been nothing really systemic yet that has, has made a difference. And in the meantime, these companies, particularly the ones that create the feedstocks to, to produce plastic, are, you know, they're trying to get out as much as they can before, before governments do start saying enough is enough. Number one, it's a health issue. Number two, it's a waste issue. We're sinking tons of money into trying to clean it up. So I do think at some point it'll come to a head. But yes, in the meantime, we are. Every year there is more plastic in the consumer marketplace.
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B
The reason I asked about are there alternatives to plastic and how can we use less plastics rather than asking about recycling is because there has been, as you've reported and as I've learned from your reporting, a lot of research and advocacy recently surrounding the fact that in a lot of ways recycling, which we've been taught for so long is one of the big solutions to plastic, has in many ways not worked. I'm hoping you can talk about that a little bit. Why has recycling not worked in the way that I guess we were promised for so long? Why is recycling not the thing that is going to get us out of this plastics mess?
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A
Well, so I think there are a few reasons. First of all, we are learning now that these companies that create plastics have known from the get go that these things were never really going to be able to be recycled. And so that is something that we're seeing in some of these lawsuits that we'll talk about just sort of the deceptive campaign. But there are mechanical and chemical reasons for that. First of all, there are several different kinds of plastic that we use in our daily lives. You have polyethylene, you have polypropylene. Some are easy to, easier to recycle than others. But there's, there's this thing about plastic that, for instance, like if you look at the water bottles or soda Bottles we use, they actually have a pretty good recycling rate, particularly in California. But you can only recycle these products once or twice before the chemical bonds break down and they can't be recycled anymore. So ultimately these things, you know, one of the, one of the promises with recycling is that it, you create this sort of circular system and that's, that's just, that's fabrication. That's, that's false when you are talking about the recycling of plastic, because again, you might be able to replast it a plastic bottle once, but you're not going to be able to do it many more times than that. And so it just becomes waste and garbage. And there was another point I was going to make there.
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B
It's the plastic in your brain. It's taking it away.
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A
Yeah, it's the plastic in my brain that's taking it away, that in old age. But the other thing is, I think I mentioned as we started this segment of the conversation, is that there are so many different kinds of plastic and some just can't be recycled. Like, I mean, you think about the films we get that flexible plastic, like maybe Saran Wrap, most of that stuff, particularly if it's used by a consumer, becomes so contaminated, whether from packaging, whether from, you know, using to wrap your piece of lasagna that you're going to eat tomorrow, that it becomes chemically impossible to recycle it. So, you know, one of the things you might, you might notice when you look at a product that you get from the grocery store is it's made of several different kinds of plastic. And when you throw that into your blue bin, I mean, nobody, there's nothing anybody can do because they're all different kinds of chemicals in that plastic, chemical foundations for each of the different kinds of plastics. And you. Nobody can recycle it, essentially.
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So this helps explain, I think, I mean, these lawsuits that we've referred to a couple times now, talk about this. Is this why you've got California now suing Exxon Mobil, which produces petroleum for plastics, and why you've got Los Angeles county suing Coca Cola and Pepsi, the world's biggest beverage companies? I mean, why. I guess explain those lawsuits. What are the claims being made here against these companies by these governments?
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A
Right. So I think in both cases there's the ultimate reason that they're both doing it is that there's been so much plastic waste generated that both the state and the city are having to figure out how to clean this stuff up, how to get rid of this waste and they, they're the ones who have to pay for it. So we, the taxpayers, have to pay for it. So they're making these lawsuits saying, you've created a public nuisance and now we all have to clean this up.
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B
Right.
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And you need to pay for it because it shouldn't be on us. But they're kind of different. So in the case of the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Bonta, and I think that was in September, that lawsuit goes after Exxon Mobil and it gets to that thing we were talking about before, that they created a. A disinformation campaign that they lied to us, essentially. And they have known for decades that the products that they were making could not be recycled. And they sold us this line that we could recycle it, right? And so we all went and bought it thinking, oh, this isn't such a bad thing, right, Because I can put it in my blue bin and it's going to become a new product. So Banta is going after. After them for that. He's also going after them for creating all these other kinds of plastics that can't be recycled. Right. It's all been. It's all been a big. A big lie, essentially. And he's also going after them for this other thing called pyrolysis, which they're saying is a new kind of advanced recycling that, you know, the mechanical maybe, maybe the mechanical recycling didn't work out as they had initially thought, but they have this new thing where they heat plastic up and, you know, break down the chemical bonds and then can be used again. And they're saying that that's completely false as well, which is. Which is what most of the research shows.
