Living Greener — One Decision at a Time

MAIKEN SCOTT: This is The Pulse – stories about the people and places at the heart of health and science. I’m Maiken Scott.

[sound of basement door closing]

MS: I’m talking to you from my basement because… I’m going to put some laundry in real quick. 

[sound of washer turning on, water rushing]

Alright, there we go. There’s always enough laundry somehow to do a load…

MS: Americans do a lot of laundry. Now, I found different numbers on this, but anywhere from 2 to ten loads a week. So, how we choose to do the laundry has an enormous impact on the environment…

Take detergent, for example. 

I stopped by a couple of big box stores to see what they were selling…

MS: I’m in the laundry detergent aisle and they have at least ten different brands, but they’re all liquid – oof… heavy, so heavy – this is 115 loads, 77 loads. It feels like a kettlebell, you know? Wee! I’m doing a little workout here – a little arm workout – yeah this weighs like close to five kilos I would say…

MS: In the US – liquid detergent is king – which means heavy plastic jugs that take a lot of fuel to transport – and they result in tons of plastic trash… I eventually spotted some powder options:

MUSIC

MS: This is much lighter – so much lighter… but of course there’s kind of like powder coming out of it a little bit…

MS: We tend to buy things based on our personal preferences, on price and convenience – but a lot of us also have the environment in mind. 

We want to make greener choices… but it can feel overwhelming – a lot of the big stuff just seems out of our hands… like global emissions, energy policy, and pollution…

But small, everyday decisions matter, too – and they add up! 

How long and hot a shower you take – what you’ll have for lunch – what kinds of products you purchase and how you sort your trash…

On this special Earth Day episode of The Pulse: everyday choices for greener living… and some innovations that could change everything from recycling to how we do laundry!

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MS: Alright, to get started – let’s get right to that laundry. I ended up buying the powdered detergent the day I was at the box store – because I hate throwing out those giant plastic bottles… and really – my mom always used powder, I used powder for years – so when and how did liquid detergents take over?

Curtis Schwartz is a retired chemist who spent more than 30 years in the chemical industry, working on consumer products like laundry…

When he started his career…

CURTIS SCHWARTZ: It was 1986 – and in the United States, it was dominated by powder detergents – containing phosphates in these enormous boxes.  

MS: And he says they worked like a charm…

CS: The world was beautiful, very good cleaning from these high alkalinity phosphate detergents. 

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MS: He says the phosphates dissolved easily – they were great at getting out stains – but they also ended up in streams and lakes – and since algae needs phosphorus to grow – they led to massive algae blooms – choking out waterways. So eventually, they were banned. 

Without phosphates – the powder detergents didn’t dissolve as well, and they also weren’t as effective. Curtis says you were supposed to put them in the washer first, on the bottom… but…

CS: Who listens to directions, right? You put your laundry in first, you overstuff it, you put the powder in, it gets into the folds, and it hardly sees any agitation. So, and then there’s a maybe even 0.1% of the time, if you ended up with the residue. That’s thousands of unsatisfied customers. But that’s enough to have a lot of complaints and they didn’t clean as well. 

MS: Making laundry matters worse, there was pressure to use less water, to make the wash cycle more energy efficient… 

There was also a very successful – and pretty annoying – ad campaign for the first liquid detergent – Wisk:

AD CAMPAIGN: “Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar! Those dirty rings…”

MS: So – the pressure was on to develop more liquid detergent options. Curtis remembers the challenges of making the formulations work…

CS: Everything has to be compatible. It can’t turn into molasses on a cold day if you leave it in your car and it’s cold out. It can’t face separate like salad dressing. Over time it has to be shelf stable. 

MS: And a quick side note here – this issue – Curtis says – also explains the design of those laundry pods that have become so popular…

CS: They have three different compartments and that’s to separate largely incompatible ingredients that otherwise you would have to have a solvent to dissolve to keep it uniform. 

MS: That’s so funny because I always thought with the pods, that they separated them out to make them look cool. 

CS: They look cool too but they separate them out so you can have ingredients that are incompatible and deliver them in the wash bath.

MS: Okay … back to our liquid detergents: 

More and more liquid options came on the market – and by the early 2000s, they had taken over as the preferred choice… with big environmental impacts…

REID EDGAR: Seven hundred million jugs of laundry detergent are thrown away every single year in the United States alone.

MS: That’s Reid Edgar – he’s the owner of a company called Spot Detergent…

RE: That figure really, really made it clear to me like – something has to change…

MS: Reid’s company has developed a detergent in a sheet form… it looks like a dryer sheet, but thicker. It dissolves more readily than powder, it’s super light, and takes up very little space… So – it’s more environmentally friendly on those accounts. But – the box is not designed to look like a quote “green product”, you know, with earth tones and leaves printed on it – it looks bright and cheerful – more like any other cleaning product… and Reid says that is intentional to get all kinds of consumers to give it a shot…

RE: Make it as easy as possible for the person to try it that one time – and if it looks like a regular cleaning product, we want them to think that it is because at the end of the day, when you put it in your washing machine, it’s doing the exact same thing as Tide or any other brand – it has to work well, otherwise people are going back to plastic.

MS: I just bought a whole bunch of different sheet detergents from different companies –  and I’m excited to give them a try. 

But there is one more big topic with laundry and the environment… so let’s head back down to my basement…

[closing the washer door] 

MS: …choose the wash. I’m going to wash this one hot because it’s sheets and stuff…

MS: A lot of laundry detergent manufacturers are trying to change their environmental footprint by convincing people to choose the cold cycle more often…using celebrities like rapper and actor Ice-T and wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin to spread the word – like in this Tide commercial:

COMMERCIAL:

Ice-T: Hello my name is Ice-T, can you spare a few seconds to learn about cold water washing with Tide? 

