Transcript of Paper or Plastic?

Welcome to We Fixed It, You're Welcome, the show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.

Paper or plastic? That feels like one of those environmental debates we settled a long time ago. Paper comes from trees, breaks down, and feels natural. Plastic comes from fossil fuels and represents pollution. So if we're trying to make the environmentally responsible choice, paper seems like the obvious answer. Except, the closer you look, the less obvious it gets. Depending on conditions, paper can require more material, water, and energy to produce than plastic. Plastic actually does better in some lifecycle assessments, but there's also recycling, microplastics, and environmental impact. Experts might think one thing, consumers might think another way. This is getting complicated. Is paper better? Is plastic? There are alternatives to both, but are any of those really the solution? That's what we're here to fix. Fortunately, we've got some serious help. Joining Chino, Melissa, and me today is Christine Yeager, founder of CSY Impact Consulting. Christine spent more than 11 years at Coca-Cola, eventually leading its North American Sustainability Project Management Office. Recently, she worked with Circular Action Alliance to move EPR programs from policy to implementation. Christine, welcome to our show and tell us a little bit more about what you're doing today. Great.

Thank you for having me. I think this is going to be fun. It's a conversation I have with strangers all the time, actually. So I, since leaving Circular Action Alliance, have been helping producers and/or service providers navigate EPR. And if you don't know what that is, it's Extended Producer Responsibility, which is a legislation that moves the funding mechanism of managing the end of life of your packaging. In this case, it can also exist for other things, but we're going to talk about packaging. Away from municipalities and governments and onto basically the brands that make and sell the package. So things around a product in a store. The reality is EPR fees are really the first time anyone's put like a price tag on a packaging decision beyond, you know, just the value of the commodity. So it's really forcing and incentivizing these decisions around paper versus plastic.

Thanks, Kristi. We're so glad you're here. So paper or plastic? Don't answer it yet. Let's look into some actual examples first. So Amazon replaced nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows a year with paper and later reported a meaningful drop in its overall plastic packaging. Apple made a huge public commitment to eliminate plastic from its packaging and actually hit the goal. Those sound like sustainability success stories. Make a big commitment, change the material, reduce the plastic. Everybody wins. But then there's McDonald's. It replaced roughly 1.8 million plastic straws a day in the UK with paper straws. Customers complained because the new straws got soggy, so McDonald's made them stronger. Then they became too difficult for its waste processors to recycle. And Coca-Cola set a major goal to get 25% of its beverage volume into reusable packaging by 2030, stayed at 14% for 3 straight years, and eventually replaced that target with a new set of environmental goals. So even when companies are genuinely trying to do the right thing, one environmental win can create another problem. The package can look greener but perform worse. It can be recyclable but never actually make it to the point of recycling.

It can reduce plastic but use more resources elsewhere. And sometimes a great sustainability promise just can't be carried out. The motivations are there, but it's just not realistic. So given all that, paper, plastic, third party, how are companies expected to make the right choice here? You wanna start us off, Christine?

Sure. The reality is, it depends, which is like the typical consulting answer, but paper versus plastic, you shared McDonald's. They also are part of a cup consortium that's led by Closed Loop Partners, where they're looking at, should the cup be paper or plastic? And the reality is, if a paper cup, which has a plastic lining, can become recyclable, Then that might be a good choice. Or if a polypropylene cup can be widely accepted recyclable, then maybe that becomes the right choice, right? And then you look at LCAs, as you said, I mean, within the paper industry, an LCA can change the answer very quickly. So an LCA of paper is going to be focused on maybe how much energy it takes to process the material and then dry it. Now, if that processing is happening using the biomass that is part of the paper mill's process, using its own waste to then generate the energy, the carbon footprint of that is going to be very different than somebody who's using energy from a grid that might be powered by coal. On the flip side, paper might be 4 times the weight of a plastic cup, and then therefore you now have to be 4 times as efficient as that plastic cup.