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B
So this deceptive marketing, this disinformation argument that Attorney General Bonta, the California Attorney general, is making against Exxon, that sounds like it's pretty similar to a lot of what the oil industry has been accused of, right? That for years and years you had Exxon and other big oil companies, and you've, of course, reported on this, that they knew with climate change for decades and decades, going back to the 1960s and 70s, that their products were going to be causing this greenhouse gas pollution crisis and hid that from the public or attempted to deceive the public about that and sway policy. It sounds like what the state of California is arguing is something pretty similar, right?
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A
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think one of the things I've heard people say about the plastic suit is, and I don't know if it'll help or not, I think Time has moved on since those original suits for climate change, where it's very apparent right now all of us can see climate change in front of us, but we all can see the plastic waste in front of us, which some say may make those kinds of cases easier to argue because you can see it right in front of you. Right? So, yes, they're similar that way. The second big case that we were going to talk about here also is this Los Angeles county, which has gone and sued the large beverage companies, Coca Cola and Pepsi. And so they're going after those companies for a similar argument that they deceived that these, these products could be, could be recycled. But that's sort of on the packaging level and not sort of on that fundamental level of, of fossil fuels. So that's a little bit different, but.
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B
Explain that to me. But they are, are they making an argument there having to do with deception over recyclability of plastic?
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A
Yes, they are. So like Coca Cola and Pepsi have been saying for years now that they are working toward, or they have recycled. They have, you know, 20 to 30% recycled material in their bottles. Then all this stuff gets recycled. And what Los Angeles county is saying, well, number one, that that's not true. And number two, you had been lying to us about this, telling us that this could, could all be recycled when, when, when in fact, it can't. And then they sort of argue, they go on that one, really sort of drill down on that one element that we talked about, that even if you can recycle it once, you can't recycle it more than that. And so the promise of a circular economy with these bottles is false. And once again, they've created a public nuisance that the county of Los Angeles is now having to, to deal with.
- [22:57]
B
You know, even if Pepsi and Coke are not fossil fuel companies like Exxon is, it's still hard for me not to feel like there's a thematic similarity there, because, I mean, plastic and oil and gas, they're products that even if we need to be moving away from them for, you know, for health and environmental reasons, they are both so central to our everyday lives in ways that have become unfortunate. And I mean, because these companies have made them that way. When I write about climate change and I write about the need to move away quickly from oil and gas, one of the most common responses I get from people who don't like that idea or who are skeptical is they, they kind of scold me and they say, oh, well, you know, did you drive a gasoline car Yesterday or, you know, when was the last time you traveled by airplane? And I don't know if you get this kind of response with plastic, but I'll, I'll be upfront and say, yeah, I purchased a bottle of Coke yesterday. I mean, we happened to be talking this morning. Yesterday I bought a plastic bottle of Coke, and, yeah, I enjoyed it. I drink Coca Cola. I mean, not that I don't use. I have my reusable coffee mug on my desk here, which I filled up this morning. I have my reusable water bottle next to that. It's not that I don't try to do what I can, but this stuff is kind of everywhere. And it's, you know, I guess I'm curious what you think of the balance between what can we do as consumers in this economy and what needs to happen at a larger structural, you know, institutional level and, you know, politically and with big businesses to make it easier for us as consumers to get there.
