Original subtitles

Hi there, welcome to the show still unfortunately taking place in this blank

void Think of it like Prince Philip, in that it's white, doesn't do anything,

and I thought for sure it'd be gone by now.

And we have to dive straight in tonight with Tuesday's horrific events in the

Atlanta area, where a gunman killed eight people, six of them Asian women,

at three different spas. And sympathy for the victims has poured out across

the country this week, although there have been some terrible reactions too,

like the one from this officer who briefed the press.

There are a lot of concerns about this statement, which many feel appears to

sympathize with the shooter and not his alleged victims.

I spoke with investigators.

They interviewed him this morning, and they got that impression that, yes, he

understood the gravity of it, and he was pretty much fed up at the end of his

rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.

Okay, absolutely fucking not.

You do get that this is a press conference about a mass murder, right?

You don't get to minimize what happened like that.

Really bad day?

Alexander had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and what he did was

shrug it the fuck off and go to bed while managing to murder zero people.

That cop even went on to repeat the shooter's claims that his attacks

weren't racially motivated.

Instead, his sexual addiction was to blame for the killing, which already

feels like a weird distinction to be making. Hey, I might be a mass murderer,

but what do you call a racist, buddy?

Words hurt!

And while it is still early, details are still coming out, and authorities seem

unwilling to call this a hate crime, I will say a white man... driving across

two counties, going to three Asian-owned businesses, shooting and killing six

Asian women in a city that's only about 4% Asian, sure as shit seems a lot more

like a hate crime than a bad fucking day.

And this is just the latest data point in a disturbing pattern. One group

tracking hate-related incidents against Asian Americans, which include physical

assaults, verbal harassment, and civil rights violations like refusal of

service, found nearly 3,800 reported in just the past year.

It's an absolutely terrible trend that President Biden spoke about just last

week. Vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans who've been attacked,

harassed, blamed, and scapegoated. It's wrong, it's un-American, and it must

stop. Yeah, it must.

And I am really glad that he condemned hate crimes against Asian Americans

there, but to say that they are un-American...

I would love to visit the nation that exists in Joe Biden's head, because it's

a place where racism is not who we are, and racial attacks against Asians are

somehow un-American, despite the fact, and far be it from me to explain this to

someone who seems like he's lived through most of American history, anti

-Asian racism has long been a...

from the treatment of Chinese railroad workers in the 1800s, through the

Chinese Exclusion Act, through the Watsonville riots in 1930, in which a

white mob rampaged through a Filipino community, through the internment of

Japanese Americans during World War II, through deadly cases of racial

scapegoating, like the murder of Vincent Chin, killed in 1982 by two white auto

workers in Detroit.

Witnesses said the men mistook Chin, a Chinese American, for being Japanese,

blamed him for taking their jobs, and beat him to death. And by... And by the

way, even though they had reportedly used racial slurs during the attack, the

men still tried to claim that they were not motivated by race. So, not only are

hate crimes against Asian Americans very much American, so is denying that

they're racist. It's all so American, in fact, the national anthem could probably

begin, oh, say can you see that this wasn't about race.

And our long...

The ugly history of anti-Asian racism and the fact that it often peaks during

times of crisis is the very reason why, just last year, many were loudly warning

that Trump calling COVID names like the China virus was likely to lead to a rise

in violence against people of Asian descent, an argument that, at the time,

not everyone seemed to find convincing.

I think if the left wants to focus on PC labeling this virus, it is a great way

to get Trump reelected. I don't have a problem with people calling it whatever

they want. It's a deadly virus that did originate in Wuhan.

I don't have a problem with it. Oh, good.

Meghan McCain doesn't have a problem with it. Listen not to the scores of

Asian Americans telling everyone that the term is dangerous and offensive.

Instead, gather around and take the word of a wealthy white woman who's dressed

like she's about to lay off 47 people over Zoom.

Now, I will say... McCain posted this week, stop Asian hate with three broken

heart emojis, which is a fine sentiment to throw up on Twitter after the fact.

But there has to be an understanding that saying, I don't have a problem with

calling it the China virus is very much giving space for that hate to grow.

And the minimization... of racist rhetoric plays into the harmful

stereotype of Asian Americans as a model minority, pitting them against other

minority groups, and pressuring them to swallow their experiences with racism

without making a stink, because that's how you earn white acceptance.

And that is something that takes its toll.

Just listen to basketball player Jeremy Lin, who recently revealed that he'd

been called coronavirus on the court, and spoke about the events of this week.