I wonder if companies are comparing the full lifecycle or simply choosing the material with the better headline that's going to make them look like they're engaging in the initiative around sustainability. And, you know, so like that McDonald's example is a perfect example of that. I think even Starbucks is saying that, right? They got rid of the straws and they— but they got plastic lids. So like, is that really better? Paper can reduce reliance on those fossil-based plastics, but Then like the customer experience they found out in the UK was not so great, and so then they tried to adjust that. But then they kind of if you go down the life cycle of the product, you'll see that it's actually made it made it a lot worse. So maybe not a lot worse, but it made it worse, and it didn't you know ultimately deliver the results and outcomes that they were hoping for. So when you're talking to different clients and you're you know Christine as an expert, are you trying to get them to? think about that entire lifecycle before they make choices, or are you finding that they've already made their decision and they're bringing you in just to help them deliver and get it done and get the appropriate sign-off and things like that?

So they're not coming to me with an answer already, but you look at Colorado, paper is— certified compostable paper is $0.32 a pound. Versus like a PET bottle, which can be like between 8 to 12 to 15 cents per pound. Either way, it's like half the price of the cost of certified viable compostable paper. So in that instance, and in Oregon, PET is even less. So in that instance, it's incentivizing an already recyclable material, not necessarily something with a lower carbon footprint. But on the flip side, Oregon has eco-modulation, which means they have this way of like continuing to incentivize better design choices, but those better design choices are focused on an LCA. So it's kind of inherently competing with itself, 'cause you have to make the design choice and it has to reduce the carbon footprint. But most people aren't participating because the cost of the LCA is higher than the benefit you could receive. So is that even incentivizing the right thing? I don't know.

Well, and consumers can be fickle and hard to please. You can get mad at a company for using plastic straws, and then it gets replaced with paper straws, and you say, I don't like these, bring back the plastic ones. And if they're bioengineered and they're corn-based or something, then you feel great about it again. And if you buy something that has soy ink, I'm guessing that's good in some way, and you feel great about that. But if it costs 3 times more, you don't feel good and you start to push back and you say your prices are too high. And now you, you've reduced the, the amount of product I get in my packaging because you've incurred other, other supply chain costs by being more environmentally impactful. You know, consumers are, are, are a tough crowd to please.

Yeah.

So I also want to just touch on like the locality of everything because you're talking about different states as well. And, you know, 50 states, all a little bit different. I'm in Canada, you know, the Canadian here, and in Ontario, it wasn't until this year, January 1st, 2026, where our recyclable processors were able to actually take the plastic-lined paper to be recycled. Otherwise, you know, you had these companies that were creating these recyclable goods to be more green, but— Our plants, our city plants could not take them, so you actually had to throw them out. And I remember that. I remember being in a condo and I was just like, literally, I've watched them put all of the recycling into the garbage because they couldn't process that. And so I want to touch on that too, because you're right, Erin, customers are fickle. I love the turtles. I'm trying not to use plastic straws. I have my own little, you you know, metal straw. Realistically though, can I bring that everywhere? No, I'm aware of that, right? But how do we get companies like McDonald's who are saying, okay, you know, you have a global production, you're trying to standardize things to kind of cut the cost and make things somewhat equal, but Ontario's recycling plants up until this year couldn't do this, but, you know, in California they can, or, you know, somewhere like Costa Rica, if anyone's ever been.

The way they compost and recycle, like, that is the gold standard. And they have the tools and the processes and the government behind that. So, Christine, this is such a hard— this is a hard job. And I'm glad people employ you to do this because how do you get the big conglomerates of the world to localize so that it makes sense? It's still compostable, but also it's reducing carbon footprint.

