To watch the captioned video, click here.
Please consider making a donation to help us do more events like this one.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Good day, everyone, and welcome to YES! Presents, a YES! Media production where we discuss themes from our print magazine that cover global issues impacting us all. Today’s event is sponsored by Break Free From Plastic. I’m Zenobia Jeffries Warfield, executive editor at YES! Media, an independent, nonprofit, reader-supported publisher of YES! Magazine based in the Seattle area, the ancestral land of the Coast Salish peoples.
This year marks the 25th anniversary that YES! has been inspiring people through its reporting to create a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world. We hope you all will join us in our two-day event celebration, October 7 and 8, this fall. Subscribers to our newsletter, “A Better World Today,” will receive event information and get their daily dose of YES!—so be sure to subscribe. The link is going to be made available to you in the chat. And for our friends following us on Facebook Live and for those who may be watching a recording of this event, you may visit yesmagazine.org/email.
Today we’re talking about solving plastic. Why? Because it’s everywhere. And it’s in the air we breathe and the water we drink, and it’s causing harm to all life forms. But the solutions aren’t easy. With over 8 million metric tons of plastic produced in the past 70 years, only 9% of that has been recycled. The problem can feel overwhelming, and fixes can range from superficial to discriminatory, as discussed in our summer issue.
YES! environmental editor, Breanna Draxler, will moderate today’s conversation with our guests—zooming out a bit to explore the diverse ways communities are fighting back and creating healthier systems and how you can also be a part of that. So we welcome your questions. Please put them in the Q&A, and our panelists will respond in about the last 15–20 minutes of the conversation. So now over to you, Breanna.
Breanna Draxler: Thanks, Zenobia. I am Breanna Draxler, environmental editor at YES! Magazine. And as Zenobia mentioned, plastics are everywhere in our lives today, which is why we chose to center it as the topic of our latest issue. But our goal with this issue is not to demonize plastic for the people who use it. It’s just a lot more complicated than that. Not all plastic is bad. We have a story in the issue that looks at how plastic has revolutionized healthcare and where there’s still room for improvement. We have a piece that looks at the ways plastic equals freedom for people with disabilities and how bans on plastic can really impact people’s lives, their communities, and entire economies. We also have a story that highlights the way the plastic industry has shifted the blame away from producers and onto consumers, which is a huge part of why we are where we are today. So recycling alone is not the answer, but luckily for all of us, communities and activists are coming up with solutions to the problems of plastics at every level.
And today we have three esteemed panelists here to discuss the ways in which they’re working locally and globally to try and make the world a little bit healthier and a little bit more just when it comes to plastics. They’ll also talk about ways that you can join the movement as well. So let’s meet our panelists. If you all want to start your videos, I will introduce you.
We have Sharon Lavigne who’s the founder of RISE St. James in New Orleans, an organization that’s fighting the petrochemical build-out in a region of Louisiana known as Cancer Alley. She grew up in St. James Parish, the daughter of a civil rights movement leader. And in addition to being a leading environmental justice advocate herself, Sharon is also a retired special education teacher.
We also have Christie Keith, the international coordinator and executive director of the US office of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. She’s worked with social movements and international nonprofits for 25 years, focusing on women’s rights, international waste, public health, and environmental justice. She’s also a founding member of the Break Free From Plastic movement.
And finally we have Erica Cirino, who is a science writer and artist whose work focuses on the intersections between humans and the non-human world. She’s the author of Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis, which will be published in October. And she also wrote, photographed, and illustrated the framing article for our summer issue.
So to start us off, Erica, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the thinking behind your framing piece in this issue. The problem of plastics is so huge. How did you go about narrowing down sort of the list of problems and solutions you eventually decided to cover in the piece, and how did your activism on plastic influence those choices?
Erica Cirino: Sure, well, first off, thanks so much for having me. I’m in such great company today. I’m excited to be part of this discussion. My story with plastic actually started out in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2016 I was invited to sail this notoriously polluted stretch of ocean, you know, that most of us have heard of, and see it up close for myself. At that time, you know, the garbage patch was still news. I mean, there were people that had not heard of it. And I for one just wanted to see what it looked like up close. And what I found was not a floating dump of garbage but instead a plastic soup of different size particles and items, and it had so clearly entered the environment, but I did not know yet at that point how. So I actually traced my way from sea back to shore and then ultimately to the places where plastic is produced to kind of understand the whole scope of this problem. And so from where plastic is made, from where it’s discarded to the environment. It’s all around us, as you pointed out. So I had to understand it from various angles. The story is endless. It touches disability rights, it touches on medical science. So it’s a huge story. I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible, you know, in my framing, but as we can see, communities everywhere, they are acting now and creating amazing solutions and ways forward that we need to pay attention to. So I’m really glad that this issue has come out and hopefully more people will learn about it.