Asians have always been...

have been projected as being others, um, or outsiders.

And-and you can... you can hear and see these microaggressions and, like, oh,

no, where are you really from? Or, um, you know, talking about the way... the

way that we look or-or our complexion. And, again, calling it the China virus,

conflict virus, that is adding to it, fueling the fire. And now we're starting

to see a lot of those microaggressions turn into actual acts of violence.

Right. Comments like, where are you really from, are constant reminders of

how Asian Americans throughout history have been regarded as outsiders, as

people who don't belong.

And the fact is, where are you really from is just not an appropriate question

to ask anyone unless they've just opened up their torso to reveal a tiny alien

squid operating a robot body. And even then, honestly, it's still a bit iffy.

Well, my parents are from Rigel 7, but I was born in Cincinnati, you dick!

The comfort people have with diminishing and othering Asians is pervasive. Even

that officer you saw earlier was last year promoting T-shirts on his Facebook

page calling COVID-19 an imported virus from China.

And the fact the killer chose these particular women working low-wage jobs

as targets for his sex addiction speaks to how Asian American women in

particular have to deal with hypersexualization and how Asian

workers, to the extent that they are seen at all, are seen more for the labor

that they provide rather than the full three-dimensional humans that they are.

So there is pretty clearly a lot that needs to be confronted here, as many

have been pointing out.

I'm glad that we're starting to have this conversation, but this cannot be

it. Asian American women have been long invisible in this society, right? You

know, we're being told this is not a racist incident.

It is a racist incident because of the way Asian American women experience

racism in our country.

Exactly. This isn't just a conversation about this week. It's a conversation

about the centuries leading up to it.

Now... Some have responded by calling for increased police presence, although

others are understandably wary of more police being a good solution.

More guys like Deputy Oops-All-Forehead here aren't likely to make Asian

Americans, or indeed other communities of color around them, feel much safer.

Others have suggested solutions from connecting victims of trauma to support

after the fact, to improving collection and reporting of statistics on anti

-Asian violence and discrimination, so that we have a much more complete

picture of what is happening.

And if you do want to help, there are some great organizations like these ones

that could really use your support.

Look, Asian American and Asian immigrant communities have been feeling extremely

vulnerable for a long time, and especially so right now.

And for a group whose suffering has historically felt invisible to the media

and to the country at large, it is important that we acknowledge that pain

right now.

But more than that, dismantling anti-Asian prejudice should be another

key part of dismantling the chokehold that white supremacy has on this

country. Because, as we have seen since its foundation and continue to see this

week, people will bend over backwards to call racism anything other than what it

is. And that is, unfortunately, very fucking American.

And now, this.

And now, even during a pandemic, local news cannot be trusted with St.

Patrick's Day.

Today on Windy City Live, top of the morning to ya. Top of the morning to ya,

San Diego.

Top of the morning to ya. Top of the morning to ya.

Top of the morning to ya.

Top of the morning to you too.

Well, it's way more than a little cloud cover out there, Anita.

It's totally cloud covered. Ah, lads and lasses, we'll have sunshine.

The luck of the Irish shining on us there. The luck of the Irish be with us.

Bless me, corner, bless me, bloody stone.

I have no idea what I said, but I watched a lot of Lucky Charms

commercials.

Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty.

Well, welcome to our fair city, where the girls are so pretty.

Let's start with one of those lovely ladies.

Susaria. I just spit.

Moving on.

Our main story tonight concerns plastic.

It's very much the Jane Lynch of materials in that it's incredibly

versatile, appears in almost everything, and it isn't going anywhere for the next

400 years.

Plastic really is ubiquitous. It's in food packaging, it's in building

materials on planes and cars, it's in bicycle helmets, and it's in this strap

-on thigh dildo. Just imagine a world before plastics when your femur penis

would have to be made from wood, or if you're wealthy enough, ivory.

It doesn't bear thinking about.

But for almost as long as plastics have been around, there's been a question of

what to do with them after they're used. A question that any number of creepy

recycling mascots have tried to answer, from the recycling wizard in South

Carolina, to recycling Ben from Georgia, to Muncie, Indiana's Mr. Blue, who

appears to be either a bag of recycling or an asphyxiated sausage, to my

absolute favorite, Totes McGoats.

The popular social media news site Mashable writes of Niagara Falls'

terrifying new recycling mascot, an horrific Goatman hybrid.

Sure, yeah, and you know what?