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I'd love to have you also kind of, you touched on this, but like, it's even like the definition of what is a good plastic, what's a bad plastic, what's recyclable, what's not recyclable. Because I do think that's part of the issue as well. Right. You know, we also live in a very, to Chino's point, a very localized, you know, you live in your little bubble. And you do what you will do with it. And so I'm lucky because we've always— I've always lived in places where you have, you know, recycling that is curbside. We— I used to live in San Francisco. They had compost that was curbside. I mean, that's crazy. They would only take trash like very rarely. So it was like one of those things where it was recyclables and compost, like you weren't supposed to have trash. But then I love, like, I go to Montana and my sister-in-law lives there. We call her a tree hugger. They don't have recycling there.

Yeah.

Montana! Like, what? Like, you know, so like, we're going and we're like, having a big 4th of July party. And I've got boxes for the beer cans and the glasses and stuff. And my cousin's like, are you driving that back to— where are you taking that? And I was like, what do you mean? Don't you have recycling here? I mean, All the kids, we all know that's what we do. We sort. So Christine, how do you think we can get people talking the same language to even get us to the point where we can make some great decisions about this, right?

First of all, I just want to clarify that like the percentage of plastic that is in the ocean or a landfill that is a straw is like like a piece of sand, right? It is minuscule, right? Like people, as you said, consumers like hyperfixate on something that resonates with them. And that turtle with the straw, like we've been talking about it for years, right? It's so sad. So sad. I do care about the turtles, right? But like straws are a very small percentage of the problem. I always talk about there's like the non-sexy stuff and there's the sexy stuff. Like, taking away your straw is the sexy stuff. Consumers will be excited for you. But what some of these companies are doing is actually tackling the, like, non-sexy infrastructure challenges that can't be done and summed up in a headline for PR, right? And it's making a major dent in the problem, but it's not enough, right, to not still be criticized.

If there's a company that can switch packaging partners and then reduce the cardboard by 10%, that's something we can connect to and we can all congratulate them and be, we can rally around and say, we did it. But, you know, if they dig in and spend way more that no one's gonna see, you know, it's invisible, it's infrastructure and it's less glamorous and it's all the things that are under the surface and it's way, you know, multiples of cost, you know, apart from being put on massive fines or a boycott list or something like that, what's the incentive to dig in and do the real work when you get much more highly celebrated and maybe your stock goes up if you do the incremental, the little change?

Whoever started recycling advertisements in the '70s was effective. Everybody knows what recycling is. They don't believe that it works, but they understand conceptually what it means. And so to make a claim on your package that you are made of recycled material, that you are not just recyclable, but you have reused material, does have, like, people are more likely to pick up your package and they're more likely to rebuy your package. They're not more likely to pay more, but they're more likely to be a stickier consumer. And to get a consumer is expensive, right? And so there is an intrinsic value to consumers if you are simple in your messaging and you are believable in your messaging. But on the flip side, like Coca-Cola, while I was there, we took the green outta Sprite. So the Sprite bottle had green in it. And bales of recycled PET have different qualities. There's an A-quality bale, a B-quality bale, and below. And an A-quality bale can be reused into, potentially reused into food-grade material. Well, green plastic was degrading the quality of the bale. Like, how do you tell a consumer that? Nobody cares, right? That doesn't make any sense.

It was a very visible change because they see it different, but we had to sort of explain that this is different, but it's the same product, and it's not even making it more recyclable. It was just making the quality of the bale better so that Coca-Cola could buy more PET down the line. So that's the kind of stuff that's That you're— that's not sexy, but it gives you a pathway to making a stronger claim on your package.

