Protecting Our Planet With Perpetual Use

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Brad Caruso:

<silence> Welcome to Civic Warriors, brought to you by Withum. On this podcast, we bring the conversation to you sharing, engaging stories that motivate and build consensus in the nonprofit community. This podcast is about the innovators, the leaders on the front lines of adversity, guiding lights in the nonprofit industry affecting change. And through their stories, we can all join forces to become civic warriors. Hey Warriors. Welcome to today's episode of Civic Warriors, brought to you by Withum. I'm your host, Brad Caruso, leader of Withum's not-for-profit practice. Our guests today are the co-founders and co-executive directors of Perpetual Use, Ellie Moss and Dagny Tucker. Perpetual is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization that partners with cities, reuse service providers and other stakeholders to implement immersive reuse systems that eliminate single use disposables, starting with food ware, they're bringing innovation to a very complex problem and it's really exciting that we get to talk about this today as Ellie and Dagny are true experts on this topic and are gonna share their vision in what reuse systems at scale look like and what's possible for all of us. So Ellie and Dagny, welcome to the show.

Dagny Tucker:

Happy to be here.

Ellie Moss:

Thank you, Brad.

Brad Caruso:

Happy to have you both. So, uh, we, I always like to start off and, and definitely want to kind of hear a little bit more about how did you both meet up and arrive at this idea of Perpetual and, and you know, found the organization.

Dagny Tucker:

Yeah, thanks so much. That's a great question. I have a little bit of a bizarre intersection in my background in which I'm a designer and then my PhD's in international peace and conflict. And I'd spent a lot of time looking at drivers of violent conflict really. And it turns out that there's a lot of innocuous or seemingly innocuous decisions that get made in the everyday that actually create far reaching impacts around the world. And I was really hungry to find sort of a physical intervention that would help translate those impacts to everyday people doing everyday things. And I was based in New York City at the time teaching at Parsons and uh, the paper cup was just everywhere, you know, the disposable cup. Every fifth person that walked down the street or into a meeting or whatever had a cup. And I thought, you know, if I could find a way to get the impact of that cup into somebody's hand every time they used it, then maybe that would have a really cool impact.

Dagny Tucker:

And so I got really interested in what would a reusable cup system look like and could I affect behavior change if that cup was enabled with the information around the positive impacts that the world experienced based on somebody's choice of using a reusable instead of a disposable. So I founded a company in New York City, went on to operate in Colorado as well as California over many years. Nobody was doing it. They all thought I was crazy. But it worked. And we found that after three weeks of using the service, our clients reported rethinking all of their daily single use disposable habits. And so that felt like the ticket to ride to me. Like that's what we were really after. At the same time, it became increasingly clear that doing this as a for-profit individual organization was never really gonna tip the scale or it was gonna take a really long time. It's very difficult to incrementally grow, reuse. And I had lots of questions from governments and cities and all kinds of people and had really started thinking about this needs to be a system solution. We have to think at about this at the systems level. And very happily, Ellie reached out to me and um, I'll let her tell her own story about how she came to reuse specifically, but it only took a few minutes for me to say yes when Ellie reached out and said, Hey, do we wanna do this at the city scale?

Ellie Moss:

It was so exciting to connect with Dagny at that moment in time, uh, because as she said, I had come to the same conclusion about the need for reuse systems at scale, but through a very different path. I had gone to business school, so I had my MBA and I'd been doing sustainability focused consulting for 20 years. I'd been working with corporates, I'd been working with impact investors, and around 2017 I had the opportunity to work on a project looking at ocean plastic. And this was something I'd never even heard of. I had no idea what ocean plastic was. And through the process of researching that report, which came out, it's called Sea of Opportunity, and it looks at solutions to plastic pollution across the entire valley chain of plastic from could we use different materials? Could we recycle better? Could we use different compostability methods at the end of life?

Ellie Moss:

And so having looked at all those different solutions, what became clear to me was that even through all of the different existing ways that we think about managing single use items and managing waste, you were just missing this huge piece of the solution, which is using things more than once and doing a much better job of that. So Dagny and I intersected at the perfect time where I had gone down into the different paths of exploring, well, maybe we can just compost our way out of this problem. And it became clear that composting will be an element of the solution, but it's not the silver bullet that's gonna address this problem. Recycling similarly, absolutely a piece of the puzzle and and necessary as a solution, but it's not going to get us where we need to go. And still most single use disposable items, the vast, vast majority of them are disposed of. They're not recycled, they're not composted, they end up in landfills. They end up getting burned sometimes with waste energy recovery, sometimes not. And really they just create enormous costs for society that are being born today by us. And uh, I think the good news here is that we actually all have some agency in making different choices.

