The Science of Changing Your Personality & What Really Happens to Your Trash

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Science of Changing Your Personality & What Really Happens to Your Trash"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Something You Should Know
• Host: Mike Carruthers | OmniCast Media
• Episode Title: The Science of Changing Your Personality & What Really Happens to Your Trash
• Release Date: March 20, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of "Something You Should Know," host Mike Carruthers delves into two intriguing topics: the science behind changing one's personality and the hidden realities of plastic waste management. Through insightful conversations with experts Olga Kazan and Alexander Clapp, listeners gain a deeper understanding of personal transformation and environmental challenges.

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Part 1: The Science of Changing Your Personality

Guest: Olga Kazan, Staff Writer for The Atlantic, Author of "Me: The Science and Promise of Personality Change."

Overview: Olga Kazan explores the possibility of altering personality traits, debunking the long-held belief that personality is immutable. She introduces the OCEAN model of personality and discusses research supporting the feasibility of personality change through deliberate actions and habit formation.

Key Topics:

1. Defining Personality:

   • OCEAN Model: Olga breaks down the five major personality traits—Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—using the acronym OCEAN (06:25).
   • Functional Aspect: Personality traits serve as tools to achieve personal goals, such as building relationships or advancing careers.

2. Possibility of Change:

   • Historical Perspective: Contrary to William James' assertion that personality is set by age 30, recent studies indicate that significant personality changes are achievable (04:39).
   • Research Findings: Participants who engaged in daily tasks aligned with desired traits successfully altered their personalities and reported increased happiness with the changes (05:19).

3. Strategies for Change:

   • Habit Formation: Olga emphasizes the importance of creating systems and routines to foster new personality traits, such as signing up for commitments that enforce desired behaviors (09:26).
   • Overcoming Resistance: Addressing identity barriers and implementing consistent actions are crucial for sustainable change (08:23).

4. Personal Experience:

   • Extroversion Enhancement: Olga shares her experience of becoming more extroverted by committing to improv classes, which initially felt exhausting but ultimately led to increased social enjoyment and improved mood (12:31).

5. Long-Term Effects and Sustainability:

   • Study Limitations: While short-term changes are documented, long-term sustainability remains under-researched (22:05).
   • Integration into Self: Successful personality changes can become part of one's identity, making new behaviors feel natural over time (23:04).

Notable Quotes:

• Olga Kazan [00:16]: "People who did change their personality traits in the desired direction tend to be happy with the results."
• Olga Kazan [09:26]: "You have to make systems and habits that you set up that you do every single day, even if you don't feel like it."
• Olga Kazan [12:31]: "After the first class, I was driving away and smiling because I had fun, even though I didn't expect to."

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Part 2: What Really Happens to Your Trash

Guest: Alexander Clapp, Journalist and Author of "Waste: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash."

Overview: Alexander Clapp unveils the complex and often problematic lifecycle of plastic waste. He highlights the inefficiencies in global recycling practices and the environmental repercussions of plastic disposal, challenging listeners to rethink their recycling habits and advocate for systemic change.

Key Topics:

1. Global Recycling Practices:

   • Misconceptions: Contrary to popular belief, much of the plastic placed in recycling bins ends up in landfills or is incinerated, rather than being effectively recycled (30:38).
   • Recycling Limitations: Most plastics can only be recycled three to four times, making true longevity through recycling unachievable (31:28).

2. International Waste Trade:

   • Shift After China’s Ban: In 2016, China ceased importing plastic waste, leading to an influx of plastic shipments to other poorer countries like Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, often resulting in environmental degradation (32:40).
   • Consequences for Receiving Countries: These nations struggle to manage the influx, leading to pollution and inadequate waste processing infrastructure (34:38).

3. Industry Insights:

   • Historical Manipulation: The plastic industry was aware of the inefficacy of recycling but promoted it to shift responsibility onto consumers (34:58).
   • Future Projections: Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050, exacerbating environmental challenges (47:22).

4. Environmental and Health Impacts:

   • Microplastics: Increasing evidence indicates that microplastics are infiltrating ecosystems and even human bodies, posing significant health risks (39:26).
   • Irreversible Damage: The persistence of plastic in the environment leads to long-term ecological harm, with little to no effective recycling solutions (40:51).

5. Solutions and Advocacy:

   • Legislative Action: Clapp argues that individual efforts are insufficient and calls for global legislation to limit plastic production and phase out single-use plastics (43:52).
   • Consumer Awareness: While challenging, raising awareness about the true fate of plastics can drive collective action and policy changes (44:00).

Notable Quotes:

• Alexander Clapp [31:28]: "Most plastic can only be recycled three, perhaps four times. So the act of recycling plastic is never actually preventing final disposal, it's actually just delaying it."
• Alexander Clapp [34:58]: "The plastic industry, because it had a mounting reputational crisis at the time, pushed this recycling narrative to shift the onus of disposal onto consumers."
• Alexander Clapp [43:52]: "The problem with plastic is that it's not a problem that's going to be solved through individual morality. It's a problem that needs to be solved at the global legislative level."