There's so many different ways to measure, you know, sustainability. And I think, you know, this is in a perfect world if I had like a paintbrush and just said, okay, everybody's going to be there and locality is kind of the same. It would be really cool. And I'm sure it's something that you're working on with different clients, but If we had just one universal measurement, and it could be, you know, it includes carbon footprint, like it could be a number of different factors, like the equation could be a long mathematician, many different things to plug in, but it's just one thing. And it's kind of, you know, 'cause it, as you mentioned, it is like the checks and balances. Like you can use the plastic, but then, you know, with Starbucks they got rid of the straws. So it's, this is a whole— math behind it, but that is something that is quantifiable. But the challenge that I'm hearing right now is that we're not able to communicate that to the consumer. And so I think if we had one measure, and if there were people like you who are hired in these companies saying, we're going to plug all this in, we're going to take the carbon footprint, we're going to take all of these other things, the quality of the bins, all of that, and my job is to give you this one number, and we're all rating it based off this one kind of system.

I think it'll be, you know, for the consumers, an easier way to just wrap your head around it, like the marketing of recycling back in the '70s, right? And, you know, it is true. Like, I look at Arc'teryx as a company who, you know, they have, you know, you bring in your old Arc'teryx jackets and, you know, I love that brand and I, you know, will go back to them many times because of that. Because it's like, you know, reduce, reuse, recycle. That's what we're ingrained in. So can we, recreate something in 2026 that, you know, Aaron, this may be you or you're the branding guru here, but can we create, you know, a new measurement for, you know, sustainability that all companies can kind of use and hire Christine everywhere? So that we can just keep it the same. And then as consumers, we just say, okay, well, you have an A rating or like you're 85% on this measure, you know, when you do your checks and balances.

I love that idea because again, that is clearly where the consumer gets confused. We're trying to do the right thing, but at the same time, we're driving these results because we don't want to just take a reusable bag to the grocery store anymore and buy and put our lettuce in there, right?

Yeah.

So I've got to have it, my, lettuce wrapped in plastic and then in a plastic bag, you know, or in a plastic box, right? You know, or in a plastic box, right? And, you know, that's just one of those examples, Christina, I was wondering because actually here in Denver recently I saw this, there's a, it's like a grocery store, but it's for, you have to bring all your own containers. You know what the place I'm talking about, right?

There's a couple, but Nude Foods is one and yeah.

In the Highlands.

It's like a bulk grocery store.

Yes. And I was like, what's that? And my friend's like, oh, you have to bring all your own stuff. And I thought, oh, that's cool. But then I thought about after COVID hit, like, I feel like a lot of those things stopped. Like, people were like, oh, I want everything wrapped. I don't want anybody touching, you know, like, right?

Yeah, it's good in theory. I don't know. It would take a lot of consumer retraining to just say, throw lettuce into my bag. You know?

Yeah.

Unless you're at a farmer's market or some kind of specialty store. Um, now I, I love the idea of one measurement, uh, one grade. I, I'm guessing, tell me if I'm wrong, I'm guessing there is one measurement, um, and there are a lot of one measurements, right? Where it's different, different consortiums, different organizations where theirs is the definitive one to them. But then parallel to that, there's a number of others that say ours is the legitimate one. Is that the fact? Is that what we're dealing with?

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We fixed it and set up your business the way it works for you. Here's something I've done for work that I'll never volunteer for again: writing a step-by-step process document. It's tedious, it's time-consuming, and after all that effort, it just kind of sits there. Which is why I really like what today's sponsor Scribe has built for companies. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500, and I've had a chance to see it in action. Instead of stopping what you're doing to document a process, Scribe captures the process as you work, including clicks, steps, and screenshots, and automatically turns it into a clear, step-by-step guide that's ready to review and share. Scribe's AI can even look at that workflow and suggest where steps could be simplified or automated. And with the Guide Me feature, anyone you choose can follow that same process with real-time on-screen instructions showing them exactly where to click. And don't worry, it can automatically redact sensitive information like names, emails, and account numbers so you can share with confidence. Look, don't just document your process. Why not find ways to make it better? To see what Scribe could look like for your organization, head to scribe.how/fixedit and mention We Fixed It for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans.