Steve Austin: Hi my name is Steve – did you know washing in cold can save you a hundred dollars a year on your energy bill? 

IT: Why wouldn’t you turn to cold? It helps the environment. 

SA: What? Because Stone Cold said so.

MS: But – does this really work, compared to using a warm or hot cycle? I talked about that with Craig Bettenhausen – he’s senior editor at Chemical and Engineering News  – and he covers laundry detergents as part of his beat…He says first you have to understand the “it” factor in detergents – which are the surfactants… the agents that get the dirt out

CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN: A molecule that’s going to help hydrophobic oily dirt-type substances get carried away by the water. It has an end that is attracted to water and an end that is attracted to oil and lets those two mix. 

MS: So – these surfactants chip away at the stains…

CB: And then a bunch more of those surfactant molecules are going to gather around it and kind of make what’s called a micelle, like a little sphere of these surfactant molecules holding on to these particles of dirt, or oil or whatever it is. And then that’s what’s going to then stay in the water as it washes around. 

MS: But – when you bring down the water temperature… 

CB: Any chemical reaction slows down, including the reactions that are involved in getting a shirt clean. But the surfactant chemistry slows down more sharply with temperature than for example enzyme chemistry. So one of the things they’re doing to make these cold water formulations work is they’re leaning more heavily on enzymes… 

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MS: Enzymes are proteins that act as catalysts – they speed up chemical reactions….

CB: So those are taken from nature – these are the molecules that are actually breaking apart the starch or the oil or the protein at a molecular level so that it’s – it’s literally ripping the molecules apart so that they are easier for the detergent to pick up. 

So if you imagine there’s a starch stain on your shirt, that’s a long biological polymer. It’s going to come in and chop that long polymer up into shorter sections and that’s going to let it detangle from the fibers of your shirt. It’s going to make smaller things that are more soluble in the water. And it works like that across the different kinds of stains. 

MS: And what about odors? Are they affected differently when it comes to cold or warm water? 

CB: Odors are one of the more difficult parts for cold water. That’s one thing that enzymes can be very effective at because some of those odors are, the odors get worse as your laundry ages. Because that literally is it’s like those are molecules fermenting on your on your shirt or whatever. 

So that ends up with a complex soup of biological molecules because these microbes, these cells will grow on your, you know, old laundry, they’ll die, the cells will burst. So having ingredients in there, these enzymes that can really break up those complicated biomolecules, can help a lot. 

MS: But Craig says if you have something that’s really dirty or stinky…

CB: At the end of the day, the heat is always going to help. And even if you take a cold water detergent and use it in hot water, it’s going to be more effective than it is in cold water, no denying that. It’s just that the cold water is enough for most things. 

MS: And that’s the main message from cold water washing proponents… even if you go from hot to cold, or warm to cold for most of your laundry – it will be a big savings in terms of your energy cost – and your carbon footprint – and let’s face it, a lot of our laundry is just not that dirty.

CB: For most loads, most cycles, we’re overwashing, we’re doing more than we have to, we’re cranking it up to 11. We can get just as good of a clean with less intensity.

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MS: Craig Bettenhausen covers consumer chemistry for Chemical and Engineering News…

We’re talking about green living – and the choices we make every day that affect the environment in big and small ways.

A lot of people are trying to reduce their meat consumption as part of “greener living,” but they end up missing the flavor and texture of meat…

About 10 years ago, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods started selling plant-based products that promised to look, sizzle, and taste like meat – but with a much smaller environmental footprint.

It was supposed to be a far cry from the black bean veggie burgers that came before. 

COMMERCIALS: “The future of food looks like this: it’s a new operation run by a company called Impossible Foods.” 

“Beyond Meat is a U.S. vegan startup seeking to redefine meat by making it synthetically from plants.” 

“Bill Gates and the guys who started Twitter, they’re already sold, and they are betting millions that this could change the world.”

MS: But now, sales of those products are falling. And both companies have laid off workers.

So … what’s the future of these products and what do consumers really want?

Alan Yu looked into it. 

[AMBI]

JONAH GOLDMAN: Hey guys, would you like to try a sample?

ALAN YU: I’m by the entrance of a Whole Foods market just outside Philadelphia.

Jonah Goldman and his colleague are enthusiastically trying to talk to anyone who walks through the door. 

He has two trays of plant-based, deep-fried nuggets that he’s giving out…

JG: We have one plant-based nugget that is a gluten and soy base and the other is a mushroom base.

AY: He’s trying to do some market research and promote his restaurant which is downstairs in the grocery store. 

It’s called PLNT Burger.

JG: They just do their shopping up here. They have their routine. There’s like a sign outside that says PLNT Burger downstairs, but no one like pays attention to that or knows what that means. So it is incumbent upon us now to really put ourselves in front of people. 

AY: Jonah and his business partners started in the Washington DC area, and came to this location in southeastern Pennsylvania four years ago. 

Their pitch is that this is fast food that looks and tastes like the chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers that meat eaters know and love, just without the health and environmental concerns of eating mass-produced meat.

[sound of grill]

AY: I went inside their kitchen and it looks just like any other burger place: large flat top grill, sizzling burgers, toasted buns… with a few tweaks. 

JG: PLNT Burger or Planet Burger is a elevated fast food concept that we launched back in September of 2019 with the mission to spread joy through the world through delicious people and planet-friendly fast food options. 