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Conclusion

This episode of "Something You Should Know" provides a compelling exploration of personal growth and environmental responsibility. Olga Kazan's insights into the flexibility of human personality offer hope for those seeking change, while Alexander Clapp's examination of plastic waste uncovers the urgent need for systemic solutions to a global environmental crisis. Together, these discussions encourage listeners to reflect on both self-improvement and the broader impact of their daily choices.

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Additional Resources:

• Olga Kazan's Book: Me: The Science and Promise of Personality Change [Link in Show Notes]
• Alexander Clapp's Book: Waste: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash [Link in Show Notes]

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Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

Today on Something you should know the interesting things lucky people have in common. Then there are strategies to change your personality. And do the people who make the change like the change?

[Olga Kazan]

Yes, people who did change their personality traits in the desired direction tend to be happy with the results. So you know, you might be surprised by how good it feels to act against your nature sometimes.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also, what you're handing handshake might reveal about your risk of illness and what happens to all the plastic you think you're recycling.

[Alexander Clapp]

Most plastic can only be recycled three, perhaps four times. So the act of recycling plastic is never actually preventing final disposal, it's actually just delaying it. But a lot of it the fate is to get burned in a field or just dumped in a river.

[Mike Carruthers]

All this Today on something you should know.

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[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers why is it that some people are just luckier than others? That's the topic we're starting this episode with today. Hi and welcome to Something you should know. How lucky you are probably depends in large part on how you define luck. But we know that people who consider themselves lucky do have some interesting characteristics. Anxious people tend to be more unlucky. In one study, people were asked to read a newspaper. Some of the people identified themselves as lucky, while others said they were unlucky. On one half page of the newspaper, it said in large letters, tell the experimenter you've seen this and win $300. The people who said they were lucky were more likely to have seen that, while the unlucky people seemed to demonstrate more anxiety, which detracted from their powers of observation, which made them less likely to see that serendipity seems to matter a lot. Chance meetings with strangers and old friends increase the likelihood that good things will happen, so you have to put yourself in situations where those encounters are more likely to occur. People who do tend to be luckier. Attitude helps too. A positive Go getter attitude is more likely the attitude of a lucky person. And even lucky charms seem to work. Why? Because people believe they do. And that is something you should know, I would imagine, if you thought about it for a moment, I would imagine there are at least parts of your personality you would change if you could. Maybe you've thought, I wish I could be more like that person, you know, more outgoing or less critical or whatever it is. But you probably think that changing your personality seems almost impossible. You are who you are, and you can't change it a whole lot. Or can you? Maybe you can, according to my guest, Olga Kazan. She is a staff writer for the Atlantic, and she has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. She's author of a book called Me but the Science and Promise of Personality Change. Hi, Olga. Welcome to something you should know.

[Olga Kazan]

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So changing your personality or parts of your personality seems daunting because I believe, and I think most people believe your personality is your personality. And yes, you can change it a little bit, and it probably changes by itself over time, but ultimately you are who you are and. And that's it. That's who you are.

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah, that's one theory. And that was a prominent theory about personality. You know, several decades ago, William James famously said it was set like plaster by the age of 30. But actually, newer research has shown that it is possible to change your personality. You do have to really work at it. It's not just something you can snap your fingers and make happen, but researchers who have asked people if they would like to change their personality traits and then given them little assignments or tasks or behaviors to do every day that would put them closer in alignment with the personality trait they'd like to have. They then found that those people actually did change their personality traits and were.

[Mike Carruthers]

Happy they did it.

[Olga Kazan]

Yes, people who did change their personality traits in the desired direction tend to be happy with the results.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I guess one thing I'd like to get a better focus on a handle on is what is your personality? How do you define that?

[Olga Kazan]

So personality, according to most researchers, is sort of the thoughts and behaviors and mindset that come most reflexively to you. They're the things that you kind of do automatically without thinking about it. Now, Nathan Hudson, who is one of the researchers, he kind of adds onto that by saying that personality is like a tool that helps you get what you want. You know, there's five traits of personality and, for example, the trait of agreeableness which is sort of like warmth and empathy. That can help you make more friends. It can help you deepen your relationships. You know, it can help you become more enmeshed in community. And so that is actually, you know, you can think of it as almost like a tool in your toolkit for living the kind of life you'd like to live.

[Mike Carruthers]

So can you run down the five traits of personality?

[Olga Kazan]

Absolutely. You can remember them with the acronym ocean. So, O for openness to experiences. This is sort of like imaginativeness and creativity. Then C for conscientiousness. This is being organized and on time, meeting deadlines, not being messy, not forgetting things, things like that. E for extroversion. We all know extroverts. They love to socialize and talk to people. They're cheer. They like to go and do activities. A for agreeableness, which I just mentioned, which is sort of like warmth and empathy and trust in others. And then N is a little funny. It's for neuroticism, which is a bad thing. It's associated with anxiety and depression. So the others are positive. Neuroticism is a negative thing. The flip side of neuroticism is called emotional stability, and that's the one that you want to be.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, here's the thing that I find so fascinating about this, is you as part of your personality. Would you say that whether you're, say, a neat person or a slob or somewhere on that spectrum, that's part of your personality? Yes.