Brad Caruso:

Yeah, I would call it the average public probably doesn't experience the direct impact of using a product once, throwing it out, and then it ends up somewhere. I think most of us, you know, don't experience it as much. And I think from statistics, I've read a lot of the plastic, a lot of, of the garbage, you know, it ends up in specific places, not necessarily exactly where most people habitat, especially here in the United States.

Dagny Tucker:

Well, you make a great point. I think it's very true. Things are in like shiny, beautiful stores and you get 'em and, and we're actually a victim of an effective collection system, not necessarily management overall, but things at least in the US tend to disappear when you put them somewhere. Now that's definitely not true everywhere. And I would say that most of our beach and coastal communities, even in the US would report that they're having a different experience.

Ellie Moss:

It is something that we have truly become blind to as a society. It's these things appear they're provided to us when we order food or drink or when we're buying foods or drinks or personal care products or home care products at the store. And then we put them in a bin and they disappear. And I, I think we have been trained, you know, through really effective marketing that this is just normal. And when you think about the extraordinary resources that are making this possible and, and you ask yourself, could there be a better way? I mean, just to share a few statistics, single use disposable packaging, food ware as well as product packaging today uses about 22% of the wood harvested per year. About 8% of metal mined every year goes for single use packaging purposes. And about 5% of fossil fuel extraction is purely for single use from a material perspective.

Ellie Moss:

That's about half of all paper produced is being produced just for the purposes of single use packaging. 40% of plastic is only made for the purposes of single use plastic and 27% of aluminum. So we're investing a tremendous amount of natural resources, some of them renewable, some of them not into items that are typically used for an incredibly short period of time. And then they become this enormous waste problem that we have to manage according to the calculations that we've done. The United States alone spends over $10 billion a year to collect process and dispose of single use primary packaging in the US.

Brad Caruso:

Yeah. And that's just a sunken cost, if you will. And thinking about this further, you know, as I was preparing for this, I was thinking about how do we break this down for, you know, the average listener to, to kind of really truly understand it. And I'm an auditor, I go into audit rooms, every single person walks in with their Starbucks cup, they drink their Starbucks cup. Starbucks cup ends up in garbage, uh, Starbucks cup then goes somewhere no one knows where and probably ends up in the ocean somewhere. <laugh>. Is that, is that a fair approximation of what's happening with that Starbucks cup? <laugh>?

Ellie Moss:

Some of them absolutely do end up in the great Pacific garbage patch or the Atlantic garbage patch or you know, in the ocean, which is hugely problematic. As Dagny mentioned, a lot of them end up as litter in our communities, which is really unfortunate. I think we're all familiar with the overflowing garbage can, you know, on the street next to a restaurant or as hard of a festival or something like that. And that, you know, there are costs associated with cleaning that up. I think one of the other hidden costs of, of single use items today is the fact that they are unseen threats of single use packaging at the moment, which I think people are only really starting to understand is that they do have chemicals in them that are likely damaging human health in a variety of ways. And this is something that scientists understand well, but are still researching exactly what are the impacts, exactly what should we be most alarmed about. But I think it's clear that there's a lot of chemicals of concern being used in the production of these items. And some of them are known to leach into food and drink and personal care products as they are being consumed. And this is something that everyone should be paying attention to.

Brad Caruso:

Yeah, and I, I appreciate that because I think very often we don't always think about the harmful effects of plastic in our food, things that affect us, but we don't really realize they're affecting us, or, and I'm sure there's more research coming out every day about things like this. And based on what I've heard from both of you, there obviously is a problem that needs some fixing. Certainly it's a large scale fix, there's no real short small scale things are, are difficult in these scenarios. But thinking about the, the positive side of this and, and some of the work that you're doing, when we talk about single use plastics, what alternatives exist? You know, if we were to look at the current time, what, what are some of the alternatives right now to getting a cup thrown in the garbage?

