Health Podcast Highlights
- When Tim Realised Plastic Pollution Was A Huge Issue [03:18-05:44]
- Take 3 for the Sea [05:44-08:00]
- Plastic Pollution in Australia [08:00-11:50]
- Degradable Plastic vs. Biodegradable Plastic [11:50-14:52]
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch [14:52-22:37]
- Ocean Impact Organisation [22:37-25:23]
- War on Waste and the Bottle Refund Scheme [28:25-31:08]
- Ocean Impact Organisation Pitchfest 2021 [31:08-32:35]
- Conclusion [33:42-36:53]
Tim Silverwood: Ocean Impact Organisation & Take 3 for the Sea Introduction
Well, oceans and plastics, two huge issues. Oceans occupy 70% of the world’s surface. Interestingly, the Pacific Ocean is the biggest, 30%, Atlantic Ocean, 20%, and the Indian Ocean, 14%, just a little aside there. And Australia actually has control over, I think the figure, it’s a huge area. I think the figure is something like 20% of the world’s oceans. So that is a big responsibility.
Plastics? Well, there’s an even bigger responsibility. We hear so much about the fossil fuel industry and we think of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But what about all the plastic that is produced? It’s huge. In Australia, apparently, we consume 100 kilos per person per year. Globally, 350 million tonnes of plastic are added each year. They are staggering numbers and plastics break down into nanoparticles and those nanoparticles go on for a very long time. Some estimates I’ve seen are for 50, 60, 100, 200, 400, or even more years. Shocking. I know.
Well, my guest today is somebody who’s deciding to do something about it in a very constructive way. My guest is Tim Silverwood, who together with Nick Chiarelli, co-founded the Ocean Impact Organisation.
Now a little bit about Ocean Impacts Organisation, its purpose is to transform ocean health through inspiration, innovation, and good business. Their mission is to support and accelerate ocean impact businesses. I mean, after all, if we live in a market-driven economy, that’s got to be part of the solution. In fact, it’s the only way for it to be a solution. They help people start, grow and invest in businesses that positively impact the ocean. And Tim’s shares, some of those which are really innovative and exciting.
Tim is a career environmentalist. He has a passion about human participation to protect the planet. He has long questioned if businesses focussed solely on profit over the critical interests of people and the planet have a future on a healthy planet. Together, Nick and Tim share a vision where conscious capitalism, conscious capitalism, what a wonderful term, and impact-driven, purpose based businesses can help to create an abundant and sustainable ocean. They believe in a future where sustainability is not a cost or a compromise, but a future where sustainability is profitable. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Tim Silverwood.
Podcast Transcript
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:01] I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I am recording this podcast, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, oceans and plastics, two huge issues. Well, oceans occupy 70% of the world’s surface. Interestingly, the Pacific Ocean is the biggest, 30%, Atlantic Ocean, 20%, and the Indian Ocean, 14%, just a little aside there. And Australia actually has control over, I think the figure.. It’s a huge area. I think the figure is something like 20% of the world’s oceans. So that is a big responsibility.
Plastics? Well, there’s an even bigger responsibility. We hear so much about the fossil fuel industry and we think of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But what about all the plastic that is produced? It’s huge. In Australia, apparently, we consume 100 kilos per person per year. Globally, 350 million tonnes of plastic are added each year. They are staggering numbers and plastics break down into nanoparticles and those nanoparticles go on for a very long time. Some estimates I’ve seen are for 50, 60, 100, 200, 400, or even more years. Shocking. I know.
Well, my guest today is somebody who’s deciding to do something about it in a very constructive way. My guest is Tim Silverwood, who together with Nick Chiarelli, co-founded of the Ocean Impact Organisation.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:01:54] Now a little bit about Ocean Impacts Organisation, its purpose is to transform ocean health through inspiration, innovation, and good business. Their mission is to support and accelerate ocean impact businesses. I mean, after all, if we live in a market-driven economy, that’s got to be part of the solution. In fact, it’s the only way for it to be a solution. They help people start, grow and invest in businesses that positively impact the ocean. And Tim’s shares, some of those which are really innovative and exciting.