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah, that's the personality trait of conscientiousness.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so how many times have people, maybe more so people who are messy, say, I wish I were neater. Well, there's nothing stopping you from being neater. No one's saying you can't be neater. People lament that they wish they were neater, but they. They don't get neater. So what's that?

[Olga Kazan]

You know, the reason why people are sometimes resistant to change on these traits is that personality can have a little bit of an identity component. So if you see yourself as an introvert, it can be really hard to give that up. You know, it's almost like changing your name or something like that.

[Mike Carruthers]

That's interesting because I would think if you have a driving urge to change something about yourself, it's always fascinated me, then. Well, then just go do that. I mean, people make it sound as if it's not possible. Like, oh, I wish I could be more like that. Well, give it a try. Why not? But there's this invisible wall that I can't get there from here.

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah. And sometimes it's about not knowing what actions to take. So particularly in the case of conscientiousness, that can be a really tough one where people want to be on the other side of it. Right. They want to be organized, they want to be proactive. It can really be really hard to see how to get there from where you are. And so a lot of the people that I talked to for that chapter, you know, they were like, I'm going to start a business. And then they just kind of sat around watching TV because they weren't really conscientious to begin with, and they weren't really sure how to make themselves conscientious.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what do you do about that?

[Olga Kazan]

What you do about that is make systems and habits that you set up that you do every single day, even if you don't feel like it. One good example of this is extroversion, which is a trait that I was working to increase. I wanted to become more extroverted and get out and have more, you know, social connections and just socialize more, not be so isolated. In the beginning, I really did not want to do this. I found it really hard to get myself out of the house and to actually talking to people. So what I did is I signed up for things that I could not back out of. I signed up for an improv class where you could only miss two classes and still kind of complete the class, the course. So even when I really did not feel like going, and most of the time I did not, I had to go because I otherwise I would lose my money on signing up for this class. So I would really recommend that to anyone who wants to change their personality but finds it difficult is to sign up for things that you can't back out of.

[Mike Carruthers]

It would seem that something like introversion would be hard to change that I know nothing of the science, but that feels more hardwired than anything. That if you're introverted and you do what you suggested or what you did of going out and taking an improv class and really getting out there, that you would come home and go, oh, my God, that was exhausting. I mean, I don't ever want to do that again. It just feels wrong.

[Olga Kazan]

No, you might feel that way. I mean, if you're really, really far on the introversion scale, you might feel that way and just think, like, that Olga woman was wrong. But I will say that in lab experiments, when they have introverts go out and act like extroverts, which usually just means socializing for a few minutes. They actually say that they felt better afterward, like they had a little mood boost from behaving like an extrovert for a little while. And they also said they felt truer to themselves when they were behaving like extroverts, which suggests that it's not really that important to act exactly in accordance with what you think your personality is all the time. Now, one thing that some researchers say is that, let's say you, you are doing this. Let's say you're. You're really introverted, but you're pushing yourself. You're going out and giving a bunch of sales presentations because you want to meet your sales goals. It might be necessary to then have kind of a restorative niche or a restorative period after each of these presentations where you go back, you know, to the hotel room and you read your book and take your bubble bath and have your introvert time. That still counts. That's still personality change, as long as you're pushing yourself and you're kind of expanding those. Those boundaries.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when you came back from that improv class, did you go, wow, that was great, or wow, that was. Or what did you. How did it feel?

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah, you know, it was exhausting, and it was great. Like, I. I think I. After basically the first class, I was driving away from the class and I was smiling. Like, I noticed myself smiling and kind of giggling to myself because I had fun, even though I didn't expect that I would have fun. And, you know, I kind of had this elevated mood throughout the night just from, you know, being around other people and being in this situation where I was just kind of being silly. So you might be surprised by how good it feels to act against your nature sometimes.