Breanna Draxler: I think that’s a really good segue actually. One of the things you point out in your piece is that the plastic industry has really done a lot to suppress the science of the environmental impacts of plastic and also to launch huge campaigns to convince people that litter is the problem, recycling is the solution. So can you speak to the ways in which that really just misses the bigger picture or obfuscates the bigger picture?
Erica Cirino: Right, so recycling seems simple. You bring your plastic and other materials, glass and metal, cardboard, out to the curb. Someone picks it up, takes it away. It’s very simple. The industries that create plastic, petrochemical industries, they love recycling because it means that we see that we’re getting rid of plastic. Very little of it is actually recycled. And then they can produce and sell more plastic. So it’s this insidious cycle. In addition to that, I’ve spoken with several scientists, a handful of them, including Marcus Eriksen of 5 Gyres, a very well-known documentarian of the plastic crisis, and Edward J. Carpenter, who’s now working at San Francisco State University. Both have been working, studying plastic for a long time. Actually, Dr. Carpenter back in the ‘60s and ‘70s was studying this issue and told me that plastic industry representatives actually came to his lab when he was working at Woods Hole Institution and threatened him, said, “You cannot publish this paper about plastics.” And this was in, you know, the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the problem was just emerging. Plastic has only been mass produced since the 1940s. So we’ve learned how to engage in this throwaway culture very rapidly. Industry saw that happening. It’s a really great selling point for their product. It’s endless supply and demand they’re trying to fill. And so the idea that recycling is the solution is very misleading. It can be part of the solution, but it needs to be vastly different than what it is today because right now it’s not functioning at a level that we need it to. I hope that was comprehensive enough.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely. Thanks, Erica. So now let’s back up a little bit and speak with Sharon. Because when people think about the problem of plastic, the images that come to mind are often plastic waste washed up on beaches and the garbage patch that you described, Erica, and that is really a big part of the problem— but it’s also, you know, the work that Sharon’s doing focusing on the petrochemicals that come into play earlier in the production process. And a lot of people don’t realize that almost all plastic is made from fossil fuels. So that harms not just the sea life from plastic but also human life. And I was wondering, Sharon, if you could talk about the link between plastic and the pollution that your community is experiencing.
Sharon Lavigne: Well, in St. James Parish, we are experiencing the approval of a $9.4 billion petrochemical plant that wants to come two miles from where I live. And the effects of this plant will leave this place empty. They won’t have any more lives here because they want to make plastic and from the fossil fuel that they use to make the plastics causes cancer, the chemicals that they’re using causes cancer. And we’re already bombarded with 12 industries in the 5th District on the West Bank. And if this industry comes into St. James, then we’ll have 14 plants inside of the big complex, and the emissions that they’re gonna let out in the air is not going to be livable. We will not be able to live because we will not be able to breathe the air. We’re already having problems breathing the air now, and we have so many people that are dying with cancer. That’s the leading cause over here is cancer. We have some that died with respiratory problems, asthma, different types of sicknesses, but cancer is the leading one in St. James Parish and all throughout the corridor of Cancer Alley. So that’s one of the reasons why we oppose this industry to come into St. James.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely, and so it’s one industry among many that are already there, and one community among many where these larger injustices are continually playing out, specifically in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. And so I think it’s a really powerful example that illustrates a much larger and systemic issue. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the organizing you’ve done and the successes that you’ve had in your community so far?
Sharon Lavigne: Well, we organized this organization in October of 2018 because that was when we heard about the industry coming in here. And our public officials, they voted for this industry in 2019 without even consulting the citizens in the parish. They made the decision to let it in because of jobs, jobs that’s not gonna go to the residents of St. James Parish. It’s always the jobs that go to the outsiders. But so we decided to fight this industry. But others were already in here that we didn’t try to fight because we didn’t know that the chemicals that they were emitting into the air was causing us to be sick. So after we realized that we couldn’t take any more and that we weren’t going to allow another one to come in here, that’s when we formed an organization and we called it RISE St. James. And in 2019 there was an industry that tried to come in on the East Bank and we fought that one, but that one had not got approval. So it wasn’t that hard to fight it because they didn’t get that approval first, so we stopped that one and that was a win right there.
But for most of the plastics, the governor of Louisiana approved it, and the public officials was celebrating with him in St. James. That’s how we found out about this plant coming into St. James. And my question to him is if this plant is so wonderful and it’s gonna do so much for the economy, why not put it in your hometown? And our public officials, one industry wanted to come on the East Bank in a White neighborhood. They voted it down right quick. They didn’t have chance, they didn’t look to get a permit because they voted it down right quick.