Jonah has been a vegan since he was 10, when he learned about factory farming practices. 

But he knows not everyone is vegan or vegetarian – so he has to appeal to a broader customer base to really make a change. 

JG: Most of the people in the organization are not plant-based eaters and our target audience is omnivores, vegan slash plant-based eaters comprise around 5% of the overall population. So if we’re only serving them or if we’re primarily serving them then we just won’t exist as a restaurant. 

Case in point is Ronnie McDaniels.

He started working in the PLNT Burger kitchen in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, three years ago 

He’s now the regional manager of both locations.

RONNIE MCDANIELS: All my family, my kids, especially my kids, they come here often. My grandkids love the dippers, love the nuggets. 

Ronnie says PLNT Burger has replaced McDonald’s in the minds of his grandchildren.

Jonah says their sales pitch is working: their company is making a profit and now has several locations along the East Coast. 

They use Beyond Meat as the ingredient for their burgers.

But that company – Beyond Meat is not doing so well. 

Neither is Impossible Foods.

McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, Panda Express made headlines when they introduced plant-based meat options, but those menu items did not last. 

These products are also not as popular in grocery stores as the companies had hoped.

When Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods first hit the shelves – people were excited about them, to give them a shot…

But not that many customers came back for seconds, says Billy Roberts, a long-time analyst of the food market.

BILLY ROBERTS: Consumers did give them a try. I think they did find them lacking. Seen in a lot of consumer research, where it basically explained they fell short in taste and flavor and texture and frankly, it may take something fairly significant to get them to to retry those products. 

AY: Grocery store sales of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods products have dropped. 

Billy says that when it comes to food, most consumers choose based on price and taste.

And Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods certainly made big strides in that area, compared to veggie burgers that came before, which did not taste or feel anything like actual meat 

But he says plant-based meat is still not quite there yet…

BR: It’s definitely a category that has had its chance for strong growth. And I think it’s going to take something in the future similar to those profound advances that we saw from Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger, what ten years ago for it really to have another trial period 

AY: Food journalist Chloe Sorvino says it wasn’t only the quality of the products that was an issue – it was that these companies were trying to do too much too fast:

CHLOE SORVINO: They were looking at salmon bites. They were doing chicken. They were doing hot dogs. They were doing steak. They were doing burgers…

AY: Chloe leads food, drink, and agriculture coverage at Forbes Magazine.

She recently wrote a book called “Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat”.

She says many plant-based meat companies were unsustainably attracting a frenzy from investors and advocates without a widely popular product. 

CS: These businesses really never had enough of a strong foundation to begin with and even early data showed that when consumers were purchasing these products at grocery stores… they often weren’t buying them again. 

AY: She says a lot of the early investments came from people who had not invested in the food market before and did not understand how much harder it would be to sell a new burger versus a new gadget.

CS: At the end of the day this consumer base really just wasn’t there and
it was a combination of, some of the original marketing, some of the products maybe being a little too early to launch.

She says ome of the products have improved..

CS: Some of the second, third, fourth generations of these products are far better, far healthier, far less processed, far more sustainable.

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AY: And now the challenge is to get people to try them again… 

Matt Rafferty was able to attract a loyal customer base when he opened a vegan food truck in Philadelphia four years ago called Algorithm Food Truck.

It was really popular. 

Philadelphia Magazine put them on their “Best of” list in 2021. 

MATT RAFFERTY: And I’m not talking about vegan food trucks – they put us as the best food truck.

AY: Matt decided to expand, to open a sit-down restaurant around a year ago. 

But his restaurant just closed; he says he just couldn’t attract enough meat-eating customers for casual, lower-priced vegan food:

MR: We’re in a very niche market, and it’s very hard to promote to people that are not vegan and looking for it. That’s been a challenge. 

AY: Matt will now go back to running the food truck – which has much lower overhead costs.

[sound of LesbiVeggies kitchen]

AY: Across state lines in New Jersey, Brennah Lambert has found success with her vegan restaurant, called LesbiVeggies, among a meat-eating crowd in South Jersey.

BRENNAH LAMBERT: I’d say maybe 80% of our customers aren’t vegan. 

We have people that are like 80 plus that come in here with their, I don’t know, church friends, and then we have people who are like 17, 18 that come in with their friends, couples, families from all over.

Her restaurant is known for their meatballs, made with Beyond Meat, and tacos that are made with slowly stewed jackfruit instead of pork.

Brennah thinks of her restaurant not as a vegan restaurant, but a place that vegans can take their meat-eating friends to, and everyone can have a good time.

BL: They can have a Beyond Meat-ball and it doesn’t have to a hundred percent resemble a meatball, because it’s not, but it’s gonna taste good, and you’re not gonna feel like you’re eating like lentils with flour.

AY: And so far she’s succeeding: she says they’re packed on the weekends. 

She’s thinking about buying the empty property next door so they can expand. 

So – what is the future of plant-based meats? 

Emma Ignaszewski says it’s too soon to tell – these products are still at the start of their story.

Emma is the associate director of industry intelligence at the Good Food Institute, a think tank that promotes plant-based food.

Emma says the plant-based meat market could take some lessons from the plant-based milk market…

It took a while to get here, but now you see grocery stores and coffee shops offer soy milk, and oat milk, and almond milk alongside milk from cows.

And no one questions whether those products will appeal to hard-core milk fans or not.

EMMA IGNASZEWSKI: Plant-based milk became big once it was shelved in the milk aisle, right? – in the refrigerated door. 

That’s where it became visible and accessible to the mainstream consumer who’s buying their milk in that area already. 