[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about how to change parts of your personality, and my guest is Olga Kazan, author of the book Me but the Science and Promise of Personality Change. Whenever I've had to hire someone, I didn't have the luxury of taking my time and thinking about it. It was always, we need someone and we need them now. And if you ever find yourself in that situation, Indeed is all you need. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job postings really stand out. It's simple. With Sponsored Jobs, your posts jump right to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. And that's the thing, right? You need good quality candidates fast so you can Review them and quickly move on to the hiring phase. Indeed makes this whole thing easier than trying to do it on your own. And with Indeed, you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? Well, in the minute I've been Talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed According to Indeed Data worldwide. Look, there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com something just go to Indeed.com something right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com something terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. So my wife had some friends over and I asked them, have you ever shopped at or heard of Quints? Because I had just heard they were going to advertise here and I didn't know much about them so I wanted to know what other people knew. And all of them except one I think said, oh, I love quints. Their clothes are fabulous. Well, since then I've gotten two cashmere sweaters, a couple of polo shirts, and I wish you could see them here. You can hear that's the sound of my Mongolian cashmere sweater. And their cashmere sweaters start at $50. They also have these iconic 100% leather jackets, pants for every occasion. Quint's has everything for men and women and their clothes are really high quality. The best part, Quint's Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts the cost of middleman and then passes the savings on to us. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. Look, just go check out Quint's, see how great their clothes look and how amazing the prices are and buy something. It's a great way to support this show and I know you're gonna love it. Indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quints.comSYSK for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I-n c-e.comSYSK to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comSYSK so Olga, I think what you said before is really important that people may want to change their personality. You know, I wish I had more friends. I wish I was more outgoing, I wish I was not late all the time. But if you don't know the steps to take to get from here to there, then you're really Stuck.

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah, exactly. And one of the studies that I write about, the personality change studies, is called you have to follow through. It's really not enough to just wish that you were different. You really do have to kind of do something every day that accords with your quote unquote, new personality. So the person who was trying to start a business, who I was talking about earlier, who kind of didn't know where to start, she honestly started by buying a giant whiteboard and writing everything down on it and hanging it in front of her desk. So she would write down all of her appointments, everything she needed to get done, you know, the time she needed to get it done, by positive affirmations. Like, if it was important, it went on this whiteboard. And that actually worked for her, just having everything in front of her in one place like that. And I really think that variations of that can work for all of the traits and can work for everyone. But you do have to kind of experiment a little to see what will work for you.

[Mike Carruthers]

Does the science say, or do you think that personality changes much over time? And I guess what I mean by that is it's kind of like you look at yourself in the mirror every day for 80 years. You don't notice the change because you're seeing yourself every day. But I wonder if the same thing is true with personality. Are we very different at 80 years later, or is the core of our personality still the same?

[Olga Kazan]

I would say both are true. You are a little bit different 80 years later, even if you don't try to become different. But there's still a little piece of you that's going to be quite similar. Right. So if you were a very introverted, anxious child, you're probably going to be a little bit introverted and anxious as an adult as well. But the studies that have followed people across decades have found that most people change across at least one personality trait over the course of their lives. And in general, just something to look forward to. People tend to become less neurotic and more conscientious as they get older. So, and that's not through, like, life hacks or doing anything in particular that just kind of naturally happens.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when you just said, like, when you were a child, if you were anxious and neurotic, well, why were you anxious and neurotic? Do we know where those things come from? Or they just are.

[Olga Kazan]

Yeah. So about half of it is genetic. So it comes from your genes. Thank you, mom and dad. So you're not going to be exactly like your mom and dad. But your personality is going to be influenced by the genes that they pass on to you. Just like they influence how tall you are, your eye color, things like that. So part of it, you're kind of is just there, but another part of it is kind of hard to define and they still don't know exactly what makes it up, but it's sort of just the environment. So it's who your friends are, what your life experiences are. Do you go to college, what kind of job do you have, do you get married, do you have kids? All of those kind of environmental factors and experiences contribute to that other part of your personality that isn't really genetic. It's. It's sort of up to you.

[Mike Carruthers]

So everything that happens to you is part of your personality, but your personality also affects everything that happens to you.

[Olga Kazan]

That's true, yeah. So like, you can see variations on that cycle in like, who goes to college. Right. So it's usually people who are more open to experiences, and then they're around a bunch of other people like them and they're around a bunch of professors who are also open to experiences. And so they become even more open to experiences in the process. So your personality leads you into certain situations and then those situations further affect your personality.

[Mike Carruthers]

Has anybody looked at when people try to change their personality? You know, it's kind of a big term, but how many times does it take? How successful are people? Is it 3% of people who try succeed or is it the other way around? I mean, is this a daunting task or is this something that if you put your mind to it, it's not that tough?

[Olga Kazan]

So I think that it depends on the scale of what you're trying to do. If you're just trying to become a little bit more conscientious or a little bit more extroverted, I think that it's definitely something that if you put your mind to it, it's. It can pretty easily be done. Some of the traits like neuroticism and agreeableness are a little bit harder to change. So I think that one would be more. Require a lot more kind of like inner work and a little bit more struggle to actually become permanently different on. But yeah, I think it is doable for everyone, but it does require new habits and new ways of thinking about yourself. So if you're, if you're not ready for those, then, then I imagine it would be hard.

[Mike Carruthers]

And what.

[Olga Kazan]

And as far as. Sorry. As far as how long the changes last, the studies that have been done suggest that they last for a few months, but that's because we don't have longer term studies. And whether, like what happens to those people after a few months, we, we don't know. I did talk to one person who had a pretty radical personality change that he has now kept up for a few years kind of across personality traits. And a few other people I talked to were able to change just one or two traits for a few years.