Ellie Moss:

I love that question. 'cause I know, you know, it's, it is, it's can be really demoralizing to hear about all the challenges and then I think we all wanna know, well what, what can I do about it? You know, how can I protect my family? How can I protect myself? How can I do the right thing for the environment and for my community today? I think there absolutely are things that individuals can do anytime that you can bring your own cup or container when you're getting food or drink to go, that's always a great choice to make. Um, especially if we can bring something that is not made of plastic, because we know that plastic, when heated and exposed to fatty food, you know, is more likely to leach chemicals, for example. So, so bring your glass and your stainless steel containers to the restaurant, you know, bring your Yeti cup or whatever your preferred brand of fancy coffee cup to your coffee shop.

Ellie Moss:

Bring your own items whenever you can. We know that that doesn't work all the time, but when you can do it, it's a great thing to do. You know, if you can purchase your, your groceries in less packaged forms, you know, that's always a good thing to do. Bring your own produce bags to the grocery store, certainly bring your own reusable bags, buy unpackaged fruits and vegetables when you can, like, whenever you can just avoid contributing to both the waste problem and also the human health problem. That's always a great thing to be part of. But I think part of how perpetual has emerged is a recognition that that's a really imperfect solution. You know, asking consumers to kind of work around the solution is not good enough and we know that we can do better. So this has informed Perpetual's vision of, well, what if when you went to a restaurant or to the grocery store, you could purchase things in reusable packaging that you then have all those benefits of the reasonable packaging and then it's really easy to return it when you're done with it so you don't have to carry it around all the time.

Ellie Moss:

You drop it in a bin, a publicly available bin, sort of like a recycling bin, but for all these returnable packages and they get washed by somebody else, sanitized, you know, everyone, someone's making sure it's really safe and then you're able to borrow it again the next time you go. So it, it really is creating a service of packaging as opposed to items of packaging. And we think there's a lot of benefits to thinking about what that world might look like.

Brad Caruso:

Interestingly enough, I live in the New York, New Jersey area, and New Jersey passed the law a few years ago, which was no more plastic in the, and I don't know if I'm probably saying this wrong, but no more plastic in the grocery store kind of thing. So you know, no longer can you just get all the ShopRite bags and put all the food in it and then take it home and then take those bags and they end up wherever they end up. And now we, you know, are now a hundred percent accustom to bringing a reusable bag, fill up that reusable bag, go home. And the funny part is that so many people push back on it when it first came out. Like, why do I have to do this? This is ridiculous, this is nonsensical. And now it's just like, all right, we just do it.

Brad Caruso:

And like, it's like it never happened two years ago or whatever. That went into effect. And even for me personally, like I like it way better. I'm, I'm much more of an advocate of using that reusable bag in a grocery store and not individually plastic wrapping every apple I buy and then throwing that plastic wrap in the garbage can. You know, there's such a better way of doing that. And it definitely changed, but it took a while to change it. It wasn't like overnight. I'm like, oh yeah, everywhere. And then what's funny is if I now go to a different state that doesn't have that, I'm like, wait, you're allowed to give me plastic <laugh>? And now I'm like perplexed by it, you know, in a very interesting way. New Jersey law kind of changed and then we all had to adapt to it and everyone complained about it, but then it was fine. And then now everyone, it's second nature.

Dagny Tucker:

I definitely think we're gonna come to a time where we look back at the way that we're currently using resources for five, 15 minutes and think we were just insane. When reuse systems are well designed so that they mimic as close as possible, the behavior we become accustomed to, convenient, easy to get rid of that packaging. You don't have to worry about it, you're not the one washing it, et cetera. As Ellie described, it's gonna seem natural and, and anyone that then goes to the other state and is like, oh, whoa, that's weird. I, I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna drink out of it and I'm throw it away like three minutes later.

Brad Caruso:

Yeah. It's funny how we, how we collectively, you know, just do something so naturally every single day and then all of a sudden five years later you're like, what were we thinking <laugh>?

Dagny Tucker:

Well, and I think that we hear a lot about behavior change and I think that, you know, everyone learned to wear masks very quickly. Like it, it, it was pretty much overnight, it was faster than your bag change in New Jersey. Right. And I think the same will become true as these systems begin to be more and more normalized. And I think that socialization is, is starting in various parts of the world and various ways, and certainly the work that we're doing is an attempt to create that immersive experience so that you won't get away from knowing that that's the thing that you do. It will just be so obvious and so everywhere. So in Hilo, Hawaii for instance, we will have a hundred return bins that are outside in public space. You'll see it, restaurants will have it, you'll be able to just get your food in the stainless steel container and then drop it off where it's convenient.