Tim is a career environmentalist. He has a passion about human participation to protect the planet. He has long questioned if businesses focussed solely on profit over the critical interests of people and the planet have a future on a healthy planet. Together, Nick and Tim share a vision where conscious capitalism, conscious capitalism, what a wonderful term, and impact-driven, purpose-based businesses can help to create an abundant and sustainable ocean. They believe in a future where sustainability is not a cost or a compromise, but a future where sustainability is profitable. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Tim Silverwood. Welcome to the show, Tim.
Tim Silverwood: [00:03:20] Wonderful to be here.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:03:21] Tim. You know, we hear so much about plastic pollution and the issues that it raises, you know, for our oceans, for the wildlife, it seems to be a never-ending concern. Was there a particular moment in your life when you realised this is actually quite alarming to the environment, an environmental issue we need to change?
When Tim Realised Plastic Pollution Was A Huge Issue
Tim Silverwood: [00:03:42] Yeah, definitely. And probably a number of moments where pardon the pun, the straw broke the camel’s back. You know, I’m a surfer. And so from the moment I was first playing in the ocean, I developed that love and that connection to that space and to the interactions with the wild creatures whose home it is.
And before I’d even really been told that plastic was a problem, I was picking up plastic bags and bags from the surf and putting them up my wetsuit. Just it didn’t seem to work that you’d be in this beautiful special place and you’d had this polluting substance. So I was quite happy even before I’d even learn about the problem to do something about it.
But it was probably in my mid-twenties when I got pretty adventurous. I started travelling around the world through Indonesia, surfing, and then I went on a big odyssey all the way from Indonesia right the way through South East Asia. And the trip culminated at the top of India in Kashmir. And I was up there to go snowboarding, believe it or not, in the Himalaya and in this small mountain village called Goolma.
And my curiosity got the better of me. And I followed where the garbage that was being collected from the guesthouses and the lodges. And I followed the tractor. And lo and behold, the truck to the incinerator where it would normally get burnt in the summertime was snowed in.
Tim Silverwood: [00:04:59] So we had all the trash go? Over the side of the mountain. And I felt suddenly this really deep sense of even though I was thinking I was a great steward and a good custodian and being responsible, my responsibility meant nothing because the trash is getting dumped over the side of the mountain.
So I felt really implicit in the problem. And so that really charged me up. And I said you know what, these pollution problems got to stop. I went deep diving into the literature and found out all the organisations doing the great work and in the process was introduced to the co-founders of Take 3 for the Sea, Amanda and Roberta. And the rest is history. That was 2009.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:05:36] I mean, I wanted to ask you about Take 3 for the Sea, because this has evolved into your own organisation. Tell us about Take 3 for the Sea.
Take 3 for the Sea
Tim Silverwood: [00:05:44] Yeah. So Take 3 for the Sea is a non-profit organisation based down here in Australia, but with participation all around the world. Started in 2009 with three of us, myself, Mandy and Roberta, just coming together to sort of really activate on this emerging problem of plastic pollution. It was a pretty fringe issue back then. It was not like the other big mainstream environmental issues. And yet all this imagery and evidence was coming out, particularly I was inspired by some photographs from the Hawaiian Islands where they were documenting seabirds who not only tragically were adult seabirds interacting with the plastic and ingesting it, but then they were feeding it to their young. And you’d have these images of these juvenile birds dying or dead on these outer Hawaiian islands. And so I was charged to do something.
We got together and we just started spreading this message of, “Hey, when you’re out in nature, particularly when you’re leaving the beach, how about you take it upon yourself to take three pieces of plastic with you when you leave?” And I don’t suppose we’ve really understood just how powerful that simple action was, but lo and behold, it started to grow this groundswell and it’s still going to this day. I departed Take 3 for the Sea after ten years last year to start a new organisation. But our wonderful new CEO, Sarah Beard, is taking it to new places and new destinations. And it’s just a very, very proud thing for me to see that organisation still going from strength to strength.
