Welcome everybody to episode 3. Of the paper and plastic show. We are in the Ocean Ridge studios. And today we're going to talk about, you guessed it, paper and plastic. The goal of this podcast, the goal of this show is to give light on the paper plastic industry, to make the industry cool, to talk about things that typically aren't talked about. We're not getting enough love when it comes in the media and this podcast goal and Ocean Ridge's goal is to shed light on our industry. We are an essential business. We are an essential industry, and we got to make more people know about that. So we post the content on TikTok, every single platform, and it's been really good feedback so far, and we want to keep it going, but something really important to talk about today is that the EU is making a really big change when it comes to exporting material overseas. So, the EU is very progressive on recycling. So, for example, you know you have the United States. And you have California, which is a very, very progressive state when it comes to recycling. And they have their recycling programs, and they're very huge on sustainability. The European Union, or the EU, is pretty much that, but for the whole, sort of, continent almost, right? And I've been a very big fan of the EU because they're always really progressive when it comes to these policies and these rules and they really make recycling a priority. but recently they make it, made a new law that the EU wants to make sure that if you're sending or exporting any recycled material from the European Union, they have to ensure that that place where it's going to have a good recycling system in place. Otherwise you're not allowed to recycle to that country. Now this, this is where the problem comes in. Define a good recycling system. And while I do understand why, you know, the European Union wants to make this, because you don't want to make other countries like a dumping ground. You don't want to create a culture where, you know, just take trash out of your country, dump it somewhere else, and next thing you know, they're burning it, right? Or they're just throwing it in a big landfill and getting rid of it because the labor is cheaper over there, right? So I understand their point. But look, when you're exporting material overseas, in these containers right here, You have to understand that not every country is at the same spot that the European Union is. Because we're always thinking from the lens of our perspective. You know, our perspective is, is that, you know, everybody wants to buy material once and dispose of it. Everybody wants to drink a bottle once and throw it in the recycle bin. Everybody wants to use a piece of paper once. A lot of these countries overseas, especially third world countries, they don't have the resources to buy and use one time use plastics or one time use materials because they just can't afford to, have one time use of anything. So in many cases, they will reuse the same material one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight times. So while the EU, I understand that they want to make sure that other countries will become the dumping ground. At the same point, maybe they need to be understanding of the fact that maybe they're not going to recycle it and they don't have a good recycling system, but they have a fantastic reuse system. Right? And it's very hard to gauge what is a good reuse system. In my last episode, we talked about how they use seatbelts to make, you know, beds overseas. That goes, there's so many use cases where like one man's trash is another man's treasure. That happens all the time. I do think the European Union has its, you know, heart in a good place that they want to make sure that material is properly disposed of. But at the same time, I think it's a bit of an aggressive law that might hurt exporting and potentially stop the reuse of material. By stopping those patterns of happening and forcing people to dump material back into you. This is, this is the part that I really want to get clear that look, you know, we live our life a certain way. But our life is not the life of everybody in the entire world, you know, we are like the North America, what is that 300 and the United States, like 350 million Canada, like 30 million, Mexico, I'm not sure exactly what's the population, what's the population of Mexico, anybody know, anybody let's see if Siri can help us, what is the population of Mexico? 131 million. So all in, you're looking at what, like 400, 500 million people? 500 million people There's 8 billion humans on the earth, right? So how could it be that the perspective of like 500 million is the perspective of everybody? So now even the EU, you know, like what's the population of the EU? Let's check that. Population of EU. That's 448 million people. So all together, the entire Western world is about a billion people. How could a billion people, describe exactly how the other 7 billion are living? we have a certain perspective, but that doesn't mean it's the right perspective or it's the only perspective. And I think that's the most important thing. And I think Even for us as industry professionals, we have to also be cognizant that, hey, there's more to the world than just us. There's more to the world than just North America. There's more to the world than just Europe. And maybe these creative solutions that maybe we haven't thought about should be explored. Huge opportunities in Africa. Huge opportunity in Asia, huge opportunity in Southern America that many professionals don't even talk about, don't even think about, and extremely important that we discuss and we try to conserve, our landfill space, save water, conserve our energy, and manage our resources better, and that's how we're gonna all win, and not just, the pressure to the next generation to figure it out while we sort of sail off into the sunset. Episode 3. That's a wrap. I think that was pretty good. quick and short. We want to make these shorter. so they're more easy to absorb, easier to get this topic. I understand is not always the coolest topic sometimes, but we're going to be a cool, but I understand that right now is not always cool. Talk about sustainability, talk about paper industry, talk about the plastic industry, but the goal is we're going to make it cool and we're going to see you guys back in episode four. See ya.