[Mike Carruthers]

I want to get a better sense that if you try to change your personality, are you always trying to change your personality? Are you always pushing against the grain that here's your personality and this thing you're doing is not your personality, or does it become your personality? Do you become more neat, more on time, more extroverted and that's now who you are?

[Olga Kazan]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah. And Sonia Lyubomirski, one of the researchers that I talked to, explained this, which is that, you know, a lot of times things don't feel very natural at first because we're not very good at them. And she actually used the example of becoming a runner where she, she now runs pretty regularly. But it was kind of hard for her at first to commit to doing it and to do it regularly. But once you are kind of doing something more and more, you become more familiar with it and it becomes less intimidating and less scary in a way. So, I mean, in that way, yeah, it does become easier just because, like, you know what to do in a room full of strangers now.

[Mike Carruthers]

And my last question is, and it's maybe a personal question to you, but also if there's research about this, when people decide that they're going to make a change in their personality or attempt to, is it because something happened or is it just a decision one day kind of out of the blue?

[Olga Kazan]

I've actually come across both. There was sort of a book about people being inspired to basically change completely called Quantum Change. And that one was like a mix of out of the blue plus like near death experiences plus like voice of God type thing, like, or something. But some of the people I talked to for my book, it was just sort of like I got tired of drinking so much or, you know, I got tired of being so disorganized or, you know, one more person made a comment about how I'm always late and I decided I didn't like it. So it really depends. It's sometimes it's a realization that someone else points out to you and sometimes it's something that comes from within yourself.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, as I think you said you can change your personality, but you have to work at it. You have to do something every day. But I think that comes as good news to people because I've always thought your personality is your personality and that's who you are and who you're going to be for the most part. And I think it's liberating to know that if you really think it's something to change, then change it. I've been speaking with Olga Kazan. She's a staff writer for the Atlantic and author of the book Me but the Science and Promise of Personality Change. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Olga, appreciate you coming on and talking about this. Thanks. Recently I was asked to try a supplement called Mitopure and then talk about it here and I said, well, let me check it out. So Mitopure is a precise dose of Urolithin A. That's a metabolic compound that is clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline. And it's also found in small amounts in certain fruits and nuts. Now, as I've talked about many times here, I work at staying fit and healthy. It's important to me. And when I researched some studies online and found Urolithin A, which is what Mitopure is, is shown to deliver double digit increases in muscle strength and endurance. And I saw that it was safe to take, I started taking it and I've been taking it a while now and I see a change. I have noticed improved muscle strength and endurance. Mitopure works by promoting an essential cellular cleanup process. It clears out dysfunctional mitochondria and it's the only Urolithin a supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age related cellular decline. So look, I invite you to join me and awaken the strength, power and resilience already in you with the first and only supplement clinically proven to rejuvenate health at the cellular level. And I'd love to hear about your results. Timeline, that's the company behind Mitopure. Timeline is offering 10% off your order of Mitopure. Go to timeline.com something that's T I M E L I N E timeline.com something many times I have mentioned how I love to cook. Yeah, but not every day. Which is why it's always a good day when I see a box of Factor meals outside my front door. Factor delivers chef made gourmet meals that make eating well so easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes. Because on those days that I don't want to cook, I still want to eat well. And factor meals are just so good, right? I mean, this is not frozen food. These are fresh meals and they have all kinds of dietary preferences like calorie, smart, protein plus keto or vegetarian. Now, I'm an adventurous eater, so I try a lot of different factor meals. I tend to like any of their meals that have a sauce. I know that sounds weird, but I love their sauces. Now, these are the kinds of delicious meals that can show up at your door in just a few days. Smoked Gouda Chicken with Roast Potatoes, Parmesan and Garlic Cream Shredded beef. That garlic cream sauce is one of those really good sauces. Fiesta Salmon with Black Bean and Corn Saute Eat Smart with Factor get [e-mail] FactorPodcast and use Code Factor Podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's Code [e-mail] FactorPodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. And I'll put that code in the show notes. Something interesting to me, not sure why is trash. It's interesting because like most everyone else, I sort my trash, put stuff in the appropriate bins, and then put it out on the curb and it gets taken somewhere. It goes to a landfill or the recyclables get recycled somewhere, probably not too far away. And it's all very efficient. And yet, as you're about to learn, it's not all that efficient. Some of the recyclables that you go to the trouble of separating out end up in the landfill with the trash. A lot of it cannot be recycled. Some of it gets shipped to other countries for all sorts of reasons. And plastic. Plastic presents a whole set of problems that a few decades ago we didn't have to deal with. Here to explain what really happens to your trash is Alexander Clapp. He is a journalist and writer based in Greece, and his reporting has appeared in the New York Times and the Economist and other places. He's the author of a book called Waste the Wild Afterlife of youf Trash. Hi Alexander. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Alexander Clapp]

Thank you, Mike. Thank you for having me.