I've seen children cry at the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus as well.

But our target market isn't a three- and four-year-old, of course. It's someone

who's learning about the environment, so middle school, teenagers, people who

maybe aren't so afraid of goats and clowns.

Well, hang on. Who said anything about clowns? No one would ever mistake that

thing for a clown. I know we've been tough on clowns in the past. They're

weird, scary, not funny, and they eat children. But credit where it's due,

they do put in the work.

You think a look this fresh just comes together?

Of course not. The guy clearly made an effort. He didn't just Google rubber

goat mask cheap and buy the first result, which incidentally seems to be

the exact mask that that fucked up goat is wearing.

And we have produced a lot of plastic for all those mascots to recycle.

Since plastic's introduction, production has skyrocketed to 380 million tons in

2015. In fact, half of all plastics ever made...

have been produced since 2005.

And for all the hype about recycling, a lot less plastic winds up getting

recycled than you might think. Less than 9% of the plastics generated are

recycled in the United States, with the vast majority ending up in landfills or

in the environment. But before you start blaming yourself or your neighbors for

not sorting their trash and separating items, it's actually not that simple, as

this reporter found out while walking through a Portland supermarket.

It seems like everybody's buying lettuce in a box now.

Is this recyclable?

In this state, none of this is recyclable.

Okay, what about all these? This is everywhere in every supermarket.

In Oregon, again, there are no curbside programs that would accept any of these

tubs. Yeah, that is shocking, because think of what that means. The stuff that

we all routinely buy at the supermarket, assuming, understandably, it will get

recycled, is, in many cases, not.

And that is despite the impression that we might have taken from mascots like

Totes McGoats, whose name I'm honestly uncomfortable even uttering out loud

just on the off chance that he's like Beetlejuice and saying Totes McGoats

three times somehow summons him into... Oh, shit!

How the hell did you get in here? This is a COVID-compliant set. You can't be

here.

Wait, you got vaccinated?

How the fuck are you eligible for the vaccine?

Hypertension, Sean.

Bullshit. You know what? I don't care. You need to get out of here. Get out of

here! You're so much worse in person, totes. You look like a furry who can't

commit. Get out of here!

The fact is, a huge amount of the plastic surrounding us isn't recycled

because it's not really recyclable. And that means that it ends up in landfills,

or burnt, or in the ocean where it breaks down into microplastics, gets

eaten by fish, and can end up inside us.

Plastic in the ocean has a tendency to break down into ever smaller pieces, and

these tiny pieces then get taken up even lower down in the food chain.

So we know that, um, it ends up on our dinner plates.

There is plastic in your food, plastic in your sea salt, and there is plastic

coming out of your tab.

It's true.

A recent study even estimated that an average person globally could be

ingesting about a credit card's worth of plastic into their system every week.

Which kind of explains Capital One's new slogan, What's in Your Stomach? Good

question, Mr. Jackson, because apparently it's 1.5% cashback, a few

thousand free airline miles, and a fucking shitload of plastic.

So, how is it that tons of plastic that we assume is getting recycled can

instead sometimes end up inside of us? Well, that is what this story is about.

It's about why so little plastic gets recycled, the harm that can do, and how

the plastics industry has managed to convince us all that it's our fault.

And let's start with some history. As plastic production began to grow in the

1950s, so did plastic waste, and therefore, public backlash.

By the 60s and 70s, organizations began drawing attention to all the packaging

waste littering the landscape through ads like this one.

Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once

this country.

And some people don't.

People start pollution, people can stop it.

Now, you might have seen that ad before. It really touched people's heartstrings,

because apparently, the worst thing white people ever did to America's

indigenous populations was litter on the freeway.

But there are a few misleading things about it. First, that man wasn't

actually Native American. He was an Italian-American actor who played them

for a living. And while it's by no means the first time someone of Italian

descent inserted themselves into a Native American narrative without

asking, I guess at least this time, no one named a holiday after him.

But more to the point, the organization that produced that ad, Keep America

Beautiful, was funded in part by a plastics industry trade group and

composed of leading beverage and packaging corporations, which might seem

odd until you realize that the underlying message there is it's up to

you, the consumer...

to stop pollution.

And that has been a major through line in the recycling movement. A movement

often bankrolled by companies who wanted to drill home the message that it is

your responsibility to deal with the environmental impact of their products.

And nowhere is this co-opting of environmentalism clearer than with

that... recycling symbol that you find on plastic products that you buy, the

famous chasing arrows.

