we are here tonight to celebrate

edward humes newest book, total garbage edward humes, a pulitzer author whose 16 previous books include garp biology our dirty love affair with trash, the forever witness, mississippi mud and the penn award winning. no matter how lo shout, ed and his family including their d rang greyhounds and collie live in southern california for more formation, see edward sitcom. he will be joined in conversation by ryan metzger ryan metzger, the red co-foundn ridgewell since inception in

2018. at that time not satisfied with theing for getting rid of hard to recycle around his home. an and his son owen started a project in seattle helping their neighbor simple could be to keep things from landfills. now, more than 90,000 rodwell ridgewell members in seven states have saved more than 18 pounds million of stuff. ryan, his b.a. and an mba from university and previously marketing roles at madrona venture group zoo, lee and microsoft. please join me in lcedward ryan. else. thank you madison and thank elliot bay book company for hosting. it's been great to bee.i came tn pioneer square. i was a kid and so ' come full like this. i think. great. especially to haday. hope you're having a great earth day. it's an important one for for us to read well andully for

many of you, it's great to be connected with ed, too. i reached out and it was really an hon i read his new book, total garbage this. and it was it was a real page turner. i hope man yo enjoy. it's really a great read and we love to start by how we got. and it was a couple of years ago i had read garp ology. madison mentioned the story of starting redwood with my son owen and and we had done a lot of research and visits and things like that. and i read gp mine, this guy by the name of joel, reached out and, said, hey, the author of garbo, he would like to to meet you. and i was amazing. and ed d w r facility and it was was wonderful. so thank you so much that and ' the you know why did you reach out to read why you know why did you want to feature us in your book? well, first of all, i want to say hello. thanks for coming. ha day. and also brian, i didn't realize that youee do before you actually read the book. so that's a real of chapter rig.

i did read chapter one. oh, yeah. well, so am a former resident of west seattle. moved up here from southern california, near for an employment for my my■w wife. she says i'm portable. you know, you get your books anyway. absolutely loved living in west stt another employment sent us back down south very regretll but we still have bonds here and friends will. but while i was in west seattle, i read of course i read the west article in there that said ridgewell just recently he from, you know, incorporated from owen'sseattle. apparently, people were really excited about. and and i learned something about the gap in our of i

suppose unrecyclable materials way to deal with. and i sort of made a mental aboh and the past and i knew i was going to do one that■ expands indeed, maybe the view of what we this had down is and bridwel down a storyline i wanted to explore. thank you i wanted to start you garbled. i was as a more narrow view of in the garbage can.ow goe that's what i did well in our members to focus on but total garbage takes a broader view of waste. hear why you decided to go in that direction and think of waste in a broader sense than st what goes in the garbage can? yeah, well, because waste is much more than what we roll to curb every every week. it's all around us. it's so deeplyde our everyday lives and habits

and products that we seif see i. it's everywhere. it's in what we eat and how we prepare our food. ' how we dress. every time you if you have a car that takes gasoline, every time you go to the pump, four out of $5, you spend is wastedse you know cars are incredibly wasteful. transportation, our mostul actit behind it or is our energy sys. whenou pay your utility unless you're renewable aut four two thirds of what you're paying goes to waste inherent imaking electricity from fossil fuel. thomas edison 100 over 100 years ago said you know we're burning down our ourin order to to lated it's crazy i can't wasolar to ce he you know the builder of

massive coal fired plants knew was stopgap measure and that we could do better and now we can do but meanwhile we have these old systems that we are wedded to that are incredibly wasteful abe driver, as the arch of ad many of our big environmental crises that we're facing from plastic pollution to climate change, all ofc wastefulness in our most wasteful civilization in history. and that's why i wanted to do the second book. i'mlad you did there's you talk about a mindset mindset shrobably made as you wrote it and i started doing a while ago but even expanded reading your book lk about how people canrian kind shift their their mind as they think of waste and softhcou

hope people kind of take of. yeah yeah you know i actually i kind of redid the the 5 hours which usedours i edited a couple more hours. but the first one is to rethink rethink how we define waste, tod also remember that s things that we use constantly and seemr instance, disposable plastics aren't necessary and then there are alternatives and you can find in everything that we do that there may be a way of of personal transportation that's y a tesla, but it is. and also, you know, a gas burning car that can meet needs. and it's kind of a good enough one. and i did find such a solution andloving.