[Mike Carruthers]

So I put my trash and my recyclables and my yard waste, I put them in their bins. And I like to think good things happen to them. But, you know, it's all very vague. Like, I hear that some of the trash goes to other countries and that that causes environmental problems. And I don't really know what happens.

[Alexander Clapp]

So that's something that's actually really interesting about the waste trade. It is not the garbage that you think is doing great damage to other parts of the world. It's in fact, the stuff that you're recycling. By and large, the waste trade occasionally operates by, you know, sending a cargo container full of municipal trash to a poor country and dumping it on a beach somewhere. But often it's much more nuanced than that. It's the stuff that you think is perhaps not harming the planet or maybe even helping it, stuff that you're recycling. So things like plastic, things like Tetrapac or Styrofoam, the stuff that you thoughtfully discard into a recycling bin. This is the stuff that is getting shipped around the world disproportionately to poorer countries. The United states alone sends 100 million tons of recycled plastic to poorer countries.

[Mike Carruthers]

And what do they do with it?

[Alexander Clapp]

That's a really good question. That's what I spent the last two years attempting to understand. The thing about plastic is that best case scenario, it is not truly recyclable. You can't form a circular economy out of plastic. Most plastic can only be recycled three, perhaps four times. So the act of recycling plastic is never actually preventing final disposal, it's actually just delaying it. So best case scenario, we're sending thousands and thousands of tons of sequestered carbon to those very countries that cannot handle their own waste outputs. The best case scenario, as I said, is that some of this might get recycled, but a lot of it, the fate, is to get burned in a field or just dumped in a river.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, that's not what people had in mind. Because when you think of recycling, you think you're doing a good thing, that you're helping the planet and all that. And in fact, perhaps not. And I had heard that for a long time. China used to take a lot of our recyclables and or trash and don't anymore. So now a lot of it does end up in landfills because nobody really wants it.

[Alexander Clapp]

That's right. So for 30 years, between about 1990 and 2016, half the plastic placed in a recycling bin anywhere on the planet ended up in China, which is an extraordinary fact if you consider it. In 2016, China came to the recognition that this was causing far more pollution than it was doing any good. And so it stopped. It put up a ban against imported plastic waste. After that, there began a kind of mad scramble, this weird game of kind of Whack a mole, whereby rich Countries needed a new country, a new frontier to be sending all this plastic to that they insisted was being recycled, even if its true fate was far from clear. And so you had countries like Vietnam or India or the Philippines, especially Turkey, for instance, which suddenly started receiving overwhelming amounts of plastic from countries like the United States or European Union countries.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so what's the future of this? I mean, it sounds like, you know, here, you take it, I don't want it. No, no, you take it, I don't want it, and nobody really wants it. So where's this headed?

[Alexander Clapp]

Yeah, it's a sort of hot potato game whereby western waste exporters are constantly searching for the next frontier with which to send this stuff. And increasingly, one by one, these countries, disproportionately across the country, across Southeast Asia, are coming to the realization that while there might be a small amount of advantage or profit in accepting western plastic waste, this comes at a huge consequence. These are countries that, again, as I said, they cannot handle their own domestic waste outputs. So the idea that a country like Malaysia, which is currently the greatest recipient of American plastic waste on the planet, this is a absurdist, illogical industry that is based off a fundamental premise, which is that we overproduce plastic by extraordinary quantities and this stuff constantly needs a place to go because in truth, it cannot be efficiently or profitably recycled.

[Mike Carruthers]

That comes as a surprising statement, I think, to many people, because the whole point of plastic was, well, not necessarily the whole point, but in addition to the convenience that it provides that you could do something with it, you could recycle it into something else and that, see, isn't this great? And we got nothing to worry about.

[Alexander Clapp]

One thing that's really interesting that's emerged over the last five or ten years is that journalists have been digging into the meeting notes of the plastic industry in the 1980s, especially the late 1980s. And what they've come to acknowledge or realize is that the plastic industry 40 years ago knew that plastic recycling didn't work. They knew that it wasn't profitable. They knew that functionally plastic cannot really be recycled. They knew that there was no circular economy here as there is with paper or steel world. And so regardless, the plastic industry, because it had a mounting reputational crisis at the time, because people were discovering microplastics, for instance, in all sorts of places, pushed this recycling narrative because they wanted to shift the onus of the burden of disposal onto consumers themselves, rather than having to handle it themselves, having to handle it just as plastic was facing this huge reputational crisis. That something really interesting happened, and that's that the Berlin Wall fell. And so suddenly the plastic industry, which had this huge waste disposal reputational crisis on its hands, suddenly half the planet opens up. And what you have in the early 1990s is that you have countries in Western Europe which begin shipping their garbage to Eastern Europe, often just dumping it on the side of the road. Or in the case of China, it theoretically is getting recycled. But so much of the plastic that was heading to China at the time was too dirty or too cheap, too flimsy to actually be recycled, that its true fate was just to get burned or to get dumped.

