Welcome everybody to episode two of the Paper and Plastic Show. My name is Osman Hameed Socials are gonna be here somewhere. We are trying to make recycling cool. We're trying to make recycling fun. We wanna make the paper industry and the plastic industry a place where, you know, young people, old people, everybody is like, this is, something is happening over here. You know, something is happening an essential business. It's an essential industry. We are just as important as the healthcare industry, or as the law enforcement industry. It's just how you look at it. Imagine if all of the paper and plastic you use around you disappeared. There goes your toilet paper. There goes your, cameras. There goes your, plastic knife, plastic forks. There goes half of the car you probably use. You know, Half is made of plastic, more or less. there goes almost all the electronics. Um, there goes your writing paper. There goes your books. There goes uh, bandages. There goes everything. Everything disappears. Paper and plastic pretty much is an essential, essential business, but it doesn't get that much love. It's not as cool, you know, it's not cool to be working in the paper industry and we want to change that. That's why we made this show, the paper and plastic show. It's a very simple title, but I like the title. I think it just, it gets to the point quickly and that's what we're going to do right away. So we're going to go right into what I think is a very important. This is a very interesting an article that I saw and I wanted to share with you. So nowadays, right now, there's a huge thing that, hey, paper is good and plastic is bad. There's this thing out here. We don't think so. We think they're both good as long as they're used the right way. So, you know, if in Canada, I can't speak for the state of the country, but in Canada, what they have recently done is they banned We know one time we used plastic, so plastic bags, plastic straws, hate those plastic straws, the paper straws, man, no offense, it destroys the drinking experience, but nonetheless, we have paper straws now, we have paper bags, we have, um, those non woven bags when you go to Walmart, no more plastic bags anywhere, they banned all of them. But this is the most crazy part. So there was a study from the Columbia Climate School and they compared the environmental impact of paper, plastic and cotton shopping bags found, at different industries, and they compared environmental footprint, which means they compared water consumption, atmospheric, identification and eutrophication. So pretty much guess what they found. This is a shocker. Plastic bags, particularly those made from LDPE or low density polyethylene, were found to be having the most lowest environmental impact compared to everything else. Carton bags, the one you see, the non ones. despite having medium from renew renewable resources supposedly biodegradable had the worst environmental impact, and they need to be used 7,100 times. To match the environmental impact of a single use plastic bag. So let me repeat Those cotton bags that these stores are pushing you to get and pushing you to buy the ones from Walmart All those reusable bags have to be used 7, 100 times Before they have an equivalent environmental impact to an LDPE plastic bag because that's how much power It takes to create you know, those reusable bags. Be honest. Are you using a reusable bag 7,100 times. So why are you making the plastic bag, like evil it is a terrible thing because look, ultimately, look, the goal is single use is the problem. it's not the bag which is the problem, the fact that when you have something and you use it only once and you get rid of it, that's the problem. So, LDPE is very, very much recyclable. You know, you can get LDPE, you can melt it down, you can make granules out of it, it can be reused multiple times. You know, all those deckings, those composite deckings that you have nowadays, all over the United States, guess what that's made out of? Shocker! These plastic bags because plastic bags are collected, you know, shrink wrap, it can be bags, it's collected, it's squished in these big, huge plastic bales, and then those plastic bales become into new plastic granules. And that's what all these companies in our industry are doing to make new plastic. Yet, The plastic industry has become the villain, like we are the villains, you know, and that's why I say we're from the paper industry and the plastic industry and we work with non woven textiles. You know, I'm not taking sides here. I'm just saying that we have to think about recycling from a different approach. You know, sometimes we get so caught up with the headlines that plastic is bad, microplastics, everything is going to go away, we should only have reusable bags. Each person is buying a reusable bag every time they're at the grocery store. Think about it. So now you're making reusable bags which are more environmentally impactful. And they're hurting the environment more than a plastic bag did. Anyhow, food for thought guys. Food for thought. Think about recycling differently. Think about reuse. Reuse is what I love the most. I really feel we're so focused on recycling that we forget about reuse. Let's stop single use. And let's look for more creative ways to to work. All right. So we have a video today another video to react to so all right, let's get let's get to it. This is from brothers