AY: She says the consumers who are growing up right now will make different choices than the people who came before them…

EI: We’re seeing younger generations like Gen-Z and Millennials come into their purchasing power. And these generations are over-indexed – they’re more likely to report caring about or making consumer decisions based on sustainability issues. 

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AY: And some big companies continue to bet on the change.

In March, Oscar Meyer announced that they will soon sell vegan hot dogs. 

 

MS: That story was reported by Alan Yu.

 

We’re talking about options for greener living – and coming up…

An innovation that could revolutionize sorting trash – and lead to better recycling:

 

TOMAS FILLER: You recycle it, but you don’t downcycle it. You use it ideally for the same product again. Therefore the plastic does not become a waste, but the plastic becomes a useful material. 

That’s next on The Pulse. 

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MS: This is The Pulse – I’m Maiken Scott.

We’re talking about choices we make every day that affect the environment in big and small ways.

Recycling makes us feel better, right? Especially when it comes to plastic! Keeping all of those milk jugs, containers, and packaging materials out of landfills, and sending them off to be made into something new! In some communities, recycling is the law – you can get fined for not doing it!

But – Pulse reporter Grant Hill has recently considered giving up on recycling. That’s right… NOT recycling. Why? Because ever since learning about the troubled state and history of plastic recycling – the process has felt like a bit of a charade to him.  

So he went on a mission to find out if he should continue sorting his trash…

GRANT HILL: When I called Wayne DeFeo and told him I was considering giving up recycling plastic, I expected pushback. 

After all, Wayne is a recycling consultant who drives up and down New Jersey to help optimize waste management processes across the state. 

But Wayne seemed empathetic to my crisis of confidence.

WAYNE DEFEO: It’s frustrating to watch… where there are litter baskets on the street, and then you have recycling bins next to that litter basket, and they’re both full of the same thing. Okay, that’s a failure of recycling, and then residents see…

GH: But – after that nod – he had no problem telling me, in so many words, that my idea was idiotic.

WD: Well, I would tell you you’re just wrong.

GH: So, here is the back story….

Like most people my age – I’m in my twenties – I learned about recycling as a kid. 

SONG: “Recycle, to take something used and make it into something new. That’s it!”

GH: It was just part of being a good citizen. 

CARTOON: “So you gotta find a way to turn the old into new then you won’t waste anything.” 

GH: From the toys in my bedroom to my backpack for school, to beloved fast food drive-thrus, our entire way of life depended on colorful, lightweight, and nearly eternal plastic materials…

That meant we all had to contribute to keeping these materials in circulation and out of landfills and waterways. Together, we could make plastic clean and sustainable.  

It made sense to me. I quickly absorbed that old mantra: 

KIDS SONG: “Reduce, reuse, recycle, it’s very easy to do.” 

GH: I remained a committed recycler – until more recently when I found out that the dream of plastic recycling – was more of a pipe dream… or, as Davis Allen – an investigative researcher with the Center for Climate Integrity would put it, a lie… 

DAVIS ALLEN: This broader campaign to make us believe that plastic recycling was more viable than it actually was… And it’s been very effective in that people have really taken it to heart. That that was a way that they could make a difference.

GH: Davis recently co-authored a report that built on previous investigations to show how, since the 1980s, the plastics industry has spent millions of dollars promoting recycling as the answer to an explosion in plastic waste.

DA: What’s clear is that, going back a long, long time, there was a pretty good sense among people who were aware of the situation that recycling just wasn’t, a viable solution for most plastic products.

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ANNNOUNCER: “The horizons of plastic are lengthening, and strengthening, too. Supported by…” 

GH: At first, plastic seemed like a miracle material—a shapeshifter that could morph into anything from clear bags to lampshades, and storage boxes. 

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, little concern was paid to what happened when its miracles ran out.

COMMERCIAL: “The ingenious alchemy of coal and oil provides the material… into a wide variety of products, articles for household use, as well as…”

DA: Until the late 60s, early 70s, there really wasn’t much interest in, or concern about plastics disposal, at least among people in the industry. The idea was, you know, our markets are growing dramatically, in large part based on single-use, disposable plastic products, um, especially plastic packaging. And they just weren’t very concerned about what happened to it afterwards. 

GH: Most plastic trash ended up in landfills or incinerators

DA: But, 1970 was the first Earth Day… and people began to be concerned about… environmental problems in a sort of different way than they had been before.

GH: By the mid-80s, the waste problem was ballooning out of control. 

Some states, including my home state of New Jersey, proposed banning single-use plastic. 

In response, Davis says the plastics industry devised a multi-faceted campaign via front groups and foundations centered around a new concept: recycling. 

DA: The effort really took a wide variety of forms and they were targeted at different audiences. You know, they were targeting the public, they were targeting lawmakers, they were targeting the media – it was a widespread effort. But, it was very effective. 

GH: Decades earlier, plastics insiders had already quietly identified the economics of recycling as quote “virtually hopeless.”

Still, the campaign made people feel like they could keep consuming – and be a part of the solution. Take those little numbers from 1 to 7 inside the triangle arrows, used to label all the plastic stuff you buy. It was devised by the Society of the Plastics Industry in 1988.

DA: They claimed that it was a way to improve recycling by making it more clear what kind of plastic resin was in a given product.

GH: Recycling advocates warned that the system would only lead to confusion among consumers – that by labeling all plastic with this symbol, regardless of whether it could be recycled, consumers would think most plastic was, or could be recycled when that just wasn’t true.

But, Davis says deception was the point. 