[Mike Carruthers]

If plastic is so not able to do what it was promised to do, why doesn't there, at least from my perspective, doesn't there seem to be a shift away from plastic, maybe back to glass bottles or maybe to other kinds of packaging or. I don't see any change. If anything, it looks like there's more plastic than ever.

[Alexander Clapp]

I think it's pretty simple. I think it's remarkably profitable to produce. The thing about plastic is that it's produced from the byproducts of petrochemical refining itself. So basically all our energy results in something that itself can become plastic. So for the petrochemical industry or for plastics producers, this stuff, the building blocks of plastic, are getting manufactured regardless of what they do. So this stuff is scandalously cheap and profitable to produce.

[Mike Carruthers]

But here's the thing though. There are so many. Well, I don't know how many, but there are a lot of products that exist as plastic that seemingly can't be anything else. I mean, your credit cards can't be anything other than plastic, it would seem to me. I don't know what else they could be. There are other products. I'm sure we could think of a bunch of them if we sat here long enough. Then what do you do?

[Alexander Clapp]

It's a really good question. I think it's important to keep two things in mind. The first is that within living memory there wasn't all of this plastic. I mean, going back to the 1950s or 1940s, plastic didn't really exist, or at least not in these quantities. The second is to understand that certain things do need to be made of plastic. For instance, medical plastic is important, but there are a lot of things, in fact, the vast majority of things that are made of plastic, single use plastic. They could be made of paper, or they can be made of wood, they can be made of things that are genuinely recyclable and yet they're not.

[Mike Carruthers]

Or they're not like they used to be. I remember seeing a picture of a store shelf of soda from the 50s, and it's all glass bottles. And today there's not a single glass bottle.

[Alexander Clapp]

And the irony is that glass is genuinely recyclable. When you recycle glass, it will become a new glass bottle. The same is not true of plastic.

[Mike Carruthers]

But there's no uproar. I mean, well, you're uproaring a little bit here, but. But there's no big uproar. I did an interview that's always stuck with me was just a couple of years ago of someone from Consumer Reports that said that we all ingest about a credit card's worth of plastic every week. I think it was every week. That's right. That's just frightening. But there it is.

[Alexander Clapp]

I think there's growing recognition. I mean, they've also found plastic in our brain cells, for instance, in our bone marrow. I think there's growing recognition that this stuff not only can't be recycled, not only as a huge pollution pandemic, but it's probably killing us as well. And so I expect over the next years, or perhaps decades, much more pushback against the plastic industry.

[Mike Carruthers]

What does the plastic industry say about this? I mean, or do they just sweep it under the rug? I mean, do they have a counter argument to all this of why we need all this plastic, or do they just pretend not to notice?

[Alexander Clapp]

It makes several arguments, one of which is that plastic is, in fact, ecologically better for the planet than, say, glass, because it's lighter and it's easier to transport and it's easier to move around and therefore spews less carbon into the atmosphere. There are all sorts of rhetorical acrobatics that are used to defend plastic. And again, this goes back to the 1980s, when this myth of plastic recycling was concocted in the first place.

[Mike Carruthers]

When I think of plastic, I tend to think of consumer items, bottles, things that around my house that are plastic. But is that the real problem, or is it other kinds of plastic, industrial plastic or. Or something else that's the real problem?

[Alexander Clapp]

I would say the real problem is the single use plastic. The timescales of this stuff are simply boggling. I mean, consider the fact that a water bottle that you own for one minute or two minutes in the plastic waste trade, this will spend months getting moved by truck to ports, across oceans, by cargo ships. It'll then get trucked to a village in Southeast Asia. So this simply makes no sense from a kind of logical perspective. That these objects that you own for moments and think nothing of throwing away become these objects of incredibly arduous journeys across the globe. And even when they do arrive to these communities in Southeast Asia, it's unlikely that it's possible that it'll be recycled or processed, but it's equally likely that it'll just be tossed into a river or dumped or incinerated.

[Mike Carruthers]

Then why do those countries or businesses in those countries accept it if it's just going to toss it into a river? Where's the money? How do you make money tossing a bottle into a river?

[Alexander Clapp]

It's a really good question. If you do this industry at scale, if you import enough western plastic, which tends to be of higher grade than plastic else, if you are able to bribe your inspectors, if you're able to pay labor very little, if you have low energy costs, if you have abundant water, there is a margin of profit that can be made through sorting plastic and chemically reducing it and then selling it to a petrochemical refining plant. But again, this is something that needs to be done at scale. And it is also something that increasingly countries across the south are realizing is too ecologically damaging to be acceptable.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it doesn't seem like this is anything, you know, consumers can do much about other than protest. Because I mean you, it's, it's hard to change your behavior because like I was saying, if you, if you were going to, to make a statement and stop buying soda in plastic bottles or plastic, whatever they are, good luck, what are you going to buy it in? Because it doesn't come in glass anymore.