make on TikTok. And what they're doing is they turned 25 kilograms of shredded DVD cases into benches. So let's see, let's see how that looks. Okay, they shredded them, they're mixing them. Oh, they're making, okay, they melted it down. Oh, they melted it down into that shape of the bench? Whoa. That is cool, man. That is cool. That is wicked. Guys, that's like a perfect segue from our last conversation. You know, we get so obsessed about plastic is bad, plastic is bad, but we don't understand that things can be reused, it can be transformed into new different things. So just like, plastic bags can become like your decking. This person made DVDs that everybody has sitting around that aren't being used, into these benches. That's how we got to think about the world. You know, you know, at Ocean Ridge, what we've tried to do is that we've tried to think about creative solutions, not just like the solution that is the obvious one, because the obvious one very often is just throw it in the landfill and whatever. It's going to be the next generation's problem. Let's make a big mountain out of it, put a park on top, wrap it up. But we don't think about creative solutions. Like what is a way that we can really use this in a unique way That, it can have a new life. So I'll give you an example. Now, you know we can have cars, and the cars have seatbelts, you know? So what happens to all the junk cars when they go to the landfill, and they have seatbelts in every single car? Now, most people, they'll be like, okay, it's supposed to cut the junk car, so the metal, we can probably melt down, make new metal. the headlights, we can take them out, melt it down, make new plastic. the seats? I don't know. Maybe we can take the parts out. What about the seatbelts? Eh, toss them in the landfill. Typically, right? That's what people say. Toss them in the landfill. You can't really melt down that material, right? guess what? Seatbelts have a very good use case overseas in multiple countries. So, what you do, you get seatbelts, you pull them all out. You put them into these huge bales. Why do you build them? Because remember, it's hard to transfer material when it's loose. If you get seatbelts out just toss them in a container, you're not going to get enough weight. And that totally kills the cost of, or the value of the material because the cost of freight goes so high. So the example is, imagine you were taking, you booked a bus, you, you booked a bus to go from Toronto all the way to Los Angeles, which is going to be like, I don't know, like a three, four day drive, okay? And that bus cost you 10, 000 to book. And you were planning to have, say 10 friends who were going to join you. So the goal was 10 friends, 10, 000, and each friend was going to pay how much? 1, 000 bucks. So that was the cost per friend. But now imagine all of a sudden five of your friends don't show up, right? Now that cost, additional cost has to be distributed among the five friends who are going. That means instead of 1, 000, everybody has to pay 2, 000. Do you see how the free cost is doubled? The same rule applies to when they're shipping material overseas. So that if you can get more weight or more friends onto a container, you can drop the free cost per friend or per piece of material and therefore get more value for it. So seatbelts, if you throw them loose, you only get so much seatbelts on there. But if you compress them, put them in a bailer, squish them down, you can get, they make these big cube seatbelts, they go overseas, and then guess what happens? So there's something called a charpai a charpai play is just a fancy way of saying it's a bed, it's a bed made outta straps. Okay. It's just like, imagine like a frame, like leg, leg, leg, leg, and then like a square in the middle. But the inside is empty. Okay? There's four legs and, and the rectangle frame around it. These seatbelts, in many places, they use them to pull them out, cut them into strips, and they make these long ropes, and those ropes can be wrapped around to make charpais, or beds. Isn't that, isn't that amazing? And that will probably be used for another 10 years. 15 year life. Instead of just thinking about landfill. So these are the creative solutions that we have to think about, especially in North America. Because we have a very much, you know, use once and replace culture. You know, and that applies to almost everything. You know, everything is just Use once and dispose of. And I mean, it's kind of sad. So we have to change that concept. the point stands that single use is the problem, not necessarily the commodity. So, very cool video my brothers make. Check them out. They're on TikTok. They're making a lot of these cool videos. Um, we'll link them below. I think also in in the description, if you want to check them out, um, already. So let's, let's talk about, you know, the sustainability and, and I want to tie that in to what we're doing at Ocean Ridge. Today's episode was primarily about finding these creative solutions and that's what I want. That's going to be sort of my sort of closing note, um, on today's episode that stop thinking about things as so black and white, what's good and what's bad. And be cognizant that what is the actual, you know, value and result over here. So for example, like, now everybody says that, hey, buy an electric vehicle, right? Buy a Tesla because you're going to save the