But whenever they want to come in my district, they vote unanimous to put it in the 5th District because the politicians all go for it. The people will not speak up. They said, “There’s nothing we can do about it because the governor approved it and our parish council members approved it so there’s nothing we can do about it, Sharon, so leave that alone.” The more they told me to leave it alone, the more I went after it. So right now it’s at a standstill. We filed a lawsuit with the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the wetlands. It’s on hold right now, and one of the judges told them to go back to the drawing table and re-evaluate your permit. So right now it’s not built yet. It’s not built and it’s not gonna be built because we want to fight to keep it from being built. Because enough people have died, and we don’t want any more people to die. The chemicals they put in our drinking water, they put benzene, and this plant would emit ethylene oxide. That’s cancer-causing, and these chemicals that they’re making the plastics with, it causes cancer.
So I’d rather have an economy without plastics that’s not gonna give us cancer or make us sick. All we’re asking for is to live and to live healthy and not be sick, but the politicians don’t see that.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely, you know, it’s a really powerful story. And I know that you have shared this on so many platforms with, you know, testimony to Congress and you’ve really represented your community. And I’m wondering for people who maybe are intimidated or overwhelmed or unsure where to start, if you could sort of describe your journey into activism and how you became the voice for your community that you are today.
Sharon Lavigne: I had no intentions on being an activist. I was a school teacher, and I worked to teach schools until I retired. But after I started working with this, I had to retire because I couldn’t do both jobs. But I had never been an activist, never spoke out into the community or anywhere, never spoke to the media or anything. I left it up to our public officials, the people that we voted into office. My daddy was an activist. My cousin, Imelda West, was an activist but I had no intentions of becoming an activist. All up in my mind, all I knew was I wanted to live, and I wanted to breathe clean air. I wanted to drink clean water, and I wanted to make our gardens again. We can’t do a garden because of the pollution. They emit these chemicals out in the air, especially at night and on weekends, and like, one, two o’clock in the morning, you ride down Highway 18, it’s like a smog all over the highway. They don’t care. They want to make profit. They’d rather have their profit and poison us, destroy us. I think they want us to die off. They didn’t ask to buy us out. They have no intentions on buying us out. So they want us to die off.
But RISE St. James came into existence out of the blue. We had no intentions on starting an organization. We just wanted to stop Formosa. And it turned into a big deal now, and I’m glad because the people who don’t know how we’re living, they need to know. And we have written letters to the president, to the governor, to our parish officials. They will not rescind this decision. But so far, just like I said, it’s at a standstill, and we almost got it down. Just a little bit more, a little bit more of a push, Formosa gonna be completely down.
Breanna Draxler: I think that’s inspiration for a lot of people in communities like yours and outside of them. And it really demonstrates the importance of stopping that flow of plastics into our lives, into the environment. And those upstream solutions are a really critical component. The downstream solutions are also a big deal, and they’re, you know, there are a lot of plastics in the world already wreaking havoc on health for people and for the planet. And so I’d like to bring in Christie here to talk about some of the downstream solutions because I think for most Americans and YES! readers, plastic waste is sort of out of sight and out of mind, right? If we’re lucky enough to a municipal recycling program, put the bottles in the bin, put it on the curb, we don’t have to give it another thought and that’s kind of how it’s designed to work. So we assume it’s going to be recycled but that’s so rarely the case. And in reality, a lot of it’s burned or exported and then burned. So I’d like, Christie, to hear you speak a little about the international plastic trade and how it perpetuates similar injustices and different injustices in communities of color, similar, as they do in the U.S., but around the world. Can you speak to that trade a bit?
Christie Keith: Yeah, I want to start just with saying all power to Sharon.
Sharon Lavigne: Thank you.
Christie Keith: I’m inspired by the work that you’re doing.
Sharon Lavigne: Thank you.
Christie Keith: I work with a global network called GAIA, and we have members in 90 countries around the world including in the United States because plastic impacts folks at the extraction and the processing side of things. It also impacts folks who live near landfills, or, you know, if you’re living next to an incinerator, then you’re breathing in all those toxins that come from when waste is burned. And so we have members in the United States who are working to shut down incineration and shut down incinerators and move to, you know, more positive solutions, zero-waste solutions, and solutions that reduce the amount of waste in our communities. But internationally, so, you know, what happens with recyclables when they’re collected in the United States or stuff that’s put in the recycling bin, you know—often chunks of which aren’t recyclable—is that it mostly gets shipped abroad. And China closed down its, you know, importing of recycling a few years ago. And when that happened, then we started to see trash being shipped to other countries. So we’re talking about Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam. Those are some of the leading countries that are taking in the waste that used to go to China and so many other countries around the world. And so the international plastic waste trade now is just going everywhere. And, you know, the folks who are benefiting from that are the companies, the corporations that sort of want to give the sense that, oh, it’s okay, we can keep producing this stuff. It’s recyclable. It’s gonna be taken care of.