- [24:24]
A
Well, I'd say, like, I think you just hit on something, you know, when I did that diary of plastic use, right. Like, pretty upfront that, yeah, I write about plastic, but I also use plastic all the time. And I think part of the issue there is there really, it is ubiquitous. It is. You can't be living in this world today and not use plastic. So that's number one. Number two is I think consumers can do something, but there's only so much one can do. And I was talking yesterday with a, a researcher for a different article about just what the environment's going to look like under a new Trump administration. But she gave me a number which I hadn't heard before. But, but basically, if consumers who are concerned and aware about these issues will do things like, you know, bring their own bags to the store, they will maybe get an electric car. They will. Or ride their bike. But if all the consumers got together and did these, these incremental steps to try to amount of plastic that they used or fossil fuels they used, it would only have an impact of about, I think she said 20%, which is actually big, but in the grand scheme of things, not that big. Right. And that would, that would require all consumers to do it. One of the things that I think most people feel needs to happen in which California is moving along is the businesses, the fossil fuel industry, the packaging industry. Plastic is cheap, and there's very little that's gonna stop them from doing what they do unless the government steps in. I mean, consumers can do so much. But again, I mean, so they. So like you know, it's shock and awe. They're so overwhelmed, the system, we can't, we can't pull away from it. And so it does require government legislation, government laws, regulations, to start making an impact both on fossil fuels and plastic and where governments, state, municipal governments, even the federal government have stepped in. That's where you start to see differences and then, and then the marketplace responds. So I think that that may be the solution and these lawsuits are our way to, to move in that direction as well.
- [26:42]
B
I saw a shirt recently that was styled like Make America Great Again, but instead of Make America Great Again, it said make straws plastic again. Have you seen in your reporting this plastics issue become culture war fodder to that extent? Or is that sure to one off? And I guess I'm just curious what you make of that.
- [27:02]
A
I don't think it's a one off. I mean, I think this is a discussion of tribal politics. I think if you look at Project 2025, it seems like one of the big goals is to go back to a fossil fuel economy and era.
- [27:19]
B
And that's Project 25 for those who might not be familiar as the sort of Republican Party playbook for a second Trump administration, but continue.
- [27:28]
A
Yeah. So I think again, it sort of ignores the fact that the whole world is turning to like, for instance, an energy that I'm sure you follow, of course you follow this, but the world is sort of moving in a different direction. But this is, this is the whole retrograde ideology of maga, of Make America Great Again. It's to go back to a different time, a time when we all use plastic straws without feeling guilt about it, or plastic bags without feeling guilt about it. And so it has become cultural. I mean, in California, we're pretty well insulated from a lot of this, but there are states that have rules on the books that, that won't allow cities to ban plastic bags.
- [28:11]
B
Really?
- [28:12]
A
It makes kind of makes no sense, right, because there, I forget how many it is now, but there are more than a dozen states out there that have laws on the books that will not let any city ban plastic bags. And it's a, it's cultural, right? I mean, if you were to sit down and think, let's look at the, the economics of this, it wouldn't make sense. All you have to do is like, watch what's happened in California, right? Like it didn't destroy restaurants and grocery stores, like, you know, the fossil fuel industry and others said it was going to do, and we put in our plastic bag ban. And I wanted to, I just wanted to bring up one, one thing that you mentioned when you talked about your Coke bottle is I was, before we started talking, I went to look at some of the lawsuits that are, there's several anti plastic or not anti plastic, but several lawsuits around the country happening right now that are directed at whether it's packaging companies or plastic manufacturers. And there was, I believe, I think it was Buffalo where a lawsuit got to court. It was dismissed. And the reason it was dismissed was the public nuisance wasn't the bottling companies that use the plastic and sell it to consumers, it's consumers who litter. And that was the court's decision. And so it was a third party that should be blamed and that's us, the consumers who go and buy it and then maybe don't put it into the property receptacle. So it's just a, it's a strange political landscape out there. Who's abducting a hundred thousand children in China each year? And how is a cult where paedophilia, murder and torture were commonplace allowed to operate in Chile for nearly four decades? At True Crime Reports, a new video podcast from Al Jazeera, we'll investigate these stories from the global south and beyond. True crimes that often haven't reached the headlines in the West. I'm Halim oh Yudin. In each episode we'll take you to a different country. You'll hear from experts and first hand accounts from those right at the heart of these stories. True Crime Reports find us under Al Jazeera's YouTube channel podcast tab and wherever you get your podcasts.
- [30:22]
B
So what is California doing about this plague of plastic pollution? Any good legislation in the works or has anything been passed recently that's significant?
- [30:30]
A
Yeah. So California has like always sort of been ahead of everybody or most states when it comes to plastic. And just to take you back a little bit, there had been a ballot initiative that had been written that was supposed to go to voters in California in 2022, which basically would have banned single use plastics in foodware and packaging across the state. And environmental groups were really excited about it, but obviously manufacturers were not. And manufacturers and environmental groups and lawmakers ended up hashing out a deal. They decided the best thing to do was to create legislation, not a ballot initiative, but legislation that they could work on together to reduce single use plastics in California.
