Swell AI Transcript: HTPTOE1507Interview_MargaretSpringOceanPlastics.mp3

00:00 SPEAKER_01 Hey Margaret, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are you ready to talk about plastic pollution?

00:05 SPEAKER_00 I am so ready, Andrew. I'm excited to be here and I'm looking forward to the questions you're going to ask and I hope I can answer them all. If not, I'll come back.

00:15 SPEAKER_01 Absolutely. I love that. I love the energy you bring into this. This is going to be a ton of fun. I'm super excited. We even have a bit of an audience in the background. I think there's some sea lions right outside your office that have been maybe trying to communicate with you throughout the day. So you guys will be hearing that. It's a great marine biology podcast when you have sea lions in the background. as an audience, so that'll be awesome. Today, I'm super excited to talk to Margaret, to you today, because I've discussed plastic pollution on here before. It's been a while since I've been able to do that. You have some updates to bring us about a UN treaty. We're also going to talk about what kind of programs, what kind of research is done at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in regards to plastic pollution. There's always great research coming out of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And so it's going to be a lot of fun to dive into that and to see what are the updates and what's needed, especially after this UN treaty, what's needed from various countries, but especially in the U.S., you know, from the administration, from different levels of, like, companies and government levels and even non-profit organizations, even us as individuals, what we can do to really decrease our use of, especially single-use plastics and plastics in general. So there's a lot to cover today, but before we get into all of that, Margaret, can you just let the audience know who you are and what you do?

01:42 SPEAKER_00 Yes, hi, I'm Margaret Spring. I'm the Chief Conservation and Science Officer here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I've been here about 10 years. My background is actually, I started as a lawyer years ago. I won't say how many years. But I really, before I became a lawyer, I actually worked at a marine lab in Florida called Boat Marine Lab as a lowly benthic sorter, probably the worst in history, which is why I became a lawyer. Little known fact. I've always been interested in the ocean. I grew up in New York City, in fact, which doesn't tell you, oh, wow, that's a great ocean space, but I grew up going to the beach and very active at diving and things like that, and I just loved it. Also, I can talk a little bit about how I came to my career, but here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I now work at the intersection of policy, business, science, and people. And that's a pretty cool place to be. And of course, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, if anyone's been here, is a fabulous, fabulous place to come. And of course, right outside the back deck is the chorus that you're hearing, which is lots of sea creatures telling us that we have to do more for the ocean. So, I'm always on my toes.

03:06 SPEAKER_01 I love it. I love it. It's definitely a very interesting background going from science and sifting through benthic samples to becoming a lawyer. Being a lawyer, why a lawyer for you? Obviously, you picked marine science and we can probably predict why you did marine science. Did you go as a lawyer to go more into ocean justice and ocean law, or was it just more of, I'm not sure this is what I really want to do for the rest of my life, so I'm going to become a lawyer, which is obviously no easy feat in any case.

03:41 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. No, I thought hard about it. Really, so let me go back in time a little bit to my childhood growing up in the 60s in New York City. At that time, there was no Clean Water Act. There was no Clean Air Act. All the things we take for granted today were not at work. So I'd go play by the Hudson River, which was filled with raw sewage, garbage, chemicals. We were spewing. All of our garbage was incinerated and going into the air. And just as I was going to college, we became aware of Superfund. All of the laws that we now know, the whole Hudson River was a Superfund site, largely. And so I became very aware of what was happening to the natural environment because I've been to beaches where it wasn't like that, but I understood my backyard was pretty polluted. And I really wanted to see how can we make a difference. And I was very interested in the science side of it, what's happening. And I wanted to, that's imprinted on me, I guess I would say. And so I was interested in marine life, but I also thought that we were despoiling our environment and our communities. And then I went to college and decided not to follow science, but that's okay. But afterwards, I went and worked at the Marine Lab. And I loved working in the Marine Lab. What I liked more, though, sort of as examples, was in collecting, I ran a water quality data program. And I would take the data, I did the logbooks, and I would report that up to EPA. And I always wondered what happened with those data. And that got me on my path to say, well, how do we connect the science and the observations we have to changes? And when I thought about my expertise and what I could bring to that discussion, I felt that a better path for me than science, although I love it, was with law, and law means you have to understand science because you have to explain it to people. So in the end, I could use my love of science and communicate about it, and also many of my experts were scientists and I had to translate for them. That's how I got there. It's a little personal but a little bit more about introspection and saying, this is good. This would be the best place for me and to be helpful.

