175: Jack Buffington, part 1: What can we do about plastic?
Plastic is everywhere — the oceans, landfills, and for 93% of us, our bloodstreams.
Everyone promotes recycling, but it’s not happening anywhere near the scale that we’re producing it and pumping it into our world.
Most people, it seems, are content to hope for the best and hope someone else solves things. In the meantime, they don’t change their behavior and the situation nobody wants continues.
Some people, or more often companies, make a big show of saying they’ll make a difference, but they don’t. They greenwash or something like that.
Rarely, you’ll find someone who makes it his or her business to figure out what’s going on and suggest what can be done.
Today’s guest, Jack Buffington, works on supply chains, got a PhD in it, and wrote two books on plastics, what doesn’t work, what does, and what he sees we should do next.
Without getting technical, we geek out on plastics. You know you wish you knew more. We’re confused by them. This conversation will reduce that confusion. I’m not saying we’ll solve everything, but you’ll see the situation more clearly. You’ll know what those numbers mean.