DA: Unfortunately, the industry was really successful in getting a large number of states to pass legislation requiring those symbols to be added. And then ultimately we get the system like we have today where, you know, virtually every plastic product you see has some kind of recyclable symbol on there.

GH: In a statement, the American Chemistry Council – a plastics industry group – called Davis’ report “flawed.” 

But Davis says the results of the campaign speak for themselves.

DA: The recycling rate in the U. S. is unfortunately really low. Currently, I think it’s five to six percent of plastics that are getting recycled.

GH: Five percent. 

This sad statistic – and this whole history rolls around my head every time I dutifully sort my trash into the recycling bin and carry it to the curb. Is this all for naught? Am I just doing this as a performance for my neighbors? 

When I told Wayne DeFeo, the recycling consultant, that I was thinking of giving this ritual up… that I felt like a dupe sorting my trash, all for a measly five percent… he invited me to my local recycling processing plant in Burlington Country, New Jersey. 

Wayne knows the statistics around recycling rates. He didn’t ask for this system, but it’s the one he inherited. 

[RECYCLING PLANT AMBI]

GH: This is like – this is like a trash waterfall. 

WD: Well, not trash. Not trash. 

These spinning wheels help to kick the cardboard up because it’s flat and light… Everything else falls through…

GH: This is one of the oldest recycling facilities in the state—first built in the 1960s to help employ adults with developmental disabilities. 

Today, it’s a sprawling orchestra of refuse – a maze of whizzing, crisscrossing conveyor belts, wheels, sensors, and tiny compressed-air canons that spin, fling, and sort through metal, cardboard, paper, glass, and three kinds of plastic. 

WD: This is the first step in quality control. The people here pull off anything they see that doesn’t belong here, like a toaster. Why there’s a toaster in there I couldn’t tell you, but it shouldn’t be there….

GH: Alongside the humming machinery, dozens of workers sort through this steady stream, removing what the instruments missed. 

It’s a dangerous job. Bins are often carelessly filled with materials that shouldn’t be there.

Thermal cameras weed out misplaced batteries inside piles of material, which, if punctured or compressed, could spark a fire that burns the whole place down in minutes.

[AMBI]

Used needles have sent workers to the hospital. 

Wayne shows me a sword once picked out of a daily collection.

WD: I don’t know if you can hear me, but this is the feed to the optical sorter. Since this is mechanical and run by the computer, look how much faster this line is running.

GH: As we make our way through the facility that Wayne compares to the game, Mouse Trap, I feel my throat tighten, and my eyes water. 

I blame it on the smell – sour milk on an industrial scale. 

WD: And to give you context, this facility can process, sort, clean up about 35 tons of material every hour…

GH: After half an hour of climbing stairs and weaving through processors, we reach the end of the line—and there is a mountain of bails of compressed plastic, ready to be loaded onto another truck and taken to be melted down and processed at another nearby plant – to be sold and eventually reused. 

All of it gathered in less than one day from the state’s eleventh-most-populated county.

It is, simply put, an unthinkable amount of plastic. 

WD: Why are we here? Because it’s a combination of two things. Consumers like convenience,  and manufacturers make things to meet that consumer convenience but also sell us and tell us what we want, and we buy into it.

GH: Wayne knows our world is drowning in plastic, and that this orchestra, no matter how remarkable, won’t save us. 

Last year, the United Nations began work on a global treaty to end plastic waste. But it’s far from finished. 

Wayne reassures me that this is why regular people must continue to play their part despite the system’s faults.

Rather than curse how little plastic gets recycled, Wayne tells me to treasure just how much really does.

MUSIC

MS: That story was reported by Grant Hill.

The sorting process has long been the Achilles heel of recycling, especially in terms of plastic. There are so many different types of plastic. Some are clear, some are soft, some are really sturdy – some can be used to hold food or cosmetics, others can’t… and when you lump them all together, shred them, and then melt them – the resulting material you get is of lower quality. 

But there is a new system that could revolutionize the sorting process – and give us a lot more information. 

TOMÁŠ FILLER: If the plastic is food safe? Who was the producer, what is the story of that item? 

MS: This is Tomáš Filler – he’s senior manager of Research and development at a company called Digimarc – they are headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon. They print digital watermarks on all kinds of consumer products – like plastic bottles and packages… 

MS: So – if you think about watermarks on money that are used to authenticate bills – it’s the same idea but not as visible. Tomáš holds up an empty yellow and blue Pampers package…

TF: Let’s say I have a design, a printed artwork of Pampers diaper bag, the artwork is design is printed, but before we print, we slightly modify each color in a little bit, in a way that humans don’t perceive this, but machines do. 

MS: – And Tomáš says that’s the idea…

TF: To me, watermark is something you look at a package and you don’t see anything. When I show this to my friends, and they just keep looking at a package and say, I don’t see anything, what are you talking about? 

MS: But – it contains very powerful information

TF: It’s pretty much digitizing waste. 

MS: Just like you can scan a product at the grocery store that has a barcode printed on it – companies can now better identify stuff that has ended up in your recycling bin – and sort it in a much more granular fashion based on that information

TF: So when this is very crumpled, muddy, or soiled, and it’s going very high speed on a sorting line, the algorithms can find the digital watermark, and based on that we know it belongs to Procter & Gamble, it is this version, specific version of Pampers. 

MS: Tomáš and I connected via video call – and he gave me a virtual tour of the sorting facility where he was at, in Ehingen, Germany. 