06:10 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, absolutely. I commend you on that because it takes a lot to do a science degree, come out doing science at a fantastic institution in Moat and then saying to yourself, I think I can be better off and maybe serve better like the ocean and the environment if I follow sort of this this law perspective and this law path and then be able to come back and do more there. Not a lot of people would take on that, especially, like I said, it's not easy to become a lawyer. It takes a long time and it's a very intense program. And so to be able to do that and come back and be like, okay, now I'm going to work and now I'm in a position where I can not only translate the science from the experts but also be able to focus in on a law perspective as well. I assume you learned a lot about policy at that point too. Was that in law school or was that more outside development?

07:08 SPEAKER_00 Well, it is interesting because you go to law school and you think you'll learn to actually be a lawyer and do lawyer things but in fact, you get the basic training. You can't specialize at least at the time when I went and so I did a lot of externship an internship for Southern Environmental Law Center, the Center for International Environmental Law, where I learned a little bit. But when you really learn how to be a lawyer and get involved in policy and politics in particular by working. And so my first job was, I was selected for a Sea Grant Fellowship, and I went to the Senate, U.S. Senate. I was selected to work in the U.S. Senate. There's nothing more complicated than Congress. And that was a year that I will remember. I worked for Senators Hollings and Kerry, former Secretary of State Kerry, on ocean issues. I really got to be right in the middle of it, and it was super interesting. So you learn by doing. Similarly, when I went to the law firm I eventually worked with, I was counseling business clients. And you learn by doing. So that's kind of all the politics and policies that I've learned, and then my later careers working in the administration, the Obama administration, or finally as a career committee staffer in the Senate, it's learning by doing, and there's no substitute. And so it was trial by fire, but also you learn a lot from your colleagues, and you learn a lot about people, and it's a microcosm of society right there.

08:51 SPEAKER_01 I can imagine that you must have learned at a very rapid rate that I assume that everything works in. So that must have been a very interesting experience there. Did you go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium after that or was there a time in between before you ended up? Because you said you've been there for about a decade, right, at Monterey Bay?

09:11 SPEAKER_00 Right. Well, I'm in California largely because I married a Californian. And so when I finished in the Senate, I was dating a man in California and he tried it in the East Coast. And yeah, so if you're from California, you understand what I'm saying. And so I sought a job on the West Coast and the Nature Conservancy of California hired me. And I worked here for two years, which was fantastic. Really good grounding of what's happening in California and learning about how you can use, you know, property law to help protect the ocean. That was quite interesting. And then I was called back to Washington, D.C. to work in the Obama administration at NOAA, which is an agency I knew pretty well, having worked with them when I was on Capitol Hill. And I became the chief of staff to the first marine biologists or scientists, female scientists in particular, to lead the agency, Dr. Jane Lubchenco. So I was her chief of staff and it was an exciting time. And so that, after four years, when she left, I was recruited here to the Monterey Bay Choir, which I'm thrilled for, because I got to return to California, and my husband, who I left behind. I mean, that's hard. He waited. He waited. What a guy.