[Alexander Clapp]

But in some ways I think that's actually what the petrochemical or plastics producers would want you to believe. The problem with plastic is that it's not a problem that's going to be solved through individual morality. It's not a problem that someone is going to wake up and say, okay, I'm going to stop buying plastic today. It's actually a problem that needs to be solved at the global legislative level. We need globe spanning legislation that at the very least puts quotas on the quantities of plastic that can be produced or attempts to phase this material out.

[Mike Carruthers]

But as we said, some of these things you can't phase it out. I mean, it's not gonna. How do you phase it out?

[Alexander Clapp]

I don't think you need to phase out all plastic, but I think within reason, I mean, there are single use plastics, for instance, that should be banned. I mean it should not be necessary to purchase a plastic water bottle that you consume for One or two minutes. I think there are plastics. And I think one of the problems with the conversation is that when people think about banning plastic, they think, oh, you know, I touch plastic all day. You know, my, you know, my cell phone case is made of plastic, my toothbrush is made of plastic. I don't think you necessarily need, need to ban all forms of plastic, but only the most insidious. The plastic that is used for the shortest amount of time, the plastic that gets tossed away the most often. There needs to be legislation to ban this.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, well, it makes sense, but boy, those plastic water bottles are sure come in handy sometimes. And you just grab one and drink it and toss it away. But. But it's just contributing to a problem. And those are the kinds of things that probably are not really recyclable. Those bottles don't recycle.

[Alexander Clapp]

Well, not particularly and certainly not more than three or four times. So again, you're never actually eliminating disposal, you're just delaying the time.

[Mike Carruthers]

I remember talking to someone who works in the trash business who said, and this has always stuck with me, that this dance that we all do where we separate our recyclables and we put them in this bin and we put the trash in this bin and we put it out on the curb and the different trucks come and take it, that a lot of it is just for show, that most of it or much of it still ends up in a landfill. That this is all to make us feel good, but we're really not tackling this problem.

[Alexander Clapp]

Increasingly the case, yes, since China stopped taking our recycled plastic, what you've also had is you have plastic recycling facilities all over the United States and it's something worth watching or paying attention to, which since 2017, have just gone up in smoke, literally, because there's so much plastic. There's such a glut of this and there's no place to put it that the easiest thing is now just to torch it.

[Mike Carruthers]

So there are or have been facilities in the US that do make an attempt to recycle plastic, yes, domestically, but.

[Alexander Clapp]

Again, it's a failing enterprise. There's no profit in it. It is always cheaper to produce new plastic than it is to attempt to resurrect old plastic.

[Mike Carruthers]

And therein lies the problem, I guess. Yes, this is unfortunately, doesn't sound like it's going to have a happy ending anytime soon. It doesn't seem like there's just. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of momentum to fix this, because plastic, everything tends to provide a lot of convenience for people that they don't want to give up.

[Alexander Clapp]

Exactly. But as I mentioned before, I mean, there. It's hard to believe it, but there was a time within living memory when the bottle of milk was not produced out of plastic. It's not unreasonable that we could possibly go back to such times.

[Mike Carruthers]

If somebody is, and I assume they are forecasting the future of plastic production, what does it look like?

[Alexander Clapp]

This is something that the petrochemical industry or the oil industry has strategically been anticipating. So they see their future, their future profits increasingly in plastic. The idea is to wrap all of our plastic packaging and even more plastic to the point that by 2050, it's expected that the world will triple plastic production of today.

[Mike Carruthers]

That's a lot of plastic.

[Alexander Clapp]

Yeah. And there's only so many places it can go.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, this is a good conversation to have because I think people feel very virtuous when they separate their recyclables from their trash and put it out in the right container and put it out on the curb. That makes them feel good, and maybe it should. But to hear the real story of what happens to those things that you throw away after they leave your curb is an interesting and somewhat troubling story to hear. I've been talking to Alexander Clapp. He is author of a book called Waste the Wild Afterlife of your Trash, and there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Alexander, thank you for coming on and explaining all this.

[Alexander Clapp]

Thank you, Mike. It's been a great conversation.

[Mike Carruthers]

I can still remember my father telling me about the importance of having a good, firm handshake. A firm handshake indicates that you're confident that you're friendly and probably, it turns out, in pretty good health. A study found there's a link between handshakes and potential health risks. Researchers followed 2,500 people for a decade and determined that those with a firm handshake were at significantly lower risk of stroke and dementia than those with a flimsy or limp handshake. The author of the study says vascular problems in the brain manifest themselves in a variety of ways, and a weak grip could be a sign that your overall cardiovascular health isn't in the best of shape. And that is something you should know. If you could help us out with a rating and review on whatever podcast app you listen on or maybe share this podcast with someone you know, or one or both of those things really do help us help us grow our audience and help us get noticed. And I'd appreciate it if you do that. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

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[Mike Carruthers]

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[Mike Carruthers]

A rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes.

[Olga Kazan]

Of you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right. On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High, to dance the night away to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[Mike Carruthers]

All information and tickets can be [e-mail] prom come join us.