SORTING FACILITY AMBI

MS: I watch as pieces of trash fly by on the belt – they disappear into a tunnel where they’re scanned – a purple light shines on them – it looks a little bit like they’re disappearing into a nightclub. At the end of the line – I can see a pile of those blue and yellow diaper packages – neatly sorted out.

Tomáš says with this process, manufacturers could take their own packaging back – and use the materials again and again – for the exact same purpose.

TF: You recycle it, but you don’t downcycle it. You use it ideally, for the same product again. Therefore the plastic does not become a waste, but the plastic becomes a useful material. 

MS: After years of testing, the detection rate is now at 99 percent. And the technology needed to detect the watermarks can be added to existing sorting machines – so companies won’t have to buy whole new sorting gear. 

Getting higher-quality materials from recycling could be a big selling point for companies – but there is something else at play here: data. 

RILEY MCCORMACK: We don’t have data about that trash stream.

MS: That’s Riley McCormack, he’s CEO of Digimarc. 

RM: I think history has shown, especially history in the last 50 years, if you really want to solve the big, tough problems, data is the answer to that.  

MS: He says take any product that you buy at the store – like a bottle of water…

RM: That water bottle was probably scanned 10 or 11 times before it reached the front of the store where you bought it, and then after that, it goes dark. There is no quantitative data from purchase to end of life, and that’s a really long journey with a lot of interesting insights that could be gleaned if we had that data.

MS: He gives me an example – a company that makes shelf-stable food products…

RM: They create packaging for some of their products to last for two years, to keep the food fresh for two years. They believe most of the stuff is consumed within three months, but they don’t have the data. If they could actually, with our technology, see that, understand how long this stuff is, they could use less uh material.

MS: Developing this watermark technology was part of Holy Grail, an initiative by the MacArthur Foundation to improve plastic recycling.

It’s already being used in some sorting facilities in Europe, and big brands, like Procter & Gamble, are printing those watermarks on their products.

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Coming up… doing little things that will make your home more energy efficient

SIMI HOQUE: Almost like saying: I have a bucket of water, it has a hole in it, but I’m just gonna keep pouring water in it and I’ll just pour a lot more water because there’s a hole at the bottom. First, fix the hole, then pour the water in.

MS: That’s next on The Pulse. 

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SEGMENT 3

MS: This is The Pulse, I’m Maiken Scott – we’re talking about green living – and our choices that impact the environment in big and small ways…

Homes are responsible for almost a fifth of the country’s total energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing your energy use at home saves money – it’s good for the planet – but it’s often a big investment upfront. There are rebates that are supposed to start rolling out this year for things like electric heat pumps and insulation, but you don’t have to wait for that to make greener choices. …

Sophia Schmidt visited one homeowner who has worked on making his place more energy efficient for years – and he’s learned some things along the way…

SOPHIA SCHMIDT: Ken Hoke lives on a tree-lined street in West Philadelphia – in a tan brick row home – with his wife and their cocker spaniel, Wally. 

[dog barking]

Their home is in the middle of the row, two stories, three bedrooms. He says it doesn’t take much energy to run because it’s insulated by the neighboring homes that are attached. 

And the place has other advantages that keep the utility bills down: The front of the house faces south — so it picks up warmth from the sun during the coldest part of the year.

KEN HOKE: In the winter, you have a low angle of sun – the rays of the sun are not really hitting the roof as much as it would in the summer. It’s hitting the south wall.

SS: Ken notices all this, and carefully monitors his energy consumption at home because this is what he does for a living. He works as an energy analyst for an agency that does weatherization for low-income homeowners in Philly. Heating and cooling make up the bulk of a typical home’s energy use. He keeps track of the savings these projects produce. 

KH: I’m a scorekeeper, so to speak.

I’m in the field. And so I’d be a total hypocrite to be going out there to people’s houses, or working in programs that uh the mission was energy conservation and lived in a house where I didn’t practice what I preach.

SS: So around 30 years ago, Ken and his wife started making small tweaks to their home so their heater wouldn’t have to work as hard.  

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SS: They set their thermostat no higher than 65 degrees in the winter — and programmed it to turn down at night and when they left the house for work during the day. 

They replaced the old windows with new ones that keep in more heat. They added more insulation under the roof, sealed up cracks in the basement … 

KH: So now you see a little bit of foam, over there… 

SS: … they also got a new, more efficient boiler and hot water heater and put strips of vinyl around the doors.

[door creaking]

KH: … but every little step helps so, so on this side, it’s pretty good.

SS: The biggest changes came last year when Ken decided it was time to go solar. 

He called up his old coworker, Anil Babooram, who now runs a solar design and installation company. 

ANIL BABOORAM: I purposely covered as much as I could of his roof. I mean, I wanted to give him, uh, as much solar as I could.

SS: Ken’s family also decided they wanted air conditioning. They had been relying just on ceiling fans for close to two decades.

KH: And as you know, it’s getting hotter and hotter. There’s more heat waves and they’re longer. It can get pretty tough, even for us.

SS: Instead of buying a traditional air conditioner, they bought a heat pump. 

That’s a device that uses electricity to both heat and cool a house — by transferring heat from one place to another, similar to how a fridge works. These units are efficient – and can blow hot or cold air through ducts if your home has them, or out of a ductless unit, mounted to a wall. 

Now, on mild winter days, Ken can heat his home using just the electric heat pump — instead of his gas-powered boiler. 

With all the changes he’s made, Ken estimates he’s cut his gas use by more than a third — and his solar panels power all his electric appliances with clean energy. 

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If you’re not quite ready to go solar like Ken, there are other things you can do. 