And, you know, in the United States, I think we think that, okay if we put it in that bin, it’s gonna be okay. And so, you know, when you look at some of the international plastic waste trade, I have a few data points here:
In Malaysia, for example, groups there were recently involved in organizing the Consumers Association of Penang and others, and they got, you know, 300 big ship, like, trailers of waste shipped back to the countries that had sent it.
And there’s incredible organizing happening in Indonesia with an organization called ECOTON and many others who are organizing around waste that’s being shipped into their communities. You know, what happens there is that, like, some of the good stuff that actually is recyclable or downcyclable gets separated from the junk. And the junk is often just burned in open pits or maybe dumped into rivers or maybe put in, you know, dump sites. So you just, you have this situation where the pollution that is happening on that end is really significant for the receiving communities.
One of the recent victories was in Turkey. So, you know, it’s not just the United States that’s shipping waste around the world. This is also happening from other countries and Europe. In Europe there was a lot of waste that was going from the U.K., from Britain to Turkey. And just, it’s just like, what was it? A few days ago, Turkey banned the import of most plastic waste after an investigation revealed that a lot of British waste, it had gone from, you know, Britain sending 12,000 tons in 2016 to Turkey to 209,000 tons in 2020. So that’s, you know, just a massive increase in waste being shipped to Turkey. So Turkey has now banned the imports of most types of plastic waste.
So there’s folks who are organizing around the world to stop waste from being shipped into their countries. And I think one of, you know, the last thing I will say is that on the solution side, policy matters here because fair trade, free trade agreements are a real obstacle to reigning in waste dumping in the Global South. And in the U.S., we aren’t signatories to the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban which could help to end the practice of us shipping waste abroad. You know, a lot of our waste also gets shipped to Mexico to be burned in cement kilns. So the administration right now is on the fence about what it’s gonna be doing about the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban and that’s something that, you know, that GAIA and a lot of other members of Break Free From Plastic are promoting is that the U.S. sign on to that global policy treaty.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely, and I think, you know, your point about policy needs to be both at the international level and domestically here. And I’m wondering if you can speak to the efforts being done to push policy at the national level and the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act and how that can help address these huge issues that you’re talking about?
Christie Keith: Yeah, so the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act was introduced to Congress and re-introduced to Congress in March. And it includes a bunch of different elements. You know, it’s supposed to pause new and expanding plastic facilities until new environment and health protections are put in place. It outlines ways to incentivize businesses to make reusable products that can actually be recycled. It would generate investments in domestic recycling and composting infrastructure so that waste is not shipped abroad. It would reduce and ban certain single-use plastic products that aren’t recyclable and create beverage container refund programs. It also has, you know, it has some other elements around requiring producers to design, manage, and finance waste and recycling. I think like all pieces of legislation, you know, there’s always challenges around how much would corporations control that piece of the system? Extended producer responsibility is something that’s often held up as a good thing. Can be good depending on how the producers are held responsible and under what conditions. So I think, you know, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act is one piece of legislation. There’s legislation that’s around clean air. There’s, you know, what’s important is to be thinking about how can we reduce the amount of plastic that we are using, that we’re producing, and how can we reduce its impacts on communities and safely manage what’s in the world today?
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely. You make it sound so easy.
I’d like to talk about one of the solutions that I think people think a lot about and that’s one that you mentioned in your piece, Erica, with bio-plastics, so made from corn or bamboo or other compostable plant starches. So you describe how these are really less ecologically friendly than they’re advertised and that they contain a lot of chemicals, some of them toxic, some of them the same in conventional plastics. So do these compostable alternatives, A, solve the problem or B, still have a place in this quest to reduce single-use plastic?
Erica Cirino: Right, it’s a great question and as we all kind of scramble to come up with solutions, replacing plastic with something that looks, acts, and feels like plastic is a much harder task than I think we have imagined because plastic is so useful. Because it has the properties we seek, you know, durability, disposability. It’s strong, it’s tough, it can be molded, pliable. And using starches and sugars, which is what most bioplastics are primarily made of these days, you have to add stabilizers and other chemicals to give it those qualities that would mimic plastic because we’re so used to having these fast-paced lifestyles where plastic just serves this very natural, it seems, role because: grab it, go, throw it out, you know, that’s it.
And yet we’re not really meant to live that way. And it just shows in our plastic crisis right now is that, you know, the throwaway mindset is not sustainable. It’s not healthy. It’s harming people, animals, our home, our shared home. And if you’re looking at some products, European scientists actually examined some of these bioplastic products, and some of them actually contain up to 20,000 chemicals, many of which that were toxic, commonly also found in plastic. So it’s not like you’re getting, you know, a clean green thing when you buy this bioplastic cup. It’s like, this also could contain chemicals that cause cancer. And then you have to think about, you know, like Sharon’s community, where are these products made? And then all these chemicals that are being brought in and then, you know, going, dumping the garbage somewhere else. So it’s insidious.