Dagny Tucker:

And so I think that more and more of these immersive experiences and demonstrations for governments as well of how this works at scale and how it becomes normalized. In fact, there's a lot of co-benefits as well. So we don't typically sit down to a nice dinner at home and serve a bunch of plastic plates or paper plates to people, right? We enjoy having real things to eat nice food out of. And so when you get to have an experience of having a real thing to eat food out of, the next time you go to a place and they've got a flimsy plastic container, you're gonna be like, Ugh, I don't like that as much. So that's a consumer benefit, but there's lots of benefits because you're creating a service industry as well. So lots of co-benefits in the type of collection that needs to get done and the jobs that that creates, the washing that has to happen and the jobs that that creates. And so I think communities beyond the fact that we're gonna reduce budgets in terms of the waste collection that's required in terms of the litter that's there, you'll have cleaner cities and you'll have all of these extra jobs and a better experience. So it's really a win, win win solution. But it does take scale and so it takes time to get there. But we're quickly on our way.

Brad Caruso:

I know you're doing that and that's a perfect segue into how your organization is working and how you're coming up with a solution. Obviously it's a very complex problem that involves a lot of systems and a lot of people and a lot of changing behavior. And obviously you have been doing work with various cities throughout the country. Can you elaborate a little bit more about how you as Perpetual, how you are approaching this problem and maybe give a few examples?

Ellie Moss:

Absolutely. We created Perpetual because we recognized the need for that level of scale to allow this to actually work for people in their daily lives. We know that if you have to go out of your way very much at all, it's a real deterrent to doing the right thing. You know, we've seen studies that show that if people have to walk an extra 200 feet to a trash can, they might just throw something on the ground. So we know that people's tolerance for behavior outside of what feels convenient to them can be really low. And so that's, when we think about reuse, we think about designing a reuse system that aligns with people's existing behaviors rather than trying to do a lot of what people like to call behavior change. And that I think is just really challenging. I don't know that there's a lot of evidence that people actually do change their behaviors except when they are immersed in a system that makes that behavior attractive to them and they have a motivation to do it that feels meaningful.

Ellie Moss:

Dagny mentioned people adopting masks quickly during COVID, well, nobody wanted to get COVID, so we were all pretty ready to put on our masks and you know, protect ourselves and our families from this disease. I think similarly, when you are in an environment where it's just the easy and normal thing to do, that's what Perpetuals trying to create. So we're trying to create that space where in you daily life, you go out to eat, you go to a coffee shop, you go to the grocery store, you have returnable options everywhere you go. And then you purchase those because everybody purchases them and that's how you do it. And then it's very easy to put them back into the public system. Perpetual looked for opportunities to create this in specific city context because we felt that cities were the perfect laboratory for this kind of work, this kind of demonstration.

Ellie Moss:

And to choose those cities, we came up with a bunch of criteria for what we thought an appropriate and sort of a good fit city would look like. But then we put the call out to cities to let them raise their hands and say, we are a city that's ready to do this. And just to give you a flavor, some of the criteria we were looking at, we wanted cities that were medium sized. So between 1,500 and 150,000 people, we wanted cities that had a lived experience of plastic pollution. So three of our cities are coastal cities that actually do have cost on their city budgets for cleaning up waste on the beaches or on the coast. Our fourth city is, is inland, but has um, contributions to a river and still has a significant litter cleanup challenge as most cities do. We wanted cities that were really diverse in all the ways because what we want people to recognize is that reuse is for everyone.

Ellie Moss:

It's not for old people, it's not for young people, it's for everybody. It's not only for people who drive minivans, like, you know, there's, there has to be such a shared normalization of reuse that everybody feels like it's for them. So we wanted cities where lots of different people in that city would be able to experience it, and we could tell the story of reuse through all those different perspectives so everyone can see that reuse is for them. And we wanted cities that were excited to be a part of a project like this. So the four partner cities that we are working with are Hilo, Hawaii, Galveston, Texas, Savannah, Georgia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. And over the past three years we've been working with each of these cities to design the reuse system, working really closely with communities to make sure that the community has a, a large role in designing a system that they think will work well for them. And we've been working on getting the funding necessary to get these actually implemented, which of course is a big piece of the puzzle.