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Yeah, I mean, I think there's reporting fatigue for sure in this space where it's like, what should I report? How much should I report? Where do I need to report? These sorts of things. And then, like I said, I mean, they're sort of measuring different things. I will say though, Colorado's EPR and Oregon's EPR will have sort of, they have this sort of universally collected list. And I think this is the way to sort of get into this direction of everyone takes these items, right? And so then you have some consistency, even if it's at a state level, instead of it being, you know, 2 miles down the road, it's at a state level, everyone will take this. And then you have the things that are harder to recycle that then become on the fringe. First of all, why can't you put your lettuce in your bag? You're gonna wash it anyway when you get home. Just put it in the bag. You don't have to, you don't have to put it in another bag. That's true. I'm always the annoying one that shows up to the register with none of my produce in a plastic bag.

But on the flip side, bagged salad annoyingly is a lower carbon footprint than non-bagged salad because there's less waste. There's nitrogen in the bag, the bag protects the lettuce, and therefore there's less waste overall. So end to end, there's less lettuce thrown away, and the carbon footprint of the final lettuce in your hand then becomes lower, which is annoying because those materials, that's a great barrier property, but it's not a recyclable plastic.

It's another paradox.

Yeah. Wow.

Such an oxymoron.

So it's not straightforward, right? But I think like, I do believe in recycling. I believe that if you can give people access, if you make it simple for them to have that access, and know what to go into the bin, then they will do it. And if you have a valuable commodity at the end of the day, somebody wants to buy it. There's an intrinsic value, like I said, to end consumers to buy that recycled material in their packaging. So I think there's economic value that can happen through recycling. If I had a magic wand, I would, like, rethink LCAs. Because LCAs point to plastic all day long, which is not what we're looking for from a carbon footprint reduction standpoint. To me, it's— there's something flawed in the way that we're measuring LCAs that needs to change so that waste diversion and the cost of throwing something away is factored in.

Yeah, I bought a sofa that the inside of it, I don't know how I did it, but it is made of soda bottles and post-consumer plastics. It's not only— I not only felt good about it, and I don't know how much environmental good it did for me buying one sofa, but, you know, self-congratulation. It's the most comfortable sofa I've ever owned. So product superiority and, you know, better than new consumer material that creates its own waste system, that was a win. So is that— can you take that type of model and expedite it, amplify it, carry it out everywhere? I don't know, because companies are— devoted to their processes. They shave pennies off when they can. They wait to get caught and then apologize and pledge to do better. They don't necessarily act proactively.

Not all of them, but a lot of them.

I interviewed a lot of people across the Coca-Cola Company about sustainability. Some people think of Coca-Cola as a sustainable company, but like a lot of people don't. And almost everyone I interviewed wanted to make the right choice that was in line with their values, but didn't know how. didn't know what to do. And I don't think that that's independent of like the, just the people that work at Coca-Cola. I think a lot of people that work at a lot of big companies want to make the right choice. People are passionate, are in love with sustainability. The number of people that come up and tell me how much they love recycling is like insane. Like people love recycling, they feel really good about it, they're big fans of it, they just don't trust it, right? And so if you can build that trust back and if you can actually find a market for the material, then you might see something. Like, there's this organization, Pact Collective, that was built and brought together by beauty brands, and they put bins in like a Sephora or in any sort of store where you buy your beauty brands. So you have this repetitive consumer behavior, people who buy their beauty brands from somewhere always go back, right?

So they're bringing back their empties. Small packages are usually not recyclable because they fall through this 4-inch by 4-inch square. And that's just like a silly thing about the infrastructure of recycling. So these small packages are not recyclable, and it's too costly to change the mesh. And so consumers are coming back and they're dropping their beauty empties into this box. And if it can be recycled in a normal way, they do that. And they also created material called New Matter, which is recycled beauty empties turned into another recyclable material that couldn't have existed otherwise. And that is purely industry-funded. That is not funded by the government or funded by EPR. It's industry-funded. So I think there's a lot of industry companies, for-profit companies, that see the consumer benefit, especially as this newer generation is revaluing reuse. They think of reuse as a— I mean, they buy almost only exclusively secondhand clothing. So it's a different way to think about buying something is with its secondary value. And so as that becomes more and more important to these people with pocketbooks, I think it will continue to pressure companies into this type of industry action.