I do think that we can start looking at, you know, other materials. So we talk about, like, our classic human-used materials. We think wood, paper, metal, glass. Bamboo is another big one. Algae is another one. We have to come up with solutions that, you know, look at the long-term effect. What is it going to mean if we throw sugar-based bioplastic in the ocean? It might cause algal blooms because we have all these nutrients and different food sources going in. It’s really hard, really hard to untangle.
The bottom line is we have to just stop being wasteful and we have to stop expecting that we can buy products that we just buy to throw away, you know? Why are we buying, you know, throw-away forks if we can just have a metal one that we keep for our whole lifetime? It’s crazy that we’ve come to this point but we are actually having to kind of unlearn the throwaway culture that industry has forced on us through their PSAs and advertising. That’s my take on it.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely, I think that’s such a big part of it is not just swapping out plastic for something else that does the same thing, right? It’s that idea that we’re using single-use materials and throwing them away. And so one of the ways people think about shifting that is sort of a zero-waste lifestyle. And I wonder if you could talk about some of the challenges and the inequities that come from trying to eliminate waste in someone’s lifestyle?
Erica Cirino: Right, so many of us can go out today and find zero-waste products, which are typically made out of those materials I mentioned earlier, wood, metal, glass, long-lasting. You can keep them forever if you so choose, if you take care of them. But often these products are marketed at such a high cost that it’s impossible, it’s very challenging for most people of, you know, average income to afford it. So when you’re just trying to put food on the table, you can’t really think, oh, I need to buy this type of oats because it’s in paper instead of plastic if it’s, you know, $6 more. It’s gonna be breaking your budget.
So we need to make sure that all these solutions are equitable. And that, you know, the idea of plastic as this cheap easy solution to everything—we have to kind of undo that mindset and start changing our values. Values is critical as are community strength and support. We need to start small, I think, because, I mean, based on what I’ve seen, I mean, I’m a journalist. I’ve covered this story in so many ways. I’ve been so fortunate to see these communities that are really making amazing changes simply by putting their heads together and saying, “What do we need now?” And also I want to point out that community-based solutions are often best because we’re so different. People are so different, and we have to come together, but we also have to, you know, create solutions that work for us. And what are our needs here? And make it equitable, make everyone be able to access solutions that work for them. So that’s what I’ve seen.
Breanna Draxler: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a powerful reminder that, like, the community level is a really powerful level to be working at. And we have a piece in the issue that looks at shame and the ways in which it’s used to really discourage people who are maybe trying to improve their lifestyles but struggling, right? So shame is not a motivating force. Building community is.
And so I think, you know, Sharon is a prime example of that community organizing and just how much change can happen by bringing people together with common values and a common goal. And I think that, you know, I’d love to hear a little bit more from you, Sharon, about sort of your community today and, you know, I’m sure it looks a lot different than it looked before these petrochemical industries were there. So can you speak a little bit to the history and how that shapes the activism that your community does?
Sharon Lavigne: Okay, when I was a little girl coming up over here in this rural area in St. James, my daddy was a sugar cane farmer, and we lived off the land. We had all our foods. We grew all of our foods, all our vegetables, all of our meats, our eggs, our milk, everything. We didn’t have to buy those things because we had it right here on our property, and then we were never, ever sick. I went to the doctor to get my immunizations but not because I was sick. If I had a cold, my daddy had a remedy, and he got rid of the cold. So then when I was about in eighth or ninth grade, that’s when the first industry came into St. James on the West Bank. My daddy and the other politicians and members of the community, they welcomed the industry. And as we went on, more industry started to come. Then more came. Now we have 12.
But it’s over the years that they came, then I noticed in the last 10 years, I noticed people were dying so fast. And this one had cancer, that one had cancer. And I didn’t know, I thought the world was coming to an end or something because there was so many people sick and dying. Every time you turn around, it’s a funeral. Somebody, that person died with cancer. So, and not knowing it was industry.
Then when I became sick in 2016 with autoimmune hepatitis, I still didn’t associate it with the chemicals. And then I started to read about my sickness, and they said it came from industrial pollutants. Then in 2018 I was diagnosed with aluminum in my body. I said, where did that come from? And I read some more about it. They say it come from industrial pollutants. And I said, all these years we’ve been sleeping? All these chemicals that’s been emitted in the air and in our water? We drunk the water. When I was a little girl, we drank that water from the hydrant, and we cooked with it and everything. We wasn’t sick. We were not sick. Now we can’t drink the water. The chemicals plants pour that benzene in our drinking water. So we had to buy bottled water. I was so tired of carrying bottled water into my house until I bought a filter. So now we have to drink bottled water or filtered water but it’s not good with the bottled water because it’s made with plastic. So that’s not helping us either. So what do we do?