A big focus of the programme is not only on sharing that call to action around the world, but they do a lot of education programmes focussed on youth and all different stakeholders. So there are literally hundreds of thousands of young people out there in Australia and around the world who [have interacted with our education programmes and taken it upon themselves to go and be part of the solution.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:07:34] One message that we’ve been constantly repeating is that if change is going to occur, it’s going to occur from the ground up, and that is from you and me and other people for waiting for change to come from above. We could be waiting a long time. And I’m not talking about God here. Can you give us a bit of a rundown on what the current situation is regarding plastic pollution in Australia and maybe in a broader sense in the world?
Plastic Pollution in Australia
Tim Silverwood: [00:08:00] Yeah, it’s a source of information that Take 3 for the Sea posted this week. And it was sort of talking about the plastic consumption of the average Australian and it’s 100 kilograms of plastic per person per year when you look at the actual quantity that we’re consuming. As a nation, so we’re not doing too great here.
Of course, a lot of the images that we see around the world of the highly polluted estuaries and rivers and coastlines, they come from nations where their overall plastic consumption will be much lower. But the infrastructure and the effort being put into waste management and prevention of this leakage is vastly different to our own country. So it doesn’t mean that we’re perfect. We definitely have a lot of leakage coming from our environment, but more alarmingly is the quantity of waste that we’re actually generating, because even when it goes to landfill, that’s still problematic. It’s got a huge energy burden attached to it.
Tim Silverwood: [00:08:59] Plastic is made from fossil fuels. It takes a lot of energy to make it and transport it around the place. You know, our recycling is poor. It’s something around 13% is our recycling rate. So we like to imagine that we pop these items in that magic recycling bin and everything’s hunky-dory. Well, it’s not often the case. The globalisation of the commodity market has meant that recycling often results in transportation to other corners of the world where you really have no insight over the human rights situations nor the environmental consequences of that recycling.
So what we really championing at the moment is this idea of taking ownership of our consumption and our waste and embracing the circular economy, because, you know, in nature there’s no such thing as waste. Everything remains in beautiful cycles and one organism’s waste is another organism’s food. And if we can start to embrace some of that thinking with our own consumption, then we can consume with a far less impact. And so that really is the future.
Tim Silverwood: [00:10:03] I guess the big thing that’s been emerging in the last couple of years around plastic pollution is we’ve got a really good handle on just how bad the problem is on the environment. And, of course, more science and more studies are revealing the problems that are happening in the environment. Or let’s try to start to look a lot more at the human health side of things, which is really important, very hard to study because of the, you know, the ethics associated with that and the certain timescales that we’re dealing with, but certainly starting to reveal a lot more about how relatively unstable plastic is.
We think about it and we talk about plastic as being something which lasts forever. It’s only really been around for hundred and thirty-odd years. So we don’t really know just how long it’s going to last for, but it starts to shed and degrade very quickly. So you pull a fresh polyester T-shirt out of its packaging. You’re already living in a cloud of this micro and nanofibrous plastic and same thing when you open up a packet of crisps, that crunchy, crispy plastic material, it’s shedding this dust.
Tim Silverwood: [00:11:05] I mean, a big source of pollution in the environment is not just the fibres from coachloads, but the dust from car tires. So everything is made of plastic is leaking and shedding. And so we’re actually living in this very significant cloud of plastic like a plastic cup, for example, that we can walk into the offices or a cinema and people are shuffling around. It’s just generating this cloud of plastic.
So some scientists are trying to put some qualifications on the amount of plastic that we’re ingesting through food, liquids, and through breathing. And the University of Newcastle suggested it could be up to five grams a week, which is a lot of plastic to be coming into your body. The consequences are less certain than what that means. But I certainly think that most people go, I’d rather not have five grams of plastic in my body a week.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:11:50] I mean, I’ve studied biochemistry and I can’t recall plastic being in an integral part of any biochemical process in the body. So while there might not be evidence, there’s certainly logic would dictate. I heard one thing about a credit card a week or a credit card a month. And the other thing that I also noticed recently, I went to a shop and they very proudly handed out this plastic bag with degradable, degradable, degradable written all over it. And I thought, well, I almost that’s quite honest, really, because they’re not saying it’s biodegradable, it’s degradable. What’s the difference between degradable and biodegradable? I think you touched on it already.