Simi Hoque teaches architectural engineering at Drexel University in Philly. She says in places with hot summers, coating a roof with a light-colored, reflective material helps bounce the sun’s rays back off, and keep the home cool. 

And you can capitalize on the sun hitting your roof to heat your hot water. Solar hot water heaters run household water or non-freezing liquids through special tanks or tubes on a home’s roof, designed to capture the sun’s heat. 

They usually require a backup gas or electric hot water heater for cloudy days. But Simi says, they lower your energy use —  typically pay off in just a few years — and can be used all over the world. 

SS: Even in the winter? 

SIMI HOQUE: Even in the winter. 

SS: Okay, that’s magical. 

SH: Yeah, it is! It is. 

SS: It’s also important to tighten up the leaks in your home — so less of the air your HVAC system has heated or cooled can escape. 

SH: Almost like saying: I have a bucket of water, it has a hole in it, but I’m just gonna keep pouring water in it and I’ll just pour a lot more water because there’s a hole at the bottom. First, fix the hole, then pour the water in.

SS: Simi fixed the ‘holes’ in her home a few years ago, and saw her energy bills go down. 

SH: But more importantly, it made us feel much more comfortable. So there were parts of our house where we just wouldn’t hang out in, in the winter and now we’re spending more time in there without having to put on a winter coat 

SS: The first step is to find where exactly the air is leaking in or out. 

One way to do this is to get a professional energy audit. 

ORI ROSENKRANTZ: So we got 1400 square feet. Alright, do you mind if I take a look at the basement real quick?

At a house in South Philly, energy auditor Ori Rosenkrantz and his coworker turn on a device called a blower door. 

OR: We always start the blower door test at 25 CFM.

[blower door turns on] 

SS: The blower door is an adjustable frame that fits within an exterior door and blocks it off. A big fan in the middle of the blower door sucks air out of the house. 

This pulls new air in through any cracks. 

OR: And that’s going to tell us how, uh, tight or leaky your house is. Uh, hopefully on the tighter side, but you never know until, we check it. 

SS: This house was built about a century ago. It’s been completely renovated — but the blower door test shows it’s leakier than it should be. 

Next, it’s time to find out where the air is coming in. You can use a thermography gun to look for cold or hot spots — or you can just feel it, by putting your hand around the doors and windows, or even light switches and electrical outlet covers. 

OR: So I put my hand on on the uh outlet here and I feel a lot of cold air coming through and well, that, that’s definitely outside air. 

SS: The next step is to seal the cracks with insulation, caulking, weather-stripping, or spray foam. 

Many of these changes can save you money in the long run. But the reality is energy audits, renovations, and new appliances aren’t within everyone’s reach. 

It can be hard or impossible for renters to make these kinds of changes – and for homeowners, the initial expenses can be prohibitive. 

For example, Ken estimates he spent around $20,000 total to reduce his home’s emissions over the course of 30 years — even after federal tax incentives. 

Tarek Rahka directs the High Performance Building Lab at Georgia Tech. He says the cheapest way to lower your home’s energy use is to change your behavior. 

Tarek recommends unplugging appliances like TVs when you’re not using them and making sure your lights are off during the day. 

Take advantage of the sun. Shade your windows when your home is too warm, then let the sun in when you need the heat. 

TAREK RAHKA: We want to remove the obstructions and then have a variable shading approach where for example, there are, not curtains because these block all of the energy, we’re talking about Venetian blinds, for example, that’s you’re able to toggle, so that you are allowing the sun to come in when you need it, and also you’re protecting from it during the summer.

SS: And, in colder months, you can follow the familiar advice: put on a sweater, and turn down the thermostat. 

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TR: Changing the set points so that you are maybe a little bit on the precipice of discomfort. But you are much more energy efficient. 

SS: You can take comfort in the fact that you’re doing your part to reduce your home’s energy consumption. 

For The Pulse, I’m Sophia Schmidt.

MS: We’re talking about making choices – big and small – that impact the environment.

Human activity has spelled trouble for honey bees and other pollinators over the years – everything from habitat destruction to monoculture and pesticides… and many bees have been threatened by various, devastating diseases…

Which has some hobby apiarists – or beekeepers – like Laula Busser wondering…

LAULA BUSSER: We vaccinate kids against all these diseases, we preempt, but we don’t do that with the bees and I don’t understand why.

Now – there’s a vaccine for at least one disease that is a threat to hives – Reporter Buffy Gorrilla has more:

BUFFY GORRILLA: I’m walking towards some bee hives with Tim Ferris, a professional beekeeper, in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania. We’re both in protective jackets and hoods. 

I can hear some buzzing from afar…

BG: So what’s the likelihood that I will get stung? 

TIM FERRIS: It depends what we do and what we need to achieve for your recording.

BG: Not to get stung if possible. Tim is from New Zealand and has been keeping bees for 16 years. 

TF: Do you think people are going to understand my accent?

BG: I think so. Yes, if not, I’ll be like, ‘And what Tim is trying to say here…’

BG: He’s managing partner of Extract and Box LLC – a company that provides all things bees… wax, honey… he’s even published on bee venom research. 

BG: You have a bee crawling on you. 

TF: I get stung about 20 times a day. It happens. They’re gentle. So, sometimes if you’re not wearing a tight jacket, they’ll crawl up the inside. That one actually just stung me. 

BG: You just got stung? 

TF: Yeah. You don’t flinch after a while. 

BG: Tim’s always looking for signs of disease in his hives – like American Foulbrood… a fatal bacterial disease…

He cracked open one of his hives to show me…

TF: We’re looking at around 25,000 bees at the moment. So on this frame, we wouldn’t see American Foulbrood because it’s still in the egg and larvae stage. However, on the frames of the pupae, we’d be looking for perforated caps.