Brad Caruso:

What do you find as you are doing consulting with and working with these various, obviously they're in diverse locations. I, I think Hawaii is certainly drastically different from Texas, which is drastically different from let's say Michigan. What are you finding currently that commonalities, if you will, that are working, Dagny, from your perspective? Anything you're finding that you see people are receptive to?

Dagny Tucker:

Yeah, definitely. I think that there is a growing consensus and recognition of the challenges of plastic pollution. While our cities all are quite different in some ways, some cities might have an entire office of sustainability, whereas others just don't. Some cities might be very well funded, others are not. I think that they all have various challenges with waste management nonetheless. And particularly an island community for instance, there's only so much land filling that's available and then you have a full stop. So certainly I think that the recognition of the problem is pretty consistent amongst all of the cities. I would say one of the, the fun things we're doing and why we've taken this approach, in addition to all the, the things Ellie, Ellie said, is that when you really get the vision of reuse, we're talking about reusable packaging from all the different companies that you, you commonly interact with in day, whether that's food ware from Starbucks, as you mentioned, one of the most obvious who is doing a lot of work in reuse, to be clear, to sort of fast moving consumer goods.

Dagny Tucker:

So the, the Nestle's of the world, if you will, and all of those products, you know, individual companies, not only would a small reuse service provider solve this on their own, but individual companies also are not really seeing the path to solving this on their own. And so that really brings the question to a government level, like, how is a city going to think about this? Because everyone's not gonna have a return bin for their own product, just like everyone doesn't, you know, have a Starbucks trash can and a Nestle trash can. We have shared infrastructure. And so I think the value for the cities also, and, and one of the reasons I got out of a proprietarily driven startup is because there just was a lack of technical expertise and governments were hungry to learn more about reuse and to understand how to do it, but it was a gap in the space in terms of people available and willing to share or the information on what to do. So I think the other commonality is a real hunger to solve these problems and real excitement around reuse and I would say enthusiasm and, and being able to find partners who can really help them think through this from a systems thinking perspective and with a long-term perspective. We don't do pilots. We have done the work to implement and stand up systems that will be serving these communities for decades to come.

Brad Caruso:

And do you think there's anything that, I guess at the current time is preventing progress, for lack of a better word, you know, is skepticism, you know, are you getting any pushback? Is there, is there anything that, that, that would, you would say, like in general, is it would be preventing progress in this, in this space?

Dagny Tucker:

Well, I think because it is so new, I think that we have of course seen certain funder hesitancy and other funders that that really can see the vision and are excited to get going. And I think as we see more progress in this space generally, which we do see around the world, there are massive projects in Europe, um, similar to what we're doing, that we'll be putting millions and millions of pieces of packaging in the market for consumer goods. I think that some of that will start to go away, but certainly that's been something we've had to work hard at is, is really getting the vision out there and getting the funders excited and on board. But once funders are on board, they really stick with us because I think they begin to see what a big piece of the waste puzzle we're unlocking and ultimately the huge potential in many, many categories to address so many issues that we discussed when we we first got together.

Ellie Moss:

Brad, you mentioned skepticism and I, I think that that is worth acknowledging many conversations that we have. Dagny was speaking specifically about funders and we've definitely encountered healthy skepticism among funders, but as she said, you know, folks who get it get it. And that's been really important for us. I think the many people, funders, government officials, nonprofit partners, you know, everyone and people who come to the community workshops, there's always a moment for people where they kind of stop and say, could this actually work? People often feel like, well I know that I would return it, I know that I would do the right thing, but I'm not so sure if everybody would. I think a lot of people might try to keep the items or they might just throw them away anyway, or people don't care. So I do think that there is a, a wondering that we encounter in conversations about what we're doing where people express uncertainty about whether or not this vision of taking all the single use trash out of the system and replacing it with Reusables, could that be our new reality?

Ellie Moss:

And as people who've spent a lot of time envisioning this and not just envisioning it, but doing very detailed planning and testing, it feels very clear to me that this is absolutely a possible future that we could choose to crave for ourselves. I think where we're at right now is a little bit of a chicken and egg where we know that everything exists today for these system to be successful, and yet we don't have an at scale example to point to when people say, oh, well who's already done this right now? We can't really point at that. Now Dagny, you mentioned there's some folks in Europe that actually are making good progress and there are a couple of citywide programs that are operating in the moment in Europe. So we are starting to have those examples, but part of what perpetual is working to do is create more of those examples so that when people say, oh, I just don't, I just don't believe that this will ever happen. We can say, but it is happening and we can show you, come to Hilo, experience it for yourself and then you'll see your city could absolutely do this as well.