- [31:16]
B
Basically, the manufacturers avoided the ballot measure by getting the legislature to do something slightly less severe, right?
- [31:22]
A
That is correct. So this way they had a voice in it. They were going to be responsible. So the idea was basically, let's reduce single use plastics in California. And we're going to do this by putting the onus, the cost on the manufacturer. So the manufacturer, I think it's. By 2032, everything had to be compostable or recyclable that was in any packaging or foodware in California. And the manufacturers, through this legislation were to oversee how this was done. Everybody was really excited about it. It was this huge, huge, big deal. The governor signed it.
- [32:01]
B
SB54. Right? That's the bill we're talking about?
- [32:03]
A
That's correct. Senate Bill 54. It was shepherded by Ben Allen from Santa Monica, but the governor was super excited about it and he signed it into law and he talked about how important it was to get single use plastics out of the environment, that it was harming our wildlife, harming our beaches, et cetera, et cetera. So all of that's going along. The industry and environmental groups, right after the bill was passed, began to work together because what they had to do, although the bill was signed sort of the, the nitty gritty of it, like how it was all going to be taken care of, hadn't been established, so rules and regulations had to be made. And these groups got together and they hashed out how, like sort of how, how they were going to do this all. And that was supposed to be completed by March 8th of this year. And so they finished the regulations, CalRecycle wrote them up, sent them along to the governor's office. And as we discovered, beginning in December, the industry started pushing back. Apparently they didn't want to really have to do this. And the governor, he basically decided they were right and the rules and regulations have not been finalized. And environmental groups are really worried right now that not only may these regulations be delayed, but it's quite possible they'll be completely derailed or defanged.
- [33:32]
B
So at the last minute, Newsom, rather than accepting the regulations by the deadline, said, you all go back to the drawing board and try this again and see what I think next time.
- [33:40]
A
Yes, exactly. So again, it took two and a half years for all of these groups to come together and come up with the rules and regulations that they had made. Those have been completely scrapped and they have to start all over again.
- [33:53]
B
How long is it going to take to do this again? I mean, when's their next chance to get this right?
- [33:57]
A
Well, so I've heard one year. But others are saying it's likely impossible at this point. I mean, you start thinking about the California legislature And lawmakers, I mean, they don't stay there forever. So new people are now in office in California, not the same people who passed the laws initially. The governor's not going to be here probably in a couple of years. He's looking right.
- [34:20]
B
He's termed out at the beginning of 2027.
- [34:22]
A
Right.
- [34:23]
B
So if you were a betting person, it sounds like you might not wager a lot of money on these regulations actually being in place by the 2032 deadline to get rid of single use plastics that are not compostable.
- [34:34]
A
If I was a betting person, I would say it's highly unlikely at this point.
- [34:38]
B
What happened with Newsom here? If he was so excited to champion this law, why is he now derailing it or at least delaying it?
- [34:46]
A
The word from the office is that there were a lot of concerns about how this was going to be carried out. The industry has been saying it was going to be impossible. And so the governor thinks that there's a smarter way to put together the rules and regulations and they all need to go sit back down. I think people who have been watching the governor think what's happening here is he is going to be running for president and he is likely trying to look more like a centrist, not doing these crazy California things like getting rid of single use plastics, but working with industry to find better solutions.
- [35:21]
B
Well, as an admittedly amateur political observer, that does kind of track with the fact that he just started a podcast where he's having, like, MAGA people on his podcast every week and kind of, you know, being very friendly with them. So it's not that surprising in the larger context that he is now not as eager to get plastics out of the environment in our bodies as he once was.
- [35:40]
A
Right. And the Sacramento Bee, I think, reported that, I guess in December, he gave out his personal cell phone to something like 50 of the largest company CEOs in California so they could directly call him. So I think there's more of an embrace of industry than there was before, now that he's looking for the highest office in the land.
- [35:59]
B
One other thing in your reporting recently that I found very intriguing was the role of Rachel Wagoner, the former director of CalRecycle, which you mentioned, the state recycling agency that was very involved in trying to draft these regulations based on SB 54. Talk a little bit about what her role was in getting this bill written, SB54, and what she's doing now.