I hope you're right, and I hope they see the economic benefit of it. Because you're right, there's a generational mindset around upcycling and secondary marketplaces, and it's all fair game, and no one is weirded out by it, it seems. You know, they're thriving, and there's new ones growing all the time. But that is an interesting thought about the company and its product line and all those things. If you have something that the durable good, can you think about not just that first sale, but what is the eventual product life of your product? You know, how far can you go? Can you stretch it? What's your accountability for its ultimate state? You know, that's a whole different way of thinking.

I know people that have like traveled out of country and gone thrift shop— thrift store shopping in other countries, right? Or like they'll buy a bike with the intention that they're gonna resell the bike at a certain point, right? So, It's no longer— it's actually going to cost me less at the end of the day, right? So they're factoring that into that purchase decision at the beginning.

Yeah, I love that you're talking about this from the overall lifecycle, right? Because I do believe that's clearly where the accountability is being dropped here. And I do think it makes sense to put that back on the, the brand or the company or whoever, just because to your point earlier, um, it's easy to pay a fine. It's easy to just wait to get caught, you know. Um, it's easy to say something in a very generalized way, you know, that we use recycled goods, but is it something that actually goes to something else? And I love the idea of being able to show, kind of showcase that. And there are, there are companies that kind of do that, they, you know, where they show where something is going all the way to the end. But I do think that that is really important. And I think it's also important to involve, for example, the design team and the marketing team, because I think that, like, your, your point about, uh, changing the green plastic to clear, right? That everybody wants to do good. But like, again, you know, seeing a new brand, seeing a new label, they're like, what the heck?

I don't understand what happened to my, you know, what happened to my thing? You know, you change the name, whatever. So I think that there's ways in which to do it in a way that is very deliberate and intentional, that it can have the right kind of impact to the end user, as well as being able to make the companies well aware of the fact that this is something— I mean, like, yeah, you don't really hear people saying, I don't want to recycle. Like, they're, they're just, they're inconvenienced. So we're, we're, we're a human race of convenience right now, right? You know, it's all about convenience. It's all about personalization. It's all about responsiveness. So as a CX expert, I can say Yeah, if it's not convenient and I have to take all my cardboard and my magazines and drive it 4 miles away or longer, I'm going to be kind of put out.

Today's episode is brought to you by Whatnot. Guess where I've been spending a lot of time lately? On Whatnot. If you know it, you know. If not, it's a live shopping app where you can find everything from electronics to fashion and collectibles and a whole lot more. I even saw some vintage stuff on there I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and I wanted all of it. It's not just me, you'll find that it's not hard to find something you want. I bought some vinyl records to fill in my collection, scored a watch I really liked, jumped between different live shows and genuinely had a lot of fun doing it. What I like is that you're interacting with actual people who make shopping fun and social, and you can find some really great deals without paying full price. And if you're a seller, you don't have to wonder what your customers think. You're right there with them, so you can chat, learn, and build loyalty in real time. I'm enjoying Whatnot, and if you have something to sell and want to create an experience for buyers like me, I think you should check it out too.

Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Here's something I've done for work that I'll never volunteer for again. Writing a step-by-step process document. It's tedious, it's time-consuming, and after all that effort, it just kind of sits there. Which is why I really like what today's sponsor, Scribe, has built for companies. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500, and I've had a chance to see it in action. Instead of stopping what you're doing to document a process, Scribe captures the process as you work, including clicks, steps, and screenshots, and automatically turns it into a clear step-by-step guide that's ready to review and share. Scribe's AI can even look at that workflow and suggest where steps could be simplified or automated. And with the Guide Me feature, anyone you choose can follow that same process with real-time on-screen instructions showing them exactly where to click. And don't worry, it can automatically redact sensitive information like names, emails, and account numbers so you can share with confidence. Look, don't just document your process. Why not find ways to make it better? To see what Scribe could look like for your organization, head to scribe.how/fixedit and mention We Fixed It for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans.