Brad Caruso:

Love that, as you said, to overcome skepticism. You know, people need to say, you know, people always say, show me <laugh>, show me, show me, show me why. Show me why I should care. And you know, unfortunately with with certain issues like this, it's sometimes the show me is too late. But, but in this case it's not. I mean certainly the work you're doing is getting ahead of that and certainly the more and more examples that pop up of, well this is what it could look like. And you know, some of those are small examples, some of those are larger scale infrastructure examples that you can present. And especially in the, you know, I'm not in the government sector, but I imagine in the government sector, you know, one government sees something working well and they're like, I want that too <laugh>. I imagine that's a, that's a very real thing in that space of like, you know, oh, I wanna prove that we could do that as well. <laugh>.

Ellie Moss:

I think that's actually a really important point. Um, and I wanted to take advantage of that to give the cities that are working with us a lot of credit because no city wants to go first in general cities, everyone wants to be second, you know, everyone wants to replicate the thing that's been proven successful somewhere else. And I think that it's taking incredible leadership for the cities that we're working with, for them to be willing to go first because we know that this can and should work until it's actually operating. There's all the risk, you know, all the things that we don't know. And so these cities are showing tremendous bravery, I think, in being willing to go first. And I think they'll be rewarded for that leadership when these are successful and everybody's visiting their city to understand how they did it and to, to be able to follow in their footsteps.

Brad Caruso:

Definitely. And with your vision and with the work you are doing, what do you see as the, we completed our work here, what does that look like to you?

Dagny Tucker:

Yeah, I mean it's every, every business has reusables, it's a default option. It's just completely normalized and people are happily using the system and the system is successfully creating the jobs I spoke of and creating all the other co-benefits that I spoke of. And I think, you know, when you start to expand the vision out, we're starting with food wear. It's a short supply chain, so it's a, it makes sense to start with foodware. It's also really good social proofing because like you said, how do we get this to feel normal When people are doing something you can see that they're doing, it's really helpful and foodware tends to move around a city visibly, but then we start to get into those other products that you have in the grocery store, et cetera, et cetera. And you start to see that reusable packaging has just become the norm. Even in e-commerce, you know, you order something for delivery, your packaging is reusable and it's obvious that it goes back to whoever it was, Amazon or whoever delivered it to get reused again. And that we've created the infrastructure to successfully do that. I think success is when we get to that end point that I mentioned earlier, which is we look back and ask ourselves, why were we doing this any other way?

Ellie Moss:

I think other ways that you'll visibly just be able to tell that we've been successful is as you walk around a community, you won't see trash on the ground, you won't see Starbucks cups and lids and straws, you know, floating in the wind. You won't see overflowing trash cans. Another way that we will recognize that this has been successful is that you think about schools, for example, you know, in Hilo, the, the public schools use about 2 million units of disposable packaging every year, uh, and trays and things like that. And Hilo's a community of 50,000 people. So this is a very, you know, small drop in the bucket if you think about what's happening nationally in the US. And so that's, I don't know how many trash bags full of disposable trays that are not getting picked up from schools and not going to the landfill that's 45 minutes away, you know, on the other side of the island.

Ellie Moss:

So I, I think there will be these very visible absence of waste situations. So in addition to the, the new jobs and all the great experiences that people are having with the reasonable packaging and reasonable foodware, there's gonna be things that we don't see that we've somehow become accustomed to seeing. And I, I hope that we recognize that their absence is a really positive sign for the environment and for the people in a community. And as Dagny said, if anyone's worrying about, oh, but the but the waste haulers, they're gonna lose their jobs, well they're gonna just be picking up reasonable items instead of picking up trash. So, you know, we think that there's absolutely ways to have a lot of opportunity associated with reuse. It's not about taking jobs away or taking economic viability away. It's actually the opposite. It's bringing more jobs to communities and creating more economic opportunity in those communities

Brad Caruso:

And creating a healthier community. That's a big part of this is on top of the lack of waste. There's also a significant health component that I think a lot of people take for granted or, or don't realize is a big health implication. But, but a lot, a lot of what you've said is, you know, this obviously will contribute to that.