- [36:20]
A
Okay, so Rachel Wagner was appointed to the head of cal recycle by Governor Newsom. She was the head of this agency. CalRecycle is the agency that was to oversee the implementation of SB 54. They met with all of these industry groups and environmentalists who hashed out the rules and regulations, and then it was up to CalRecycle to put them all together and write them. And Rachel Wagner had been the director of that agency, oversaw the rules and regulation. The writing of those was at the meetings, talking to the different groups. And then she left about a year ago. Now, turns out soon after she stepped down, she started consulting for a company called Eastman Chemical Company, which is interested in doing this thing called alternative recycling, which is, you know, one of the big concerns when we start talking about plastic is this idea that plastic can be recycled if you like, heat it up, either turn it to fuel or turn it into other plastics. Most research shows this is not. It doesn't really work. But nevertheless, she started consulting for them, and then she became the head of the Circular Action alliance, which is the industry group that was supposed to oversee the implementation of SB54.
- [37:51]
B
And they're the ones that are now calling for the regulations to be delayed.
- [37:54]
A
Essentially to be delayed and to include chemical recycling in the future regulation. So there's a real conflict of interest here. Somebody anonymously filed an fppc, which I.
- [38:08]
B
Think is the Fair Political Practices Commission.
- [38:11]
A
That's right. So they filed a complaint that she had violated a law which basically prevents people who were in the government, who wrote and drafted laws from then going and working for organizations or entities that would try to undo those laws. So it's not clear she did actually violate it, but it certainly looks not so good that the person that had been entrusted to oversee it is now working for a group that wants to derail it.
- [38:43]
B
Kind of classic revolving door here.
- [38:45]
A
Yeah, very much so.
- [38:46]
B
I guess I'm just going to say one of the things that's so kind of frustrating about all of this as a Californian, is that California has this reputation for championing climate change and environmental causes and public health. And during the second Trump administration, now everyone is looking to California to be the leader on this stuff. And meanwhile, with plastics, you've got Trump trying to get rid of paper straws at the federal government. You know, then you look at California and this is what's happening here, and it's not that inspiring, frankly. Anything better happening in California that we can look towards to inspire people, or is it all bad news right now?
- [39:24]
A
Well, maybe I'm in a bad place. It feels really discouraging right now. I'm not seeing anything out there it looks like we have a governor who is not embracing make the planet great again. So it's discouraging. Having said that, of course, California has a long history of environmental activism. Environmentalists are working right now trying to figure out how they can resurrect this plastic law. And maybe we are introduced with another ballot initiative. They're talking about it because there is clearly a plastic crisis. And the longer we wait to get this thing enacted or any sort of plastic legislation enacted, you know, the bigger the problem. I mean, I feel like I'm reporting every week or every other week about another discovery of where we're finding microplastics in our body. Or there is a study last week that found microplastics, you know, that are in our air and environment, are on plants and reducing photosynthesis. I mean, it's a disaster in the happening.
- [40:26]
B
Well, I can't say I'm encouraged, but it's better to know than not to know. We believe that we're journalists, so give people the information and hopefully we can all do something with it. Suzanne Rust, thanks very much for being with us on the Boiling Point podcast.
- [40:38]
A
Well, thanks for having me, Sammy. It was fun.
- [40:45]
B
One more thing. That law we were talking about, SB54, there is another provision in it banning a certain type of plastic called expanded polystyrene, which is the stuff in styrofoam. That ban was supposed to take effect on January 1st, but Suzanne's got a story coming out in the next couple of days finding that the ban is not being fully enforced. Look out for the story on latimes.com thank you for listening to Boiling Point. I'm your host, Sammy Roth. My producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shiflett. Sound design and original music by Jonathan Shiflet. Elijah Wolfson is our editor. Denise Callahan is our studio manager. Ben Church is our production manager. Nick Norton is our engineer. Special thanks to LA Times Studio president, Anna Magzanian, President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argentieri, and executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tank. Boiling Point is executive produced by Darius Derek Shon and created by me, Sami Roth.
- [42:02]
A
The Supreme Court's word feels final. Until it's not. After Roe v. Wade fell, I wondered, could something like this happen in Canada? I'm Phelan Johnson, and on my new podcast, See you in Court, we explore eight cases that shaped a country fighting to protect its stance on everything from abortion to gay rights to junk mail. Find and follow CU in Court wherever you get your podcasts, because as Americans know case closed doesn't mean story over.