That's scribe.how/fixedit.

Well, in California, your bottles and cans, you can get 10 cents back, so they might have been searching for bottles and cans. Deposit return scheme states which there's 10 of, means you give an empty bottle and can, you get your deposit back of 10 or 5 cents. Those states have the highest recycling rates overall because they have this funding mechanism. There's other challenges with this type of legislation, but that is where you see the highest rates in the United States.

And that's where I would see people stealing my recycling. So when I lived in San Francisco, that used to just flipping piss me off, right? So I would go out and yell at them because they're taking the bottles and the aluminum cans. And I'm like, you gotta leave those in there because the poor other guys are— the real recyclers are coming in and they're getting nothing because I left a phone book.

Yeah, because that's the value. Aluminum and PET is the— that's what holds up the value, like, in MRF, materials recycling or recovery facility, depending on The location, they get the biggest bang for the buck of the bale for aluminum, for PET, for sometimes paper. There are paper companies that own MRFs just so they can get the— they have a low-cost way to get recycled paper back into their stream.

I think we have enough to fix this. It's a complicated issue. It's a lot. It is a lot. We're gonna do our best here. So paper or plastic, the answer's yes, but it's situational, it's nuanced. There's things to navigate here. So what we're gonna do is continue or ramp up charging companies for their offset, holding some accountability. Ultimately, paper or plastic, maybe it's situational, maybe they have to make some determinations on recyclability and other— Other impacts that happen if you go the full paper route, which sounds great, but maybe there's some complications and trade-offs there. So companies, maybe you can't just force one situation on them, one solution on them, because it's not viable. They have to be a partner in the process, and you have to give the ability and transparency to understand what the process is and what compliance looks like and what a good actor within that compliance looks like. Maybe it's not only industry motivated to come up with these unique solutions for disposing your empties and coming back again. But maybe there's some programs or motivations or grants or economic incentive for being proactive and not just surface level with your solutions.

We want to have maybe one solid point of truth that everyone gets, one centralized resource. I don't know if that's going to happen with all the watchdogs and nonprofits and things involved, but that would be nice to know unilaterally there's an A rating in this state, I trust it or I don't trust it. But at least at the state level, if not get beyond just the my block's different from your block, let's try to standardize these programs at least at the state level so that it's again easier for companies to comply, easier for them to know where they stand, easier for them to know when the rules change and how to be not just the one that checks the box, but the best citizen they can. And again, they like public recognition, they like awards, they like all the things that we like to celebrate about them. So give incentives for playing along with those types of things. Yeah, so if we do those things, I mean, did paper, plastic? Yes, there's a nuanced conversation there. We didn't pick one over the other, but I think we did some good. Melissa, did we fix it?

I think we did. I think that there's a lot to be fixed. I think that we got it started. I think that one of the things I would, expect that we need to do is really compare materials by use case, not necessarily by ideology, because I think we're all agreed on the ideology. But sometimes it needs to be understood that the entire material system and the entire end-of-life recovery, Christine, that you talked about, it's different per case. And so we really need to understand that. I'd also love to use standardized— I'm stealing this from Chino. This is Chino's— standardized total outcome scorecard that we could all understand. And that would flow into something that I think Aaron and the marketing and brand team need to do. Let's get a new campaign going that is really enlightening to the individuals so that it puts the right kind of pressures on these companies to take responsibility and accountability and really give— Companies a cross-functional decision matrix to be able to make these decisions on this? Because I have a feeling that sustainability lands squarely in the finance world because it's, it's a dollars and cents type of thing decision.