Degradable Plastic vs. Biodegradable Plastic
Tim Silverwood: [00:12:29] Yeah. So, I mean, in essence, we say most plastics are degradable. They over some certain timescale will start to degrade. But what some companies are doing and potentially what you interacted with there, Ron is one that’s actually putting some additives. So there’s oxo-degradable additives and various other additives. That will mean it will degrade into those smaller fragments faster, which is precisely what we don’t want for the sake of the environment. And I think it can also start to contaminate some of those recycling streams.
So what you do want to look out for if you’re interested in this new wave of green chemistry and how that interacts with plastic, is those that are certified compostable and they’re, you know, they’re using plant-based materials and processes to make a material that does somewhat the same job as a conventional plastic. But you can put it in your home compost, and it will become those soil nutrients.
Tim Silverwood: [00:13:21] There’s a lot of evidence coming out now showing that, well, when they get into the marine environment, there is that same microbial activity. So they’re still going to be causing a hazard and causing harm. But back to that earlier point about the circular economy, you can almost imagine a future where food, waste or offcuts from certain bio industries could then go into a process to create the proteins, to create the new bioplastics that can then be used for a specific purpose. And you can start to see that circularity.
The bottom line is, at the moment, the vast majority of plastics are made from petrochemicals, the same fossil fuels that we’re trying to resist the urge to keep consuming because of the impact on the climate. And we need to address this plastic problem because a lot of the big petrochemical companies have got their eyes set on the plastics market to diversify away from their traditional energy market. So it’s a big, big problem.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:13] Wow, I mean, we’ve identified fossil fuels as a problem because of their impact on the atmosphere. But there’s a whole story going on in the ocean. This morning, we were out walking, my wife must have known I was going to talk to you, and she said the ocean looks particularly big today. And I said, well, yeah, actually it is.
And in 2011, you did a trip. I think it was a 5000 km trip across the North Pacific Ocean to study this thing, which I just must be an absolute nightmare. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Could you paint a picture for us of your experiences, what you saw? I mean, I think it’s mind-boggling, but go and give it to us.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Tim Silverwood: [00:14:53] Yeah, look, it was very early on in the piece of my little environmental crusade, so we’d started to Take 3 for the Sea after I’d had my kind of calling. And then I had this opportunity to go out and join an expedition to see what was clearly the most notorious source and destination of plastic pollution, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So it was sort of discovered or coined in 1997 by a guy called Captain Charles Moore, who was sailing back from Hawaii to California.
He became somewhat becalmed in this very large high-pressure system and couldn’t believe that around his vessel was all this floating plastic. He ended up starting his own marine institution to study the impacts of plastic and is a real pioneer. So the expedition I went on was coordinated by his marine institution, and I joined 12 other ragtag activists and artists and filmmakers to go out and actually see it.
Tim Silverwood: [00:15:52] So it was probably, you know, at that time in my life, it was one of the greatest things I’d done. It was a three-week voyage. But to be honest, I mean, what we encountered out there in the ocean was underwhelming compared to what you hear about in the media, because we imagine this floating island of trash because that’s how it’s been communicated.
What you’re really dealing with is more like a plastic smog. It’s like when you go travelling to a densely populated developing country city and the whole place is shrouded in smog. It’s smaller particulate stuff shed across the entire ocean system. So it’s not until you actually do your scientific analysis. You used Mantha Troll’s and various devices and then you start to quantify just how much plastic is out there. That’s when it hits you hard. But looking at the ocean, it still looks pretty much beautiful on most days.
Tim Silverwood: [00:16:42] Sure, we saw sources of ghost nets and lots of big fishing items because commercial fishing and shipping material is designed to last. It’s very, very rigid and robust. But before I even joined the sailing component of the trip, I went and explored some of the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. And that’s where I was actually most shocked because there’s islands in remote corners of Hawaii where it’s just shocking that we call it plastic sand because you walk along the beach and it is literally this plastic confetti, the degraded stuff, the same stuff out there in the garbage patch washing ashore.