They are on everything, and the numbers inside them are pretty important because

they represent what type of plastic it is.

Number one stands for PET.

Think water and soda bottles.

Number two is HDPE, often used as packaging for detergent and shampoo.

Then there's three, four, five, six, and wild card number seven, which stands for

other, meaning everything else. Right.

Number seven is basically the catch-all for everything else. In the same way

that that one drawer in your kitchen is a catch-all for everything else. Yeah,

there's ketchup packets in there, but also rubber bands, the instructions to

an immersion blender you lost a year ago, and a post-it note with just a

phone number on it and no indication who it belongs to. Call that number now! I

dare you!

But crucially...

very few of those seven types of plastic are commonly recyclable. Certain types

of number one and two plastics, things like soda and laundry detergent bottles,

do get recycled. Although, depending on where you live, certain other types,

like those lettuce tubs you saw earlier, may not.

And when it comes to plastics numbers three through seven, which can be things

like plastic bags, cups, or pouches, we have the capacity to recycle less than 5

% of it.

So out of these seven numbers, only two are really much good. And that is a

pretty bad ratio for a group of seven.

Ideally, you'd want to balance a little more like BTS.

There's not a weak link in that unbreakable chain of heartthrobs. With

so many people on stage, you would understand if sometimes Jimin only gave

50%, but he doesn't. He beats up the dance floor every night like he just

caught it robbing his house.

And there are a number of reasons why certain plastics don't get recycled.

Some are complex mixes of different resins, making recycling them difficult.

Other times, there are practical obstacles that the plastic is

contaminated or difficult to sort. And then there are economic reasons.

Sometimes there is no market for certain types of plastic. And right now, it's

actually cheaper for companies to make virgin plastic than for them to recycle

it. But the thing is, despite knowing... that most plastics can't be recycled,

the industry lobbied state legislatures to pass laws requiring that chasing

arrow symbol to be placed on...

all of their containers, regardless of whether they could actually be recycled

or not.

Manufacturers and companies like Coca-Cola also lobbied local governments

to invest in curbside recycling programs, even though behind closed

doors, one industry insider acknowledged as far back as 1974 that there is

serious doubt that recycling plastic can ever be made viable on an economic

basis. And honestly, it wasn't all that difficult for them to convince us that

all their waste is recyclable because we so badly want to believe it.

Lies go down easier when you want them to be true.

In fact, our desire for things to be recycled is so strong that people who

work in the industry even have a special term for it. A lot of things really

aren't recyclable no matter how much we want them to be.

People just want to throw, you know, everything in and, you know, they wish

it was recycling, so we call it wish cycling.

Here's some wish cycling for you.

Here's an umbrella.

I wish it was recyclable.

It's not.

Now, first off, he's right that umbrellas are not recyclable, which is a

pity, as the average American goes through roughly 4,000 of them a year.

I've already somehow lost 12 so far this year, and it doesn't even reign in this

void. And secondly, the term... Wish cycling is just too good to be wasted on

garbage. Wish cycling sounds like a spin class taught by a unicorn, or the sewage

treatment system at Hogwarts.

And this, children, is where we wish cycle all your collected urine into this

delicious butterbeer. Oh, it's fine. Calm down. It's magic.

Stop crying.

It's fine.

But wish cycling can end up doing...

Real harm, because at best, non-recyclable items can be a hassle to

remove. Plants often have to stop machines to cut out all of the plastic

bags that people desperately want to think that they can handle. And at

worst, they can end up contaminating loads of plastics that could otherwise

be recycled.

So, the false impression that we've all been given that all the plastics we're

putting into the recycling are being recycled is very much not the case.

And for a few blissful decades, America and most of the world didn't really

worry about this because we simply shipped much of the lower quality

plastic waste we couldn't use in bulk to China.

At one point, roughly 70% of the world's plastic waste went there, but that

stopped in 2018 when China flat out banned the import of most plastics. And

since then, much of our waste has been left to either pile up in domestic

recycling plants with no one to buy it, or shipped out to other countries in

Asia where it can get dropped into landfills like this one in Malaysia.

Look at how big this is. Just take a look.

Look how far it goes.

This is just one dump.

One dump.

A vast field of plastic, two stories high.

See if we can look on the back here.

Marysville, Ohio.

This is from Italy.

Pennsylvania, New York.

Look, Walmart bag.

Yeah, a lot of our plastic just ends up sitting in giant landfills on the other

side of the world.