And that's not really where it should be. I think like we just talked about product procurement, legal, finance, you know, marketing communications and operations really all need to be involved, and especially design when we're talking about new types of materials.

So thanks for saying that, Melissa.

Yeah.

And we're also going to do a brand campaign around recycling because if people are doing it out of obligation or because they were told to in the '70s, like, let's start getting people involved in knowing what their, what actual impact they're making and what their efforts are going toward. Because if it's doing good, let's make people aware of that. And then we can just amplify those efforts.

We could do the day in the life of a straw.

I love that.

And it ends with the turtle and the turtle's like, I don't have, I don't, yeah.

Chino, did we fix it?

So I agree with all of these points. And just to add on the reeducation part is looking at recycling from the lifecycle. I think that's the key here because we only got one part, but not the rest that Christine has beautifully shared with us. And something a little controversial that we didn't talk on, but I'm going to throw it out there. Penalties, right? We should be definitely penalizing these huge corporations because as Christine shared, you know, As consumers, as the people, we're about like 0.001% of the actual problem. It's the big corporations. And the problem with corporations, they're billionaires. A penalty is nothing to them. But what I think we should do is take these penalties and get the government to reuse and bring them, recycle them back into building better infrastructure so that it's not a 4-inch disparity that's gonna make or break whether or not you can recycle that MacBook concealer. We get the companies actually cover the bill for helping the governments re— kind of recycle their recycling tools.

I love that idea, Chino. And I think one of the reasons I do is when you think about like the big oil spills and the detriment it was to the wildlife and things like that, and how they forced those oil companies like Exxon to pay and to actually be part of the solution that took decades to get, you know, repaired. So I love that, Gino.

Christine, I know we did a flyby on this conversation and there's way more to it, but I think we did some good here. What do you think? Did we fix it?

I mean, I inherently can't say yes because it's like too nuanced to fix fully, but I will say a couple of things. One, I think if I'm in a grocery store, if you're in a grocery store and you can't— and you forgot your reusable bag, pick paper, don't pick plastic, because plastic will float away into the ocean. I think that otherwise you probably need to like look at the recyclability of the package, and I would say pick recyclable over anything else. And then to your point, Melissa, about the design, or I guess all of y'all sort of said this, like my headphones are designed to be taken apart so that you can just replace one battery or just replace one piece. You don't have to throw away the whole thing. I think designing for reuse and recyclability is so important. Another example is in Montreal and Quebec, all of the beer bottles are the same shape so that the entire industry has to use reusable beer bottles. So there are ways to make these reusable solutions and recyclable solutions the industry norm. We just need to amplify them. And EPR is meant to create that, like, economic incentive that you were talking about where Brands are paying.

It's not necessarily going directly to the government, but it's going to an entity that is obligated to meet the intention of the law and is governed by the government. But it's a third party so that you don't— so that it's forced to be a nonprofit and that funding goes back into the system. And I think there's a lot of flaws with EPR, and I think that it is one of the best ways that we're going to see this change towards recyclability. And ultimately, this price tag on packaging decisions will hopefully make design changes easier to convince the finance team.

Well, let's hope so. That's going to do it for this episode of We Fixed It, You're Welcome. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Chino. A big thank you to Christine Jaeger for helping us tackle a question that seemed unanswerable, and we found our way through it. Christine, if a company is trying to make sense of their own sustainability goals or helping to navigate situations like this one, how can they find you?

You can go to cs50.edu. And I have a lot of resources that help people understand what extended producer responsibility is. And I also have a podcast for myself, Change Cycle, which I think, Aaron, you're going to be on soon. So hopefully we can talk more about how change is a cycle.

Very nice. Thank you, Christine. Thank you to our listeners, our Fixaholics. Keep tuning in each week for new episodes. When you go shopping, BYOB, bring your own bag, and we will see you next time.

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