10:31 SPEAKER_01 That's awesome. I mean, what an experience to be able to work not only for the Obama administration, there were a lot of environmental changes that happened there, but also for Dr. Jane Lubchenco, who is legendary in the field, continues to be. had the opportunity to meet her at the International Marine Conservation Congress. And that was like, I had like, it was one of those, you meet a celebrity, you know, where you're just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I was sitting beside her at a restaurant. It was just, it was phenomenal. And so that experience is amazing. Then you come to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So obviously you've worked very high level positions. You come to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and you're You're working on, I assume, like you said, the intersection of science, business, policy, and so forth. A lot of times when we talk about marine biology, we talk about marine conservation, there's the science, then there's the policy, but we rarely talk about the business side of conservation, which I think in the future is going to lead a lot of the conservation initiatives, I guess the applications of this, especially when we talk about plastic pollution. How important is that to you, to bring that business focus or that business aspect into merging the science and the policy?

11:53 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, I think it's important to be realistic about what, and to sort of walk in people's shoes, and I admire, the aquarium was doing this before I even got here, but it's a natural, is to think about how we and our operations are affecting the environment and the ocean in particular, and how we can impart that information to our guests, our visitors, and all of our audiences. And it gives us credibility to try and do it ourselves. We are a nonprofit, of course. We rely on donations and contributions. However, we have to pay people. We have to pay for stuff. And we have to conserve our pennies. And so how can we do our work better and demonstrate and model change? And we happen to be in California, which is a state that has some progressive policies in some areas. But before the policies were implemented, we helped support some of them. But we always felt that when we took a policy position, we should try and walk the talk. So one of the examples is our Seafood Watch program, which is a program where it started from an exhibit. And people said, what can I eat? I'm concerned about the impact of fishing on the environment and the healthy ocean does rely on good practices. And so we had to say, well, here's what you could, we went to the science and we ended up not only telling people what we thought based on the outside science we could, were better choices, but we also started feeding, requiring that our animals be fed the same. So choosing to source from the same things we're telling people. And how hard is that? It's hard. That's why we have a lot of empathy and sympathy for how hard it is. And we think about ways we can fix it. Similarly, on plastic pollution, single-use plastic was a big issue for California. We took on a number of policy actions, as you have already in Canada. And we wanted to walk the talk, so we actually have almost eliminated single-use plastic in all of our front-facing, guest-facing operations. So not only do we talk about plastic pollution, but we, and we actually find that in the selling and the explaining, not only are we, we're educating at the same time and helping people see the possibilities and that there's hope. Don't be, don't think you can't do it. We did it. It was hard, let me tell you, but, and your purchasing power can make a difference. in choices outside when you vote. So giving people some tangible, but also saying to say the administration, how can we do reuse and refill or something like that? We can say, well, here's what we tried. And it really does give you credibility. And I appreciate that about us living our living our conviction.

14:52 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, let's like, you say you call it like a monetary bank, where it is a nonprofit, but it is a corporation in itself. with a lot of people that are employed there. And I'm sure the people that are employed there are very environmentally focused and using less single-use plastics or no single-use plastics. So you have the culture there to build on that. So if the aquarium comes out and said, OK, here's our policy on trying to source from different things, and let's all do this as a unit together and help each other out, it's great to have. But it's also great to work as an example. Here are the challenges that we came up against. Here are the successes that we had. and then be able to present those in a report or however you present in a communication and to help drive more policy and maybe make it better. I think that's a great way of doing things. The Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey is pretty large. It's very well known. Do you have a lot of relationships with local businesses to help drive some of that policy or help them with their own corporate policies?