We buy everything with plastic. It’s gonna be hard to get away from plastic. I think we could get away from it if we gradually find a solution. Just like we said, go back to paper bags in the stores. Go back to the silver spoons and forks and stuff. Go back to the bottled milk. We don’t have to have plastic. If plastic is killing us, let’s get rid of the plastic because we want to live. So why should we have to sacrifice our life because the industry want to make money? They’re making money off our lives. They don’t care if we live or die. So I want to live. So if getting rid of the plastic’s gonna make me live, get rid of the plastics.
And a lot of people feel the same way that I feel. If something’s gonna harm you, you get rid of it. When I was a little girl, all I did was swimming in the river where my grandfather would catch fish and shrimp. We didn’t have to buy shrimp or fish. You better not fish in there today. It’s filled with chemicals, the fish, so everything was being taken away from us with these industries, and the thing that gets me, they want to put them all in one area, African American areas, poor African American people, knowing no one would speak up. So it’s time for change. It’s time for them to let us live.
Breanna Draxler: Absolutely, and I think, you know, hearing about your example of your community and to Erica’s point about, you know, these changes and these solutions need to come at that community level, this next question is for you, Christie. What is the power of a global network that connects these communities and that allows for the sharing of information and stories and resources? How much bigger can that impact be when we’re able to connect the communities?
Christie Keith: That’s a great question. There are folks organizing around the world to create community-oriented zero-waste solutions because, you know, we need solutions that are systemic, that are not just about me making a choice to buy something different. But if I live in a place that’s being polluted, if I live in a place where it’s a food desert and all I can buy is heavily packaged foods, if I live in a place where there’s no composting and, you know, all that green waste, all that food waste, you know, like, there’s no place to put it, right? That’s gonna go into a landfill or that’s gonna get dumped in the nearby stream. And so we have members who are working around the world literally in their communities and their cities to change systems. And some of those groups are working in cities of 1 million people, 2 million people, on solutions where, you know, you can, where folks who used to work on the dump site picking through trash on the dump site are now going door to door, collecting recyclables, picking up compost, creating community gardens.
There’s this amazing organization in the Philippines called Mother Earth Foundation. They’re building zero-waste models. There’s, you know, folks that we work with in Tanzania, folks, you know, waste picker associations that we work with in Brazil and South Africa. We have members in Ghana. It’s really powerful. And I think part of it is that, like you said earlier, it can sound so easy but the reality is when you start with the community and when folks in the community see, this is our problem, you know, what are our solutions? What’s the pollution that I’m being impacted by and what can I do differently? That’s where the organizing begins and that’s where organizing can have the most impact.
But then people need to learn from each other. You know, by learning from each other we feel more powerful and we get better solutions. And so that is, you know, that’s one of the things that we do. We call it trans-local organizing. You work locally and you connect up with others and you learn from others and you share with others. A lot of the countries around the world that are at the forefront of plastic bag bans, you know, they’re in Africa, you know? There are countries and there are communities that are at the forefront and I think, you know, in the United States, we’re often way behind. And, you know, we need to think about, plastic’s only cheap if we don’t count the impacts on communities like Sharon’s. It’s not cheap. There’s a real cost here. The question is who’s paying that cost.
Breanna Draxler: Yeah, those hidden costs are such a big part of this and really highlight the inequities that are felt as a result of it. I really appreciate so much all of your sharing and we are soon gonna transition over to audience questions, but I did want to open it up to just if any of the three of you have final thoughts or maybe inspirations for why you continue to do this work despite it being daunting and huge and oftentimes overwhelming. If anyone has final thoughts for our audience, we’d love to hear.
Sharon, why don’t you get started?
Sharon Lavigne: Okay, my final thought is if you’re living in something like in a bad area or bad situation, speak up. Find the facts. Get the facts first. Speak up. Educate the public. Educate your children and tell them to be mindful of what’s going on.
First, seek God. That’s what I did. I seeked God first when I couldn’t get my message over to the people in the community—some of them who said it was a done deal, there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s already approved. I didn’t listen to those people. So I’m telling people to follow your own minds, especially if you know it’s the right thing, and speak up. Don’t hold back. Speak up for what you believe in. And if it’s the right thing, speak up. That’s what I did, and I was not a person to speak up. But after I saw them trying to poison us, I have to go to God because some of the people, they said you couldn’t do anything about it. It’s a done deal. But I didn’t settle for that.
So I’m telling especially the young people who would like to do this type of work or would like to see something is wrong, speak up about it, don’t hold back. That’s my advice.
Breanna Draxler: Thanks, Sharon.
Sharon Lavigne: You’re welcome.
Christie Keith: Yeah, I want to echo what Sharon is saying around speaking up and organizing for justice. And in addition, I want to say that the solutions are pretty beautiful. Like, you know, when you can really get to reducing the trash that we’re producing, and you can really get to the types of systems where, you know, the waste that we produce is just less, and it’s turned back into soil for our food. And we’re buying things from local businesses because there you have to package less, and we’re having to travel less to get the stuff. I mean, I know that it may not always seem easy, but we actually have a lot of really beautiful solutions out there.