So, yeah, there’s no floating island of trash, but there’s enough trash in the ocean to make an entire continent will be able to aggregate and bring it together, which is what a lot of innovators and visionaries have thought about trying to do. Let’s get the trash out of the ocean. It really isn’t feasible. The ocean’s massive. As your wife pointed out. It was particularly big today. It’s very, very big. So we’ve got to make our effort in actually stopping the plastic, getting into the ocean in the first place, which starts with what we do obviously on land.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:17:46] So stopping it getting in is one thing. You’re saying once it’s there, I mean, it’s just time. It’s, what, just sinks to the bottom and it’s time. And that’s an experiment we’re on at the moment.
Tim Silverwood: [00:17:59] Exactly. So there’s a bunch of different types of plastic, something about 40000 different chemical constructs of types of plastic. But they get quantified into these seven stamped numbers that we generally see on the products that we consume. Of those, the vast majority actually sink. So you can do a little experiment at home. You can take a one through seven-piece of plastic and cut a little bit off and pop it in water, and you’ll find the stuff automatically sinks a lot of it. So that’s why if you go diving in Sydney Harbour or any waterway around the world, you’ll see a lot of plastic on the bottom of the ocean.
The stuff that does float, yeah, it will start to break up and life will occupy it. So it’ll become a new home for its entire little ecosystem. And at some point, it might get ingested and pooped out and it’ll end up sinking down. So ironically, if we’re around in a few million years, we might be digging up new oil from the old oil that we turn into plastic, that we then let pollute the ocean and sink to the bottom. But, yeah, that’s essentially what we’re dealing with.
Tim Silverwood: [00:18:57] Getting out into the ocean and cleaning up the stuff is, you know, there’s some visionary change-makers out there giving it a good crack and raising millions of dollars to go and do that. And I support them. I support them for attracting the funding to go and invest in the science and the innovation. But I would much prefer to see that effort, that genuine focus on getting to the source of the problem, which the one chap I’m talking about, boy, and that he’s done that.
Now he’s created a device called the Interceptor to complement his big boom device. He’s got in the great Pacific Garbage Patch. He’s now investing in getting these devices in Rivers’s interceptors to actually stop it from getting there because that’s what happens. You have a big storm. You’ve seen the polluted city or the urban landscape. The monsoon comes. It flushes into the strain, the drains and stormwater systems and eventually the ocean. That’s the source of this plastic.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:19:50] You know, you hear a little bit about, oh, we could employ microbes to do this. You must be following this. Is that a viable is that a possible alternative for dealing with in the ocean?
Tim Silverwood: [00:20:02] Yeah, look, it gives me peace of mind to know that on that large timescale you talk about, that nature will always find a solution, but there’s going to be a great deal of collateral damage while nature is figuring it out like it’s, you know, the microbial processes compared to the three hundred and fifty million new tonnes of plastic that we’re bringing onto the market every year and all the consequences along the way to allow that to happen.
It doesn’t fit into a solution in my book. So I support, again, all of the science and innovation to deal with these problems. But it can never be get out of jail card to keep doing what we’ve been doing.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:37] I mean, your new organisation is looking at being more entrepreneurial in how we approach this. And I guess, you know, we live in this world where the market-driven economy, we’ve been constantly told, you know, we live in a market-driven economy. And that’s where the solutions must lie, I guess.
Tim Silverwood: [00:20:56] Yeah.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:56] To turn this into a viable, market-driven solution.
Tim Silverwood: [00:21:00] Yeah. Look, I’m a firm believer that in a healthy ecosystem, you’ve got so many moving parts working together at any one time. So, you know, for me personally, as an environmentalist, I had a bit of a coming of age. I suppose, after ten years of focussing very heavily on civil society and the power of the individual and grassroots activism. And I love that. I’m such a big fan of that.