15:58 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, that's a good question. So we are focused on providing advice for those who would like to have it. And all of our advice is free to the public generally. When we have made relationships with business, it's to help them do better and give them some guidance when they ask for it. For a while, we had a restaurant program and we're reevaluating it. The restaurant program and a number of restaurants around here still use our sourcing guidance, which is free essentially off our website to select options. It's hard to run a restaurant program because you have a lot of boots on the ground. In fact, we seek the public to provide feedback to the restaurant and ask them, do you source sustainable seafood? and they'll say yes or no, or they might not know, and they go back and ask. And just that asking, that prompting, is in a sense a more connected way of pushing it. But a number of our restaurants here, first of all, I am so thrilled that really off the west coast of California, and the west coast in general, we pretty much have seafood that's sustainable, green and yellow rated. And that's a big shift. And that's been the result of good management. So you can't do it with consumers alone. The government has to play a role, which is why, you know, it's one of the things we pay attention to is the government. There's a business part, and there's a government part. And the science has to underpin all of it. And so, yeah, we do have relationships with providers here. Our restaurant, of course, sources sustainably, and we have providers. On plastic, we don't run those kinds of programs, but we do support policies that change because it's very hard to change it from only a consumer perspective. We think we can use our voice better to support major policy change that will enable everyone to do better and that's where we focus our attention. You know, Surfrider and other groups do that, have a restaurant program where we're coordinated with them and so we like to figure out what we do best and do that. But yeah, we're really fortunate to have very sustainable seafood here now. And it's really a joy. And one of my roles is I'm on the board of the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, where we hold fish quota for the benefit of the Monterey Bay area. And we do promote sustainable seafood with restaurant partnerships, gut hook dinners. And also, we partner with Meals on Wheels and other food banks to help bring fresh local seafood to people who don't normally get access to it. Seafood scares people when they have to cook it, and they also haven't had it in a long time if they're older and they've been on their own. It's just really been nice to connect people with the actual source of the sustenance and the sustainability. story. So that's been great.

19:10 SPEAKER_01 That's fantastic. What great programs. And speaking of programs for plastic pollution, which will be the focus for, you know, hearing on in for this conversation. What type of programs do you have? I mean, because plastic pollution is such a huge problem. So for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, when you look at the programs for like that, that underlies plastic pollution as a topic, what type of programs do you run at the Monterey Bay Aquarium?

19:37 SPEAKER_00 You know, largely we We don't have a program that's very large. We have targeted work that we do. My team definitely has been focused on policy change. However, we've been building that program up. So first, if you think about the Monterey Bay Aquarium and all the ways we touch people, I'll start from the floor. We have had a longstanding exhibit on plastic pollution, and it's actually an interesting one if you come because it's very focused on art. It's art made from plastic trash. And a number of those kinds of installations here, I just happen to think ours is the most beautiful, but it really does raise people's awareness about plastic. And then they're really excited to go to the store and see no plastic and they can start making the connection. And so that's one. We also have a seabird, excuse me, a Laysan albatross, the only one I believe in captivity at this moment, and this Laysan albatross injured it and could not be released. She, Makana, is our spokesperson to the guests about why plastic pollution is so harmful because of the impact on seabirds. And we have a very nice program on the floor. I don't run that program, but all the information that we use, that we have, is used in that program and it really connects people to the empathy around animals. Then we had the big deep sea exhibit that we just opened last year and we have a Part of the exhibition focuses on microplastics in the ocean again. So that's sort of the base that our website enters into. And then my team has been working on building the science base, having partnerships. I work with the National Academies of Sciences. I work with the Environmental Law Institute and other groups that I'm a member of to help bring their awareness and raise the science and policy impact. We have supported California policies, national policies, and local policies that help change the landscape. And so I could go on, but essentially what we've found is the plastic issue has come to us because everyone's concerned about it. I have to say this is one of the, sometimes environmental issues are, there's some voices saying, you have to pay attention to this. And people are saying, what? This one is, people are saying, this is a problem. We don't want this anymore. How can we change? And that's been a very powerful opportunity to up our game in this space. And we help support local cleanups and such. And all those data, which are organized by others like the Ocean Conservancy, really ladder up to choices that are made at the policy level. We make sure that information gets up. And the markets work really hasn't, we've been, we find that some of our partners in Seafood Watch are super interested in understanding what they can do in plastic and I'm looking forward to having that conversation with them because the seafood sector and packaging and food packaging is a big issue. And I think they want to do better as part of their environmental social governance work. And it is, it's a puzzlement. to your point, because it took us 60 years to get to this point. And what I find interesting is that for plastic pollution, until you start talking about it or showing people what it looks like, they don't even see it in their day-to-day lives. It's so ubiquitous. And so that's the first step. Do you see it?