And I think that’s the thing that keeps me inspired is that when I go and see the work that our members are doing. I mean, yeah, sometimes they’re David versus Goliath struggles, and yeah, sometimes it’s daunting, but there’s also just a lot of beauty in the solutions. And so I feel like, you know, all that and then there’s beauty in the organizing. So I think that this is some of the most inspiring heart-filling work that I’ve done. And so I just want to say this is not like all doom and gloom. There’s a lot of positive stuff out there, and it’s the world we need, so let’s create it.
Breanna Draxler: Thanks, Christie.
Erica Cirino: I’ll wrap up with my final thought here. Sharon and Christie, those were great points and so inspiring. I just want to reiterate as a journalist who’s seen this issue up close all around the world from, you know, the oceans to the Middle East, Asia, everywhere, I mean, plastic affects all of us, and if anyone’s on the fence about caring about being part of the change and joining your community and changing, please get on board because your health is at risk. The community’s health is at risk. Other communities’ health is at risk.
You know, there’s always someone downstream from you. So next time you pick up something plastic, just think about it, and ask yourself, do I really need this or could I live without it? I think that’s something that we all really should challenge ourselves to do and something I thought about so frequently when I was out at sea on my sparely equipped sailboat, the crew that I joined, we were on this creaky old steel boat. We did not even have a toilet. We did not have a shower. We all shared a bucket for that purpose and, you know, you ate what you had, and you had to make do.
And I think there’s a beautiful thing in simplicity. There’s a beautiful thing in slowing down. We all need to question our values at this point and say, you know, why are we allowing these things happen? Why are we allowing racism to perpetuate pollution and why are we allowing inequality to prevent people from accessing the solutions that could actually make their lives so much healthier and better? Why are we polluting the shared environment? It’s just, we have to stop and slow down. That’s basically my advice is just stop, slow down and think, and then act after that. So I hope everyone can take that from this. Thank you.
Breanna Draxler: Thanks, Erica. I’ll hand it over to Zenobia now who’s going to kick off the Q&A with audience questions. So if you do have a question, please add it to the Q&A.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Yes, thank you so much, Breanna, and thank all of you. This has been such a rich discussion and encouraging, motivating at the same time, lots of appreciation in the chat for all of what you all have shared. Lots of questions around equity too. And so this one is inspired by Diane Landry. How can we address equity issues raised by policies that penalize individual plastic use like disposable cup fees?
Erica Cirino: I’ll jump in. So, okay, in terms of increasing equitability, you said, Zenobia?
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Yes.
Erica Cirino: Okay, so if we create these solutions, such as, like, you have to pay to have a cup, we need an option that is free that can enable the right solution, I think. I think that’s the only way out. I’ve been in many shops that have given out free cloth bags for example, but again, that’s producing more waste. I think we need to kind of implement more of the values but also have that other option so that no one’s left out. That could be a way forward.
Of course it requires investment on behalf of whoever is packaging or selling the product that could be possibly taxed. In my community here, we have a fee on plastic bags, and they actually just took all the plastic bags out of the shop and you can get a free cloth bag if you request one. Again, we don’t want you to take a million free cloth bags because it’s creating more waste, but that is one way to start moving forward. I hope that helps.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Thank you, Erica.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Okay, I don’t know if I saw you move to jump in and unmute yourself, Christie. I’ll go on to the next question from Edward Ren. Is capitalism fundamentally not workable with reducing plastic pollution and addressing climate change or can public pressure adequately influence these systems to adopt alternatives? One minute, all right, Christie.
Christie Keith: That’s a big question. You know, capitalism is the system we live in and change is possible. Is, you know, is the vision of the world that we want to see, is this going to be the system of the future that’s gonna allow for sustainability, that’s gonna allow for us all to live healthy and thriving lives? You know, I think there’s a lot of issues with capitalism, and it’s not just plastics. What I will say is that it’s not impossible to reduce plastics in capitalism. And, you know, a lot of our structures, a lot of our corporations, the corporations that are thriving instead of human communities under the system, are thriving because they’re externalizing the costs of production to others. And, you know, that’s part of the system. The economic system that we live in is that profits are made by externalizing the costs and externalizing the impacts. So is this system creating the conditions of the problem? Yeah. Should we be changing this system, this economic system that we live in? I think so, but is it impossible to make change? I don’t think so. So I don’t know. Be interested to hear others.