But at the same time, I was looking around and seeing how glacial the pace of change was, a government and a corporate level. And it didn’t take long for me to realise that perhaps the secret to getting the government and the multinational giant corporations to move faster was to make it as profitable as possible.
So, you know, I’ve had a lot of transitioning across to this pragmatic sense that, OK, well, if that is going to be the case, then we are in this market-led economy and this is going to be what’s going to generate progress, then let’s give that a red hot crack. So, you know, this is almost a big experiment for me. I’m a bit of an anti-capitalist at heart and a really bit bleak about the trajectory that our species is on.
But I do believe in the power of good business, and I do believe that people will support and invest in those businesses that are doing good by people and the planet. So why not try and rapidly accelerate as many good businesses who are focused on the solutions as possible because it’s going to give us a much greater chance of navigating our way through these turbulent waters ahead.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:22:28] Well, you’ll move from Take 3 for the Sea to form this organisation with Nick Chiarelli in Ocean Impact Organisation. Tell us about that organisation. Tell us about what its aims are, what it’s trying to do.
Ocean Impact Organisation
Tim Silverwood: [00:22:43] Yep. So we essentially exist to help people start, grow and invest in businesses that are improving the health of the ocean. So essentially, you know, we’re a start-up accelerator, we’re an aggregator. We introduce a little innovation investment ecosystem, all driven to helping those founders, entrepreneurs, startups and teams who have got visionary ideas of how we can transform ocean health.
So we’ve only been around for a year and a half. We launched in February 2020. And in that time we’ve had pretty good success, so we ran our first big campaign to attract these targets startups last year we had one hundred and ninety-two businesses apply from 38 countries. And you can go into our website and check out the 12 finalists and the ultimate winner to give you a sense of the kind of companies that we’re we’re targeting.
Tim Silverwood: [00:23:34] The ultimate winner was a Sydney based company, even though we had applications from all around the world. The expert judging panel selected Planet Protective Packaging. Now they’re Sydney based, their mission is to eradicate expanded polystyrene boxes from the food delivery market. So you see whether it’s seafood or groceries or all manner of home preparation meal kits, they’re getting delivered in these expanded polystyrene boxes, which are notoriously polluting. They’re very problematic for recycling because they’re so bulky and there’s not a lot of weight in them. So the commodities and they actually have great value and they take up huge amounts of storage in warehouses and transportation systems.
So Joanne, the founder, actually was commissioned to work for one of these companies and was responsible for delivering 55000 of these boxes every week. And she said there’s got to be a better way. So she went and did her big global literature review and researched it and found out that you can actually use waste from the wool industry. It’s about 20% of the wool that is shorn from sheep is actually a waste product that gets thrown into fields or into landfill.
She turns it into a felt. The felt, coupled with a recycled cardboard box, performs better than expected polystyrene. So here she is. She’s already helped divert prevent seven million boxes of expensive polystyrene entering the market or landfill or the ocean. And she’s got herself a viable business model with huge plans to scale. So there’s this one example of the kind of innovation that we’re supporting.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:25:13] What a great story. And I’ve actually been exposed to that kind of wool. And that’s a great one. I mean, you had 12 going give us another one because these are inspiring stories.
Tim Silverwood: [00:25:23] Yeah. So the runner up was also another Australian innovation, a guy called Dr Tom Dennis, who a brilliant mathematician, has worked a lot in the finance sector, but also a visionary innovator. And he was inspired by the Kiama Blowhole. He was down there and he’s watching the waves enter this cave system and generate this enormous amount of energy and so off he’s gone and tinkered away over many, many years and developed the Waves Swell Energy Unit, which is essentially like a, it’s as big as a Sydney Ferry, but it sits in the ocean and underneath it is a cavate.