23:21 SPEAKER_01 Yeah.

23:22 SPEAKER_00 Do you need it? Can you do without it? Or is there an alternative? And that's a great journey to bring people on. You could start them here.

23:31 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, I love that. And having it those, you know, kind of hitting that from the communication perspective at the different levels that you that you mentioned from the floor to the policy. to sort of building in the partnerships and other programs. I think it's just such a great way to go about it and kind of implement it into these programs and just get people to see it too. You know, the albatross, the deep sea exhibit, I think it's wonderful. Now, when we talk about policy, There's a lot of policies that have been put into place, banning of single-use plastics, banning of certain plastics over others. When we look at it from today's perspective, what types of policies are needed today to really make a large impact? When you talk about policy, what type of policies does the Monterey Bay Aquarium support? and what you think is needed for us to really kind of put a dent into, you know, single-use plastic or just plastic pollution in general.

24:39 SPEAKER_00 Yeah, I think, so it's very clear to us and to many that source reduction is absolutely essential. And that's been a policy we've been supporting in the state and also as far as we can take it. I would love to say that you don't need to reduce, you know, whatever makes people money or there's an economic value, but really the economic cost of producing plastic to people and communities far outweighs any kind of economic benefit. The major issue is that we've been increasing our production way beyond our ability to absorb it at all, not only in our country but around the world. Global plastic production increased nearly 20-fold from 1966 to 2015, and it's just going up and up. And every time I see another estimate, it's just increasing because it's basically producing plastic as a byproduct of oil and gas production. And so it provides a valuable product to that industry, but it's now creating a huge burden, a cost burden, a health burden, and an environmental crisis on top of it. There have been a number of studies and a number of modeling exercises that show there's no way you can deal with this without turning off the tap. How do you do that? That's always the question. Well, that's where these policies, these banning policies have come from because, well, what is problematic? What's a bad thing to have? What's harmful? And that's a science question, but we are learning a lot more about that. So what's damaging to your health? What's going to blow up in a train car wreck in Ohio? Yes, we know what that was. That was vinyl chloride. We're learning a lot about what constituents are. And so some things you can say, well, maybe we shouldn't make that. The other thing is, what's the product? Do you need the product to be made of plastic? Does everything have to be single-use? And that's where these banning of straws or bags or packaging has happened. That's where we focused on-site, because that's a place you can cut down on. So there's these problematic, avoidable, and unnecessary. And that's one thing. But we also think that there should be a reduction in actual production. And that is a heavy lift. And that is something that really does require government action. It's hard to have industry alone do that. It's a very challenging thing. So that is our number one issue right there.

27:23 SPEAKER_01 Right. And how are governments like different state and even federal governments responding to the conversations that you're having with them in terms of sort of turning off that tap? Because obviously there's the other side of the business aspect of those producers that are trying to produce more plastics. So where does it come – what happens now like when there's that there's that other side who are saying, oh no, we need to produce. There's a lot of jobs depending on it. It brings in a lot of money. But then on the other side, you're proposing, hey, we need to really reduce and even turn off the taps of this source. So how are governments reacting to that type of conversation?