Dagny Tucker:

I think that's right. That's another unseen win. It'll be a long time, longer horizon to measure that impact. But I think we are really clear that there are huge health benefits to decreasing our use of plastics for hot and fatty foods and other things.

Brad Caruso:

We've obviously talked a lot about the public issue itself that exists, why people should be thinking about this more than just in passing. And also then how you as Perpetual have solutions that are helping here. How can the public help you, you know, where, where is it that you as a not-for-profit organization need assistance or need help? And what would you like the audience to take away or if there's something asked to the audience, what, what would it be?

Ellie Moss:

Love the question. Thank you Brad. There's a couple things that I would highlight. I think one is I think we would just ask people to open their eyes a bit. Like, I think being more aware of the current challenges means that as people do have the opportunity to adopt solutions, they'll, they'll do so and they'll, you know, they'll be strong participants in reuse systems right out the gate and that'll help the system scale and be successful. So I think people just understanding that even though we've sort of accepted this as normal, it really isn't the normal that we should be striving for and that we can collectively expect better for ourselves and demand better. Many of the products that are using some of these packaging are consumer products. And so there's a huge opportunity for consumers to also use their voices as consumers to tell their favorite brands, to tell their favorite restaurants, I want a better choice, this is not working for me and I expect you to provide me with options that are safe for me and for my family and that are not, you know, imposing a huge burden of waste in my community.

Ellie Moss:

So I think there's a lot of ways that consumers can do that. You can always communicate to brands, a lot of them are very active on social, um, you know, let them know through their websites. There's also a vote with your dollars. You know, when you have the opportunity to buy something different, something that's been packaged, uh, you know and offered to you in a different way, do that. Show them that that's something that you're willing to do. A lot of companies are skeptical that sustainability attributes will actually impact purchase behavior. So we have to show them with our actions that people actually do take this seriously. And I think wherever people can participate in reuse and return systems to do it, try it, get in there and provide those systems with feedback. If someone is offering you a reusable cup program or a reusable container program and you think there's things they could do better, tell them because this is exactly how these systems can get better and better over time. So be generous with your feedback, uh, and let them know, you know, what you loved about it and you know, and what you thought could do better. And that's a way that we can all iterate collectively to make sure that these systems really do evolve to be the system-wide solution that we know they can be. Dagny, did I miss anything that people can do?

Dagny Tucker:

I'll, I'll add a couple of things. One is just to reiterate, you know, we have good relationships with a lot of the multinationals and we hear from them like we, we need to see the consumer demand. And so in the absence of a reusable being available, it really is your voice and you're telling those brands, Hey, we want reusable options. Maybe you don't get the feedback immediately or you can't see the result of that request, but those requests they add up and they really do impact the brand. So be very vocal there. And then I would be remiss, of course not to say, please go to our website,

Ellie Moss:

Perpetualuse.org,

Dagny Tucker:

Make a donation. You can help us in that way too. We do raise the money for all of our communities through grants and other means to build the infrastructure so our dollars don't just go to us, they go to all of these communities and local partners. So they will go a long way.

Brad Caruso:

I love this topic and I really appreciate both of your time in sharing more information about it. Like I said earlier on, it's, it's an often untalked about topic. It's not something that gets, especially with everything going on, it doesn't get the mainstream attention that, that some other topics get, but more and more you boil it down. You know, the good part is that we are seeing change. Like I, I have even seen in one of the local cafeterias I went to, they started using reusable containers as opposed to here's your paper plate that you get from the buffet, it's, here's a reusable container and it goes in that bin over there when you're done. And then we collect that and then, you know, wash and reuse. So you know, we are seeing a positive impact and certainly with the work you're doing, you're sharing examples of how on both a small and a large scale that can occur. Ellie and Dagny, I really appreciate you being on the show. Appreciate your time and I appreciate you sharing more and certainly encourage everyone out there to check out their website and learn more about the work they're doing and learn more about what Perpetual is all about. But I appreciate your time today.

Dagny Tucker:

Such a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having us.

Ellie Moss:

Yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much Brad.

Brad Caruso:

Thank you. And Warriors, thank you for listening. We appreciate your time and appreciate listening to this episode. Subscribe and meet us right back here for for another episode of Civic Warriors. Bye everybody.