BG: Tim doesn’t see any signs of disease on his bees or in this hive, but he’s right to be watchful. 

I talked about this condition with Kim Skyrm, the chief apiary inspector for the Department of Agriculture in Massachusetts, and self-proclaimed bee lover.

KIM SKYRM: In the simplest terms, American Foulbrood is a bacteria that is very virulent…

BG: American Foulbrood starts when bacterial spores enter the hive. Then, food contaminated by the spores is fed to the larvae, you know, the baby bees, by nurse bees. And then, the bacteria takes over. 

KS: The ultimate success of this bacteria is that it will, use developing larvae of honeybees for its life cycle, so it basically consumes these larvae.

BG: Kim says knowing what to look for around your hive can help beekeepers spot the infection.

KS: The telltale sign would be there’s not a lot of brood left. You may see a pile of dead bees on  the ground in front of the colony.

BG: There’s also a way to sniff out the problem.

KS: It does have an odor of a chicken house, which is where that Foulbrood name came from.

BG: American Foulbrood is rare, but Tim, the beekeeper, says if your hives are infected, it’s time to make a tough and expensive decision.

TF: You will exterminate the hive. Uh, you can use gasoline, tip it into the hive to fumigate off the bees, and then you can burn the hive. So, I’m not quite sure what it is in Fahrenheit, but a hundred and twenty one degrees Celsius is the temperature to kill off the spores. 

BG: But now, there’s an easier way to manage this disease and keep the pollinators safe.

There’s a new vaccine on the scene.

In January 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture granted a conditional license for a vaccine to protect honeybees. 

Annette Kleiser is the CEO of Dalan Animal Health in Athens, Georgia – the company that developed the vaccine. 

ANNETTE KLEISER: We know that vaccines are extremely effective at preventing diseases and preventing the spread of diseases. Why hasn’t anybody done this? This idea for a honeybee vaccine. I felt like there’s an urgency here. This needs to be done. We need to act fast.

BG: Annette says before working on the vaccine, she didn’t fully appreciate the importance of bees in our ecosystem.

AK: They feed us, they clothe us, they make music for us. It really touches every part of our lives. 

BG: Annette’s team identified brood diseases as the first to fight with the vaccine.

AK: You need to get to the larvae. You have to protect the larvae, not the adult bees. These diseases, these relly detrimental diseases, are larval diseases.

BG: So to get to the larvae, you’ve got to get to the queen. 

AK: Through the queen is a really effective way to protect the larvae before they hatch. And are less likely to get infected. 

BG: During peak season, a healthy queen bee can lay up to 2,000 eggs a day. And to get protection, you need to get the vaccine to the queen. 

It’s administered through food given to the nurse bees that take care of the queen. A treat Annette calls, ‘queen candy.’

AK: She’s given royal jelly by nurse bees that feed her. And the royal jelly comes from a sugar paste, so that the nurse bees can feed on that sugar paste, make royal jelly, and then they feed it to the queen. 

And we put our vaccine into that sugar paste. The vaccine literally travels through the gut of the nurse bees, into their body, up to the gland that makes the royal jelly. From there, it goes into the gut of the queen, and then into the ovaries where the developing larvae will see a little fragment of this vaccine and will start mounting an immune response.

[bees buzzing]

BG: So, can bees smell fear, Tim?

TF: They don’t fear- smell fear per se. 

BG: Back in Chester Springs, Tim asked me to point out the queen in his hive.

TF: There’s the queen on that frame, can you spot her? 

BG: Oh, Tim, the test. Oh, is it that one? 

TF: Yeah, it is. 

BG:  Oh, wow! 

TF: Well done! 

BG: So once you have a vaccinated queen in your hive, the eggs and developing larvae are protected against American Foulbrood. 

TF: So with feeding the, nurse bees that look after the queen initially, the vaccine is passed through trophallaxis, which is basically mouth to mouth transfer and that through feed.

The queen’s genetic stock line from, laying the eggs will be, immune. So it’s actually called transgenerational immune priming.

BG: The vaccine can really help beekeepers. And Kim Skyrm, the entomologist from Massachusetts is optimistic. 

KS: We are seeing innovation like this, from the industry. And that is exciting to me, the beekeeping and beekeepers and honeybee health is on the minds and the efforts of companies that really want to sustain these pollinators for the future.

BG: At the moment, the vaccine is not widely available in every state. 

Kim: There’s a little bit more of a process to understand how this works to get something like this in the hands of beekeepers.

And every state has to assess the needs of its beekeepers.

KS: And so, we’re working closely with our state veterinarian here in Massachusetts to evaluate the product, to look at the efficacy data, and just again, big picture to see how this would fit for our beekeepers here and in our system. 

BG: As threats against pollinators mount, from diseases to mites and parasites, to habitat destruction and pesticides, vaccines could be one tool to protect our bees.

[bees buzzing]

For The Pulse, I’m Buffy Gorrilla.

BG: Oh, there’s a bee in my microphone fur. 

Uh oh. (LAUGH)

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MS: That’s our show for this week — The Pulse is a production off WHYY in Philadelphia – made possible with support from our founding sponsor, the Sutherland Family, and the Commonwealth Fund.

You can find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Our health and science reporters are Alan Yu, Liz Tung, and Grant Hill. Marcus Biddle is our health equity fellow. Charlie Kaier is our engineer. Our producers are Nichole Currie and Lindsay Lazarski. 

I’m Maiken Scott, thank you for listening!

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