28:03 SPEAKER_00 Well, governments are acting in reaction to what people are asking them to do, and the voices are becoming louder and louder. And you'll see that some countries have really responded strongly. The EU already has a plastic strategy. it's embedded in their climate strategy because reducing the amount of plastic produced is also reducing fossil extraction, fossil sources of carbon extraction. So it's basically hitting two birds with one stone. That doesn't mean it's easy, but I think it's easier to explain. And so they started with banning and they've got all sorts of policies in place. Similarly, Canada and even countries like China started to have some policies, because it's actually a management challenge. You can't manage as much. There's no way when it comes to this stuff. It just moves. And unfortunately, it's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It's in your house. It's in your ocean. And it's in the air. So the response has been, how do we do it? There's a lot of curiosity. Well, how can we get this done? And what's interesting about the arguments that I've seen come around about whether recycling works or doesn't work. It doesn't work right now very well, and I think we can improve it. But one of the things you've got to do is change the formulation of plastic, because I'm sure the recyclers would tell you that when you have too many ingredients in plastic, over 10,000 chemicals, or some estimates say 13,000 chemicals used in plastic, then it's very hard to recycle it. Everything that's in there makes it harder to reuse. So you're undermining the whole idea of recycling by not making it in a way that's designed for what people call the circular economy. Now, recycling is not the answer, and the volume we're talking about is so great. It'll take a while to untangle that. That's a science and technology question. What's really getting a lot of attention is reuse and refill, and it's kind of going back to the future. Because as many of us remember, oh, yeah, I used to get bottles. Maybe some of you aren't old enough to know this, but I am. And we had a milkman or a milkwoman. They'd bring the bottles. You'd return the bottles. You could return your Coca-Cola bottles. All that stuff where it actually, why do we have to keep making something to use once and throw away? And that may not be recycled. Can we figure out a chunk of our work, the chunk of what we're using, that we could actually turn into recycle and refill and reuse? That's gotten a lot of people excited about the innovation opportunities. And the state of California is interested with their bill. Also the administration is interested in experimenting with that. And so that's become a very interesting and positive opportunity for change, which means that we have to change our expectations, too. It's not just a coffee cup, but it's like, how do we refill? Why do we need all these plastic things that we touch once. And then when you start seeing that, it really makes you wonder, why are we doing this?

31:11 SPEAKER_01 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it gets frustrating sometimes, too, to see it happen over and over again. And it's nice to see that governments are listening, people are talking about it, people are complaining more about it and saying, hey, we need to have this type of change. And you mentioned you're seeing it in different countries now, too. So there's obviously that international, I don't know if it's necessarily pressure, but that international sort of desire to do something about this plastic from a management perspective. And speaking of international, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that you were involved in or you talked about your involvement in and attendance of this UN treaty talks on plastic pollution. Can you kind of give us sort of a basis of where it happened and how people can get more information and what happened during that treaty talks?

32:00 SPEAKER_00 Well, it's very interesting, because I'm going to take a step back and say, how did I enter this space? We were always interested in plastic pollution here, and I had worked on a number of topics. But I was invited to be the chair of a National Academies of Sciences panel, commissioned by Congress, to do a report on the US role in global ocean plastic waste. Because there have been a lot of confusion. We've been talking about it for a long time. A lot of confusion is what is the U.S. 's role? And I'll tell you why it was important to ask that question for Congress to ask that question. It's because there was a lot of discussion at that time of putting together a resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly to establish a process to create a global treaty. Like climate change or like anything that's a pollution that's globally transmitted, you can't deal with this by a state alone, by one nation alone, it's really a global problem. And so there's always been in the background that question. And Congress asked us in the Save Our Seas 2.0 law to, well, what is the U.S. role? And so we undertook that report and we actually came out with this report at the end of 2021, just as the United States agreed to join the Global Plastics Treaty. At about the same time, I was asked to be part of another study, which was the Mindoro Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, where I got to work with a lot of esteemed doctors, epidemiologists, and other experts on this question that, of course, we were wondering about, what does it all mean for human health? And at that time, the global treaty discussions had begun, were just about to begin, excuse me, and the first meeting was in Uruguay. So in February, March 2022, after we issued our first report, the United Nations Environment Assembly, 175 countries agreed, yes, we need a global plastic treaty, a binding global plastic treaty to address the entire life cycle of plastic. It's not just what goes into the ocean. That's what you're producing. You have to look at the whole thing. And that was an amazing moment. If you saw the video of people there, they were crying. They were so happy that they got this agreement, because it was so important. Fast forward, I went to the first meeting. And I was enabled to go to the first meeting under the auspices of the International Science Council, which is an international group of scientists of which the National Academies is a member. And we went to the first meeting to figure out how the scientists could help. And there are a number of other science groups there, too. And so this is what I learned about this treaty and what it would take to get it done. There will be five meetings. We've had the first one in Uruguay, the second one in Paris in the spring. The third one will be in Nairobi, Kenya in November. I'll be there. two more meetings next year, Canada, Ottawa, and then Seoul, Korea, South Korea. And after that, the treaty will be done. That's the end of next year. That's how fast this is moving. It's moving at the same pace as our first report, which came out at the end of 2021. We told the U.S. administration, you need to develop a plan because you're going to have to be negotiating a treaty. And so now that's what the US is doing, and there's a lot of activity there. And there was the EPA issued their draft plastic strategy. So things are moving fast on all tracks. California passed a groundbreaking law to reduce plastic. Then the US joined. I mean, it's just been an amazing process to see happen simultaneously. And it's an exciting, what I've seen, I've been involved in some international treaty discussions. I've never seen a treaty being held to a timeline of two years. That is very unusual. So first of all, there's a huge job ahead. And all the countries are trying to get as smart as they can. It started out really as a waste and ocean impact treaty. And all of a sudden, with the new data coming in on health impact, it's now not only a health treaty, but it's now a human rights treaty. So we have evolved in about six months since we've been going to these meetings into this very interesting space where delegates are drinking down a lot of information and trying to figure out how to prioritize action. And a huge number of groups, even from the United States, are there. They go to all the meetings because it's such an issue for equity and communities and vulnerable populations who are most at risk, not only here, but also in other countries. And so it is very, and people who live in Cancer Alley come in force. from Louisiana and Texas, from Appalachia. So it's a very interesting moment. There's never seen so much civil society engagement in one of these very esoteric treaties where you have a lot of rules and regulations and how you do business, but it's been very dynamic. And the same people who are coming to this meeting are talking to the United States about the domestic policies. Super interesting. And if this is done on time, it will be signed in 2025.