And with the slightest movement of a wave, you know, one foot, two foot of wave action, it displaces the air in that column, which spins a turbine and generates renewable energy. So he’s got his eyes set on islands and remote communities where currently they’re using diesel to generate electricity, which requires the transportation of the diesel to get there and all the emissions associated with it. And he’s got his eyes set firmly on the huge opportunities of the ocean energy market. So a really great innovation as well.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:26:32] See, I mean, I think part of the problem with the environmental issue is that we are often painting such pictures of doom and gloom and catastrophe, which is, well, you know, it’s accurate, but it’s so depressing that people want to put it out of their mind. Whereas I think if we can paint more positive pictures about a future that is environmentally sustainable and renewable and appealing and prosperous, you know, it’s the narrative that needs to change, isn’t it?
Tim Silverwood: [00:27:04] Yeah. Look, I’m with you in the sense that we need to be all operating at our best. And if the news of the state of the world is causing us to delay our action or to not be our best, then that’s not good. I do think it’s a delicate balance. You know, we need to be and I used to say this a lot with Take 3 for the Sea. As crass as it is, you know, we’d use the images of the dead or dying creature or that to slap people over the face.
But then we say, hey, there’s a solution right here. So we need to have that beautiful balance and ultimately use data and analytics to track how they’re performing. Because if we’re just focussing on all the good, positive stories about what is possible with innovation and all these improvements, but meanwhile, it’s getting worse, then we haven’t done a good job. We’ve got to make sure we’re balancing out the two simultaneously.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:27:53] And you mentioned that only 13% of plastic is recyclable or being recycled and destroyed. And I know there was this wonderful programme which you were part of with Craig Reucassel, the War on Waste. I think, you know, that was a really powerful programme. Some of the things that he did, I mean, The Coffee Cup Trolley, the Plastic Bags on Manly Beach. I mean, these were great, and the Clothes Mountain, I mean, these were all-powerful images, weren’t they?
War on Waste and the Bottle Refund Scheme
Tim Silverwood: [00:28:24] Yeah, and that I mean, that was almost in hindsight, the golden age of the War on Waste. I found myself saying quite a bit in the last 18 months what happened to the War on Waste? And I think we all know what the answer is. But that’s a concern. And it’s a concern because the petrochemical companies that are really championing a plasticised economy for the next few decades, see this as an opportunity.
So I don’t know what the secret is going to be to get us back on on the wagon, back on the horse. But I certainly salute those pioneers out there who’ve been, you know, stoic throughout the pandemic and done their best whilst being safe because, yeah, it’s a very, very plasticised world right now as a result of it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:29:11] And the pandemic has distracted us from that golden moment where we could really have consolidated so much. There was definitely public support there, wasn’t it? I mean, he was terrific at articulating that.
Tim Silverwood: [00:29:27] Yeah, and there have definitely been some big wins. I mean, the one I’m most proud of through the more political activism that I was engaged with over the last 10 to 15 years was the Bottle Refund Scheme, what we call a Container Deposit Scheme. It felt when we were really championing that in the early days, we had South Australia with a model that had worked since the 1970s.
We had countries in Central Europe and around the world who were showing that they could recycle 90% and upwards of all the beverage containers, not just plastic, but we’re talking about aluminium, glass, et cetera.
Some of those countries even have mandated refilling systems where you go into a supermarket and you’re picking up that plastic bottle. That bottle has been sterilised and reused a number of times. You can see it written on the side of the bottle. So it’s just felt like madness that our nation couldn’t embrace this take-back scheme. You had the scouts and the kids saying, bring it on, we want more pocket money. You had everyone in agreement except the only people you had opposing with beverage companies because they quite like the idea of just selling you the packaging with the liquid inside and then having no responsibility.
So I’m incredibly proud that now every state and territory in Australia has agreed to the 10-Cent Refund Scheme, and that is helping to power the circular economy around beverage containers, which is at least one part of the problem.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:30:49] This is obviously a government-led regulatory issue. Is the block here that there are just too many powerful lobbyists pushing a different agenda? Is that it? I mean, lobbying seems to be the key to getting things done in government. Is that it? The problem is that part of what you see is the problem?