environment. But what is the cost or the environmental impact, environmental footprint to make a battery? Is that more or is that less than the fossil fuels burned when you use a gas vehicle? You know, and if you look at the apple, if you look at the agro studies on it, it's actually almost equivalent. Like it's like Tesla's and like fossil fuel vehicles. It's like, of course, maybe the longterm we drive for many, many years. At some point, maybe the electric vehicle will, will, will be better. But that's, if you look at apples to apples as of right now, and hopefully the technology will get better as, as you know, humans do progress. But as of right now, you can't tell me that having a Tesla is less. environmental impact than driving like a fossil fuel vehicle. Because that battery is very, very, very, mining that lithium, mining those, those minerals are very, very, you know, cost, costly and have a very big environmental impact, right? So you got to think about things from an overall lens that what is real recycling and what is real sustainability and what is us just being in a bubble of sustainability and making ourselves feel good like, we're saving the planet, we're saving the earth. But in essence, we're just doing the exact same thing. Just, you know, we're turning a blind eye to where that thing is coming from. Real sustainability is actually in reuse and full use. So I'll give you an example. if you're a single person and you just drive to work and back, real sustainability would be you opt for the smallest vehicle. Go for like a Toyota Corolla, you know. Go for a Honda Civic. Don't go for a Yukon XL. That's sustainability. You know, where you are a one person, you need, you're just going there to work and back, you don't need a living room on wheels. You know? You need a small car, it takes less gas to move it because it's lighter, in a smaller vehicle, so it takes less material to make it, and you go to work and you go back. That's sustainability. It's not sustainability like, I'm gonna buy a Tesla and feel good about myself, because that's gonna be more, Tesla's a very, very heavy vehicle. They're very, very heavy. So there's a lot of metal, a lot of material. The battery's extremely heavy. It's very, very bad for the environment. Um, so that's what it is. So, for example, don't think that you're doing, you're, you're being amazing because you're using plastic straws, soy paper straws, and paper bags, um, and non wooden bags. And you're not using a plastic bag because if you buy a reasonable bag from Walmart, but you use it twice and then it's now that you lose it and you buy another one and it's only getting three, four uses. You'd rather just have bought the plastic bag because that plastic bag, it takes 7, 100 times more of an environmental impact to make that cotton or non woven bag than it does the plastic bag. So unless you're using your reusable bag 7, 100 times, you should've just stuck with the plastic bag. And this list goes on. So the real way is reuse, reduce, and try to maximize the age of your products. Your iPhone does not need to be upgraded every year, you know, and I'm guilty. Sometimes I went in the past. I've been guilty because I was super into tech, but that's the, that's the actual honesty that you don't have to upgrade every single year. Um, your computer doesn't have to be upgraded every single year. You don't have to buy a new car, you know, every, every other year. Like if we can really utilize our real materials for longterm, that's real sustainability. So anyhow, just some small things we can do to make an impact. We are not the villains guys. Paper and plastic. super essential. Gonna be here for a long, long, long time time. You know, people have made plastic into this villain recently. And there are so many studies that prove that it's actually not as bad. Microplastic. There's a whole class of microplastics that are going into your body. There's micro versions of every single particle. sand, rocks, carbon, you know, everything has a micro version. All right. And that's, you breathe it in, of course you breathe it in. Right. Um, so nonetheless, it's just some, we have to be more, more aware, more cognizant about our, about our choices and just focus on sustainability from a bird's eye view, not just so narrow focused on what we think is right or wrong. Um, anyhow, that's episode two. Thank you guys for for joining us. It's, we're going to keep it going. We're going to keep popping. We're trying to do five episodes a week, which is pretty ambitious. And that's the goal. So we're going to keep this going. Hopefully you're going to be having some podcast guests soon. you know, we might have some guests hopefully maybe at the end of this week, maybe next week, hopefully you have some people. People in a queue and so maybe this show will become sort of a, a guest show as well as a one on one show with me whenever we, we, we can. Um, please check us out, subscribe, share. Um, if you're in the paper industry, plastic industry, please do share with your friends, family, because you want to make the industry cool. You want to make people understand that we're doing amazing things and we're an essential business. If you want to, you know, really give kudos to all the hard workers, uh, uh, and people and women and men working in our industry. So, uh, shout out guys and, uh, hope to see you guys in episode, episode three, take care.