INTERVIEW: The Current State of Plastic Waste

Video Interview: The Current State of Plastic Waste

This post was originally published on LinkedIn. I encourage you to share your thoughts in the comments.

Plastic waste is a complex mess full of competing priorities, endless tradeoffs, false solutions, regrettable substitutions, differing opinions, misinformation, disinformation, politics, agendas, and so much more. Our world has developed and our civilizations have advanced tremendously because of plastics and the benefits they’ve afforded, but those haven’t come without their costs—and it’s well past time to directly address these tradeoffs.

While it can be really hard to wrap one’s head around the dynamics of our global overconsumption and fossil fuel reliance in a way that makes sense to those not immersed it in, my recent conversation with Jessica Marati Radparvar of Reconsidered tries to do exactly that!

Jess and team came to me asking if I could help explain the current state of the plastic waste to their sustainability community (come join us in The Change Hub!), and despite my fears of not knowing enough, not having the answers, and perhaps my biggest fear of being wrong about something, I said ‘yes’ because we need more people to know more about the complexities, challenges, and nuances of the plastic waste crisis if we’re going to get out of it. There are no easy answers here, but I fully believe that we’ll all be better off if we can all get educated on the topic as quickly as possible. So, please enjoy listening to me pontificate on the state of the plastic waste crisis!

In this episode of Breaking It Down, you may not get The Answer, but you will most certainly get The Perspectives, The Challenges, The Complexities, The Nuances, The Tradeoffs, The Battles, and perhaps even The Path Forward.

My hope is that you come out of watching this with more clarity, more questions, and better understanding of the plastic waste crisis than you had before. If you watch it and think something I said is wrong, please tell me and provide data/sources. Similarly, if you take away something incredibly insightful and perhaps even useful, please tell us in the comments!