Ocean Impact Organisation Pitchfest 2021
Tim Silverwood: [00:31:12] Yeah, essentially. There are complications attached to it. I mean, I mentioned in another podcast recently, you know, globalisation, again, I mean, things like recycling of aluminium. We used to have aluminium smelters in Australia that would have employed people. Yet with globalisation, suddenly the market said, well, now you can sell your aluminium scrap cheaper to this mob over in South East Asia.
So where’s your incentive to keep that smelter open so it closes down, then the world changes a couple of decades later and now we’re saying, well, actually, the market’s come back because there’s a new mechanism to reward you with things like container deposit schemes. And so then there’s all the complexity of actually rebuilding the industry. So there are all sorts of complications. But at the very top of that is the lobbying influence of giant companies, for sure.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:32:03] You’d be pleased to know just recently I’ve spoken to Helena Norberg-Hodge about local futures and this whole story is of being more locally focussed is a big one. And that’s where I see recycling as such an opportunity because there are industries waiting to be to sprout up and be successful in this. Tell me another initiative. Just finishing up now, because another initiative that you guys have got going is this Pitch Fest 21. And I guess it’s a continuation from what you had last year?
Tim Silverwood: [00:32:36] Yeah. So in order to find and support the best start-ups that are working to improve the health of the ocean, we run this annual campaign called Pitch Fest. So it just launched on the 10th of August. You can apply until the 21st of September. We’ve got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of cash prises, another hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of products and support, and a bunch of different award categories.
So if you know of anyone or maybe you are working on a business solution that’s scalable and can demonstrate that it is or will improve the health of the ocean, then you’re in our sweet spot. And we’d love to talk to you and to help you make your biggest impact because we just don’t have enough time to waste here. We’ve got a lot of work to do to turn things around and set up a beautiful, healthy trajectory forward for our species and the millions of other species that we share this beautiful pale blue marble with.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:28] Tim, we’re going to have links to that and encourage people to climb on board and take more than three for the sea. So thank you so much for all the work that you’re doing. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Tim Silverwood: [00:33:39] Thanks, Ron.
Conclusion
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:42] Some of those statistics are quite staggering, are they not? And here we have the fossil fuel industry again, and I think this is a probably reasonable time to mention an IMF report that comments on fossil fuel subsidies globally. This is something I still do not understand why it isn’t more publicly discussed and isn’t in the news every single day. Apparently, this is the IMF. So this is not some left-wing environmental group. This is the International Monetary Fund. They did an assessment on the level of fossil fuel subsidies, and it works out to be around five trillion US dollars a year.
Now, that might be hard to get your head around. So let me put it into a more relatable form. That is 10 million dollars a minute. Now, do the maths on that one, because if this podcast has gone for 40 or 50 minutes, then the fossil fuel industry has got 400 to 500 million dollars worth of subsidies while you’ve been listening to this. So when I hear people say that renewable energies just wouldn’t survive without subsidies and I have heard that from very senior government officials who dismiss renewables sometimes, oh, if they didn’t have subsidies, they wouldn’t survive.
Well, guess what? If we just took those five or six hundred million dollars or four or five hundred million dollars of this time in the podcast and just gave that to every single Australian, we could have solar panels and all those other innovations in wave technology that turns people like Dr Tom Dennis put together.
Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:35:26] So, you know, this whole business of subsidies and government support, comes back to this recurring theme on this podcast. If we are expecting the change to occur, it has to occur from the ground up. It will not happen from governments or it may not happen from governments.
However, while we only get to vote once every three or four years and one could question, given the influence of lobby groups on a daily basis on government, one could question what value that vote has. But we do lobby in another way. How we spend our money, and how we conduct ourselves in our own homes.
So just as Taking 3 for the Sea encourages you to pick up rubbish off the beach before it ends up in the ocean. This is something we can all engage with on a personal level and support organisations like Tim and Nick’s that are doing such a great job in coordinating these efforts globally. It’s a really worthwhile initiative.
And I, we will, of course, have links to their site. And don’t forget the fest that is going on at the moment, which is still going. It’s the Pitch Fest 2021. And so we will have this out. And you should be following this organisation on a regular basis. So much to think about. There’s so much that we can do. I hope this finds you well until next time. This is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.
This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.