Welcome everybody to episode 7 of the Paper and Plastic Show. You're in the Ocean Ridge Studios. You're with your host Osman Hameed and you guessed it. We're going to talk about paper and Plastic, paper and plastic don't always get a great, especially plastic doesn't get its fair share of the work that it does in the world because it's so valuable. It's so important, but people, some people call it the devil's offspring. You know, it's made from Satan himself, but the reality is we need plastic. We need paper. And this show is about highlighting that importance and putting more highlighting on the paper industry, the plastic industry. And the really, really cool things that we do. So today I want to talk about something really cool, something really close to my heart being, you know, almost raised in the beautiful Toronto, Canada, uh, my whole life. so when we have milk and we go to the grocery store to buy milk, we don't get milk in bottles or jugs or boxes. Get ready guys. And this is almost for the entire world. In Canada, we get milk in bags. We have jugs made for these milk bags that we toss the milk bag in, we snip the top off and we pour it wild for half of the world. This is like insane. Now, how could you put milk inside of a bag? And I have friends that will, they'll come from North and will come from the United States and they'll come up North to Canada. And they're like, Whoa, what is this? And it's strange, but guess what? There is some thinking behind it. So a lot of times people always say that, Hey man, these milk bags are really bad for you. Why? And there was this big article on the Toronto star on CBC and on Twitter, people going, you know, we're getting really upset that, Hey, this is single use plastic and because the milk is inside. And milk, obviously, you know, it goes bad. So you can't recycle that plastic once it's been used. Like once that milk bag is empty, that milk bag is garbage. There's no putting that back into, melting it down and making new plastic out of it because it's. It's too contaminated because the milk was bad and that obviously can't be recycled. So there's a, there was this big uproar recently on Twitter and all these, all the websites that you know what, these milk bags should be banned. There should be no more milk bags and we should go towards the gallon bottles or old school like those, those glass bottles that they used, you know, way back when. But guess what? And this is why I want you guys to think about sustainability and recycling differently. So I get it. A plastic bag is one time use. It's single use. It goes in the garbage, but the energy required to create a plastic bottle at those gallon bottles you get in the United States or a glass bottle is significantly higher than creating that bag. Significantly, like I think if I was to show the exact number, I think compared to jugs, a carton bag use 20 30 less energy and produce 20 to 40 percent less greenhouse gases to produce compared to the gallon jugs and the bottles. And guess what guys, even the gallon jug, you're not going to reuse them. Like Those, those big bottles, once they're out, it has milk in it. Who's gonna wash that out and reuse it? It's going in the landfill anyways. And sure, it can be recycled. So milk bags are far, far superior, that even if they're disposed in the landfill, their overall environmental footprint is significantly smaller So this said, according to the 2010 UN report, the most popular milk container sold in North America is still the jug. followed by carton and bags only amount for 7 percent of sales. It's actually the more sustainable option. So even though milk jugs can be recycled and glass bottles can be recycled, even glass bottles, very, very expensive to make, and they can only be used about seven, eight times before they got to be, sort of crushed back down to glass. So it's not always about. You know, what is reusable, recyclable, but also you have to think about the environmental footprint involved to make that happen, right? So stop hating on our milk bags, Americans. It takes 20 liters of water to create a liter carton milk, jug. So at the end of the day, those milk bags that you guys hate, They're really, really good for the environment because they have a smaller environmental footprint and that's huge. So anyhow, that was something cool that I want to talk about, We've got to start looking at sustainability in a different way. The paper and plastic industry in North America, we do things a certain way. But around the world and that's what Ocean Ridge is really good at is finding creative solutions to Solving our waste problem and finding creative solutions to reuse and possibly recycle material In ways that we can't always do here in North America. Sometimes we feel like we're the only ones that are doing these type of cool things, but guys, the world is amazing. Humans are amazing. all around the world, every corner of the world, There are beautiful, amazing people doing amazing things, especially from the paper and plastic industry. And we got to be looking at this whole industry with a new eye. Sometimes we just write things off. You have a tendency to write things off completely. Like these milk bags in Ontario there's people on Twitter who are saying, stop selling them. Okay. Then what's the alternative. No. So that that's the most important thing that sustainability is not going to be an easy uphill battle. There's no perfection does not exist. We can't just stop using fuel. People always say, stop burning fossil fuels. And then what? so you have to give an alternative and in a way that's sustainable and it doesn't hurt the general quality of life of people worldwide. there, there's that balance that we have to take, but that balance is important. But you know, like pesticides and herbicides, these things, like for example, if you didn't use them at all, you would have less crop. If you're 100 percent organic, completely organic, you want to have the amount of food that we have available, it's that balance, but then if you overdo it. And now you have all these modified crops and you overdo it. All of a sudden you go for territory that's now hurting humans. So we got to throw that needle and the same thing applies to recycling. The same thing applies to plastic, to paper, that we had to thread that needle, find that middle ground, and it starts with finding these creative solutions and working with people all over the world to find a common solution. Anyhow, that was chapter. That was not chapter seven. That was episode seven. That's a wrap. And we'll see the next one.