37:42 SPEAKER_01 That is insane how fast this is. I mean, and that just goes to show how many countries are willing to, you know, move quickly on this as well. I mean, there could be some countries that are, you know, in the past and with other trees that are dragging their heels for whatever reason. But this, it looks like it's an all-out effort, not just the US, but however many countries are involved. It seems like a lot of countries are really moving fast. Are they progressing just as fast as the US to meet these deadlines for this treaty?

38:10 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. Everyone's on track for the meetings. I would say as it gets more and more real, there'll be more and more friction. We're still in the aspirational phases of everybody saying, yes, we must do something. And I will say it's something about business, because business is at the table too. And there's a business coalition that's calling for source reduction. So I think there is a reality check going on that something's got to give. And it's not as polarized. I think it's polarized. It will become more difficult as choices have to be made. However, my sense is that there will be agreement on a few important things now. And then once it's signed, there will be additional decisions to be made with science input along the way. But I sense that the business community that's really part of this coalition is looking for rules of the road that they can follow instead of having 20,000 different rules that they have to address. And so that's why a global treaty to some of these groups is super important. And that speaks volumes because it says they want to make a difference too and they want to be part of the advanced group that's going to be you know, ahead of the pack for competition's sake. And they also are worried about health issues, too, and they really want to see the plastic formulation change so they can be more assured of less harm. And particularly in the administration's planning, they're very concerned about the connection with climate change and social and environmental justice, which is an area that we focused on a lot in the Minjibu Monaco report. And they're making some strides, and it's really motivating them to think hard about what they can do. And so you see that. We made comments on the EPA strategy. They're quite long, and we were really encouraged that they issued a strategy. There's some work to be done on it. But I think we're looking for a strong backbone for this, because plastic is an interesting Substance it's not It's a it's a polymer that has many things in it. It's a carbon polymer, but lots of stuff in it and It's hard to call it. It's easy to regulate Nitrogen, you know easier to regulate we have pollutants we regulate and we're used to have being able to control This is a very changeable substance and so if this were you know called a pollutant or called a hazardous waste. We have the mechanism for dealing with it, but it's not. And it's eluding a lot of our controls. And so one of the things that the U.S. could look at is the science to say, yes, we should be treating this as a different kind of substance. And one of the examples of what people are saying is a model for this is the Montreal Protocol, which dealt with the ozone hole and phasing out of CFC. So there are models where this could work, but it requires a lot of science and technical know-how and commitment.