Erica Cirino: There’s a great book by Kate Raworth called Doughnut Economics and it talks about a much more equitable and just economic model that’s shaped like a donut where everyone has to live within certain levels of sustainability within the Earth’s kind of limits, I’ll call it. So limits of resources, limits to how much of a resource can be used before people’s quality of life starts degrading or environment starts degrading. So circularity is a term that we use a lot in maybe a different way forward, making things more equitable, more fair, and just not having so much exploitation which is, the system that we currently live in is extremely exploitive. So look that up. It’s also in my book, so if you wanted to learn more, that’s where it is.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: And we also actually interviewed Kate for an article in our ecological civilization article. So check that out too. Another question here from, I’ll ask this really quick one. Is silicone a decent alternative for plastic? Why or why not?
Christie Keith: I’m not a chemist but I thought silicone is a form of plastic. I think, you know, there’s a difference between durable plastic and, you know, single-use disposable plastic and silicone I think tends to be used for more durable applications. But I think it is a form of plastic.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: And one last question from Kat Gjovik. What hope is there for standardizing the most innovative waste reduction programs, at least regionally? Programs vary from community to community so it makes it a little confusing for users.
Christie Keith: You know, waste in most places around the world is actually at local government. Often it’s managed through local government contracts and local government systems. And yeah, I’ve heard lots of folks talk about confusion, confusion in terms of what’s recyclable in one place versus another. I mean, the fact is that shipping markets are different. Like, the conditions of what surrounds your community is different and so I think standardization is an interesting solution but it doesn’t really get at the problem, which is that in the United States right now, we have very few companies that are actually doing the recycling here. And so standardization, if what you’re getting at is standardizing to simplify so people know what can go in the recycling bin and what can’t, a lot of stuff is still gonna be shipped abroad. It’s still gonna have that problem associated with it even if we standardize. I think there’s possibilities for standardization. I just don’t think it gets to the root of the problem. It’s not where I would focus all my energy.
Breanna Draxler: I did see one question pop up that I thought would be a good one to address talking about the way in which spirituality influences your activism, Sharon, and drives a lot of the work you do. And I wonder if you could speak to the ways in which this is a spiritual challenge as well as an environmental one and a racial one.
Sharon Lavigne: Well, I know for me it’s spiritual because without my vision from God, I wouldn’t be talking to you today because when I went to him with the problems that we’re having in St. James, I asked him the question if I should sell my home and he told me, “No.” I asked him if I should sell my land, the land that he gave me. He told me “No.” And I asked him, “What should I do?” And he said, “Fight.”
He transformed me. He made me to be something that he wanted me to be. And it’s just like I see the world in a different eye now. I see things that I didn’t see before. I see people in a different eye and even the bad people that want to pollute us. But it was him who put this fight in me and without him putting this fight in me, Formosa would be building right now. So you got to go to God. We have to seek God first for everything in your life. And I know that, and I pray to him daily, and I have to because this is a fight that he put in me, and I work on this fight seven days a week. I can’t sleep because if I’m sleeping, they’re plotting against us out to get in here and they won’t let us alone. They want to keep at us. Everything we do, they jab at us. Everything we put in the paper, they do a rebuttal.
They do all kinds of things against the people in St. James. They offer us little trinkets like gift boxes of food, stuff like that. I picked up a box today but they say it’s from the parish. Like, you know, Formosa did that. So they’re trying to buy their way into St. James. But as long as God is here, they will not come in here because God didn’t put this fight in me for nothing. And I could speak from that. I know from my heart, God is doing this and God is bringing us all together to talk about it and to find ways to stop them. So I know it’s God doing this. I know I can’t sleep at night some time but I’ll wake up in the morning. I’m still refreshed. I’m ready to go. And he put a fight in me where I can’t stop. I’ll keep going. And I try to find solutions and he gives me the solutions. When I have our meetings, I bring it to the meetings. Oh, that’s a good idea. I said, “Lord, if they only know that wasn’t my idea. It was your idea.” So, I mean, it’s a whole new world out there when God changes you, and he changed me. I can tell the truth.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Thanks, yeah.
Sharon Lavigne: He changed me.
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield: Thank you so much, Sharon. I think that’s a perfect place for us to end. Unfortunately that is all the time we have for now, and I want to thank each of you for your encouraging words and your experiences and expertise that you’ve shared with us today and the work that you do and to our participants for spending this last hour with us. I want to let you all know that this talk will be emailed to registrants and made available at yesmagazine.org in about a week or so. In the meantime, you can check out our other events, the “Pandemic Portal” and “The Uprising” and “Ecological Civilization” on yesmagazine.org and “How to Make Black Lives Really Matter.” Every day at YES!, we seek to elevate hope and inspiration among our readers with our “Better World Today” newsletter. So again, if you have not already signed up, please do so. And just thank you, you know, thank you all. This has been so rich and encouraging, and I appreciate you all taking the time to spend with us in this last hour. So everybody continue to enjoy your day and onward, don’t give up and keep on fighting. Thank you, Erica, Sharon, and Christie.