So I guess Katy Perry's question, do you ever feel like a plastic bag drifting

through the wind wanting to start again, should really be, do you ever feel like

a plastic Walmart bag drowning in two stories of society's unmitigated filth?

And since you're asking, yeah, Katy, I do.

All the time.

And the problem is, those countries don't necessarily have the capabilities

to deal with their own plastic waste, let alone millions of tons of ours,

which can have serious consequences for the health and safety of people who live

there. In Malaysia, some operations are illegally incinerating lots of plastic

waste. And just listen to this community activist describing what it's like to

live nearby.

The air pollution become very serious in my village.

The burning cause a lot of respiratory disease problem to our people,

especially our children. And our elderly who has this problem of repeating

asthma, repeating coughing also.

That's terrible.

And I have to say, there is just no way that the people responsible for burning

that waste don't know the fumes are toxic.

When you smell burning plastic, you don't think, ooh, ooh, that smells

great. Is someone baking cookies?

You think, my nose seems to be dying, and it's taking my brain down with it.

Now, the good news is more than 180 countries agreed last year to place

strict limits on exports of plastic waste from richer countries to poorer

ones. The bad news is that the United States is one of the few countries in

the world that didn't ratify that global ban.

And the thing is, when plastic isn't burned, it can end up in landfills or in

the environment.

Across the world, more than eight million tons end up in our oceans every

year. There is famously even a swirling garbage patch of microplastic waste in

the Pacific Ocean spread out... over an area that's bigger than France, Germany,

and Spain combined.

And by 2050, the ocean is expected to contain, by weight, more plastics than

fish. That is all fish. That includes the red snapper, salmon, and of course,

the blobfish. The only fish with a face that screams, I would be voiced by

Richard Kind in a Pixar movie, and he'd absolutely nail it. Isn't that right,

blobfish? Oh, absolutely, John, 100%. I mean, look at me. I'm a blobfish!

I'm Slurp the Blobfish.

Of course you're called Slurp. That is some spot-on casting right there.

Well, I'd only be a supporting character.

Right. But look, with this face, you know damn well I'm going to steal the

show. I know you will, Slurp.

I would provide comic relief throughout a very fun, yet intermittently touching

film. And word has it, there's going to be at least two sequels. And, John? Uh

-huh? Entree new? Yes.

I'd die at the end of the third one!

But don't worry. I got profit participation.

Good for you, Slup. Get that money.

And frustratingly, the plastic industry's response to all the damage

you've seen has been to make a big show of tiny improvements, and then revert to

what they've always done, which is heavily push the idea that if we as

consumers simply tried hard enough, we could make our plastic problem go away.

Keep America Beautiful, the people behind that fake Native American ad, is

still around making dumb commercials like this one, where a bottle goes on a

long, inspiring journey to a recycling bin, and ends up fulfilling its dream of

becoming a bench. And if Bottles were sentient, I would genuinely be surprised

if their biggest dream was, I wish old people would play chess while sitting on

my face.

But I will say, at least they're being honest there.

that the bottle became a bench and then nothing else. Because the truth is, only

about 2% of all plastic winds up in a so-called closed-loop system. That's

where it becomes the thing that it originally was. In other words, a bottle

getting recycled and becoming a bottle again. Instead, most recycled plastic

gets down-cycled to become a carpet, or a fleece sweatshirt, or indeed, a bench.

And then, it cannot be recycled again.

And yet, despite this fact, companies like this Nestlé water division have

gone out of their way to make ads indicating that if we simply did our

part, plastics could be put into continuous reuse.

Like in this ad from 2012.

Nature has a biological metabolism where one thing's waste becomes another

thing's food.

So if I look at something like a plastic bottle, I don't see waste.

I see a nutrient.

This is raw material?

So if this is raw material, people need to start thinking about it that way.

It could come back as a bottle, of course. We only have to make this virgin

material one time, and the rest of it's up to you. We get the bottle back, we'll

make this bottle out of recycled content again.

Well, that sounds amazing.

Unfortunately, what that executive board, Ken Doll, is suggesting there is

complete bullshit.

Because that company doesn't, in fact, have to make virgin plastic just one

time if you simply give your bottle back.

And the reason that we know that is, even eight years after that aired, only

20% of the plastic they use was recycled, meaning 80% was from virgin

material. So that is the most obvious overstatement in an ad since this one

for Game Boy in the 90s that claimed it was more fun than a ferret's down your

trousers. That ad is real. And I'm sorry, Mario, but no, you're not more

fun. Not if the ferret knows what it's doing.