41:25 SPEAKER_01 Yeah, I can imagine. And I think that was sort of my next question. And when we talk about these international treaties, these UN treaties, we see them often. It's really interesting to see what happens after that too. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done from now until 2025. Hopefully, the US and a lot of the other countries will almost meet the treaty as the treaty is developing and as they're developing their national policies and so forth. For a lot of my listeners they get a little frustrated with these – not just a little. They get frustrated with countries not abiding by the treaty, signing them on but then they're like, oh, we couldn't because of this or we couldn't because of that. Going forward after this treaty – and you may not be able to answer this right now because it's probably one of these questions where it really depends on individual countries and the parties that are in power and so forth. How do we make sure that the countries stay on track and to make sure that they're following these treaties, including the US and Canada and other countries?

42:27 SPEAKER_00 Yeah. There are mechanisms that are used in many treaties, including fisheries treaties, which I've been part of. And these are compliance monitoring. And that's where science and monitoring can be helpful. I think there is an interest, a very strong interest, in making sure whatever is agreed to can be monitored for compliance. What you want to see, though, in the treaty is a price for noncompliance. And that is important. And that's where some of the art of this is going to be, is how do we track progress? What are the data sets we have? But yes, it is of concern. And so there are two schools of thought. One is everybody should get on. So the positive thing is that the United States position, while they haven't put forward any specific actions yet, Their goal is to see zero plastic pollution in the environment by 2040. If we back calculate from that goal, there are ways we can model how we can perform. There are a number of groups that have done modeling. So you could back calculate or forward calculate and be able to track it. We've seen that kind of transparent reporting work very well when it came to US fisheries documenting, here's what we said we'd do, and where are we? Performance tracking is important. And I think that will be an issue. Now, when it comes to signing and ratifying treaties, we as a country have not ratified every treaty that we may have even signed because of the number of steps that are required, including new legislation sometimes. They're self-executing, so they don't need new legislation. But it's very complicated there. However, I do think that having a clear goal and reporting towards that goal is going to tell us when everyone's off track. And I agree that it's really challenging and frustrating. And that's why I think the importance of having as many countries be able to at least sign the treaty in 2025. because they're all committing to try and do this. I would say, you know, people should be paying attention and calling for commitment. There will be a moment for that, and we'll be happy to keep people apprised of the moment when it needs to happen, and many other groups will too. And, you know, there are many technical issues associated with this, but the very strong feeling of people and Whatever they do is that this has to stop. This cannot continue. And it's not going to get better. By ignoring it, it's not going to get better. And I do feel there's a commitment by the administration to try and do something about it. And we have to all do our own part, too.

45:36 SPEAKER_01 Absolutely. And this has been wonderful and it gives me a lot of hope for the near future to see this treaty kind of come into play and to be finished and see the commitment from the countries. I look forward to seeing that. And when it's time to rally the troops and rally the people to put pressures on their countries to be able to do that, Margot, I'd love to have you back on or someone from your staff back on to tell us how to do that and how we can do that each as individuals to be able to make sure that this treaty goes forth. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing the projects that you have going on at Monterey Bay, your history sort of with marine conservation and plastic pollution, and as well as what's coming up and gives us a lot of hope and optimism, especially in this summer has been a tough pill to swallow when we look at things going on in the environment. So it's really nice to have this type of optimism going forward. So we really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing that optimism. Thank you so much.

46:34 SPEAKER_00 Thanks, Andrew. It's really nice to talk to you and I look forward to bringing some more good news. As we go, we're seeking help to make it happen.

46:42 SPEAKER_01 Yes, absolutely. Love it. Thank you so much.