And the crazy thing is, that company actually has a better track record than

many other brands when it comes to this. That is how bad things are.

Take... Coca-Cola. Brand audits of plastic waste collected at cleanups have

consistently found Coke products as the number one top global polluter, which is

damning. And probably why Coke has been so anxious to make splashy promises that

we all so badly want to hear, like pledging to use at least 50% recycled

material in their packaging by 2030, which does sound really good. The

problem is, Coke has been making and breaking promises like that for decades.

Over the years, they've repeatedly, loudly launched big recycled plastic

initiatives that they then quietly abandoned with no one really noticing.

In 2009... they announced plans to source 25% of their plastic from

recycled material by 2015.

Except, you'll notice that it's now six years past that deadline, and their

current proportion is just 10%. So, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if by

2030, the main thing Coke is recycling is the same bullshit promises that it's

been making for years now.

And look, on a personal level, I know this can feel demoralizing because it

can seem... that recycling is pointless, but it's important to know that it's

not. We should absolutely keep recycling paper, cardboard, and aluminum, and even

recycling plastic, while it might be 90% more pointless than you assumed, can

still have modest environmental benefits, although we should absolutely

do it more mindfully. You should check with your local municipality to see what

types of plastic they accept, and then only recycle those. Otherwise, remember,

you could end up contaminating usable materials.

And as a good rule, definitely don't wish cycle things like umbrellas,

because there is a non-zero chance that you're gonna end up angering totes-ma

-goats. Oh, shit.

No. No.

Absolutely not. No.

Leave this place.

No!

But more importantly, our personal behavior is not the main culprit here,

despite what the plastics industry has spent decades and millions of dollars

trying to convince us. So, yes...

we shouldn't be using single-use plastics like grocery bags or take-out

containers. Reducing that would make a huge difference, as nearly half of the

plastic waste generated globally in 2015 was plastic packaging, most of it single

-use. but it can be hard on an individual level to end their use. A

better move would be to implement smart, thoughtful, targeted bans that force the

introduction of alternatives.

And to their credit, many cities have banned single-use plastic bags.

Unfortunately, the industry has fought those bans hard, even lobbying some

state legislatures to the point that 18 states now have... preemptive laws

stopping local regulation, which is a bit weird. I guess those states just

have a hard-on for plastic bags, not seen since that creepy kid from American

Beauty. The kid loved bags.

So what can we really do here?

Well, the real behavior change has to come from plastics manufacturers

themselves. Without that...

nothing significant is going to happen. We have to make them internalize the

costs of the pollution that they are creating.

And there is a way to do this through a concept called Extended Producer

Responsibility, or the Polluter Pays Principle. The idea is to create laws

that essentially shift responsibility and the cost of collection from the

public sector and all of us to the actual producers of the plastic waste.

EPR laws could, among other things, force companies to either create the

infrastructure and markets to recycle the products they make... or force them

to stop making them altogether.

The U.S. is one of the only developed countries on Earth without a national

EPR law addressing packaging, because of course it is.

But on the positive side here, several states are currently considering EPR

laws, and there was even a national law introduced in the last Congress. It went

nowhere. But it will soon be introduced again, and we are going to need some

version of an EPR law to pass, and soon, because this problem is only getting

worse. Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050.

And it is obvious that meaningful change is only gonna come through being able to

force this very powerful industry to do things that it has shown for half a

century it has absolutely no interest in doing.

We have to make them change.

And if not for our sake, or the sake of future generations, let's at least do it

for all the fish who are about to be outnumbered by plastic in the ocean.

Just like me!

Ain't that right, John?

Exactly, Slurp. Just like you. That's our show. Thanks so much for watching.

We're off next week, so we'll see you in two weeks' time.

A hiatus? Are you fucking kidding me already?

Jesus God Almighty, John.

Come on, John. Buckle down.

You got more writers than the Jonestown Massacre.

My God!

Slurp, it's a very intensive production. Our staff is entitled to a break.

We'll see you all April 4th. Good night.

Hey, look at me, everybody.

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking I look like something another fish coughed up, huh?

That my head looks like a basket ingredient from Chopped? Yeah, okay.

To everybody out there on the Internet who said I look like Ted Cruz, remember,

I got feelings, and you've hurt them. Good night. I love you all.

Bye. Jimmy Beach is the greatest audience in the world.