and i talk about that in book, but then there's simple things a an entrepreneur, los angeles who started a nonprofit he left the finance world of finance■nd he's working in food deserts of l.a., wherend vegetables are hard to come by. and he's convertings into urban, and he caneed 25 households with weekly deliveries of fresh fruit and vegetables, a thousand square feet of former and use, about 8% of the water doing it[n e he recycled water and solar power for it and beautiful you know, people don't miss their lawns, say, wow, why move? why mow, my god, i can eat my yard and and awesome and it's so obvious when you think about why do we have something so unproductive as grass in front of our houses native plants? and pollinator gardens are also but in places that need food it's■e it's it's just such an obvious solution and war two we

had 40% urthis country produced in people's they called victory gardens.wh'd we need to eat gardens. and when were so motivated we actually did much of what he's tryilú■%o doand in los angeles d ideas are new again, i suppose, you know, wasn't there a stat can fill us in but around vegetable gardening was i think the highest. 'war two or yes well since depending people have found their green farms and andd you don't need a big plot of to you know, let's say you live in an apartme, farm you can hae indoor plant pot tdow. you can do a lot of things. and there's value and health you know, a factory farmed tomato like you get, the rmarket can have up to 70% less vitamins and minerals than a tomato that you could grow in your backyard.

if the usda measures this thing the modern tomato has more of than than ones of the past is more salt like 7014 times the amount of we that right uh and so we have made certain for, uh, reasons that don't necessarily make sense anymore and these kinds changes that we can do on our own and we do collectivelyone of the storit resonated in my house wa the one around gas stoves and induction stoves and all the waste there around heating the the air aroundt anthe amount of waste that that goes. it's kind of seen as sort of a luxury is have a gas and ' sen'e talking wit'reooking with gas it's a meme it is. and and i think how it became, it from the industry. and think there were laws passed around, you know, new

construction ts at margins, very big deals. but it became kind of a wedge issue re some. and so i think it'd be interesting the would probably start hearing th story. it certainly made me take notice of a gas stove and how there's this is quite less wasteful that's out there. yeah. who here has a gas stove■ and it's okay. well, me too. you know,ut and there's ways art that ido don't, i don't think bans are effective. so i, and, and that's i a very controversial there's a lot of like warfare over banning connections and i think it's important to on some of these changes we can make or actually not giving up something we love. they're upgrading to something . and this is one of those examples and the maiar about inl garbage, about cooking are

two chefs who were, you know tried and true guess cookers. that's how you're trained to be a professional you don't know anything else and those old electric stoves, the ones with, the coils that get orange, i mean they're they're horrors, right? they were really hard to cook up. no, cooking li a good idea,hen went't se away. and i should say one of these chefs, rochelle bush, she was the personal chef to george lucas, and sheheoyu could possibly want and all of them involved gas. but then she got a more sustainaki thinking and she shes, learned about inductin into thehysics of it, but it's basically using magnetic fields to to generate heat inside a pan. you know how your phone, if you have a wireless charger, it gets

warm at that warmth. it's kind of a unintended byproduct in an induction. it's the same thing, but that it works very efficiently just as electric cars are more efficient than gas powered cars in terms the amount of energy that turns the wheels. it's the same with with stoves. so you can cook faster. the room stays cool because the only the pan on top of it. and it is an old texas. oh, it was it was it was first demonstrated the world's fa in in the 1930s in chicago and they t cool cooking and the way they demstd athey put it a book on of the induction coil and put a tton tn ea and then somebody read the books and it was brilliant but it was never commercialized fully until fairly recently. whyimrtant for for us non

ranthefs. well you can get as my cousin doy re■'ntly did she just me she said i read your book she's sfering from long covid and she's had a lot of respiratory. and one of t things she read in the book that we via the vo there's 42% higher asthma and respiratory ailments in vu populations like her that have gas. my had had childhood asthma. i had known back then what know now i would have ripped it out a long time ago, but dorothy, she one of these on sale for $64.a it's a single because she was really proud of the the shopping but then she's been using it for about weeks and she says you ck, but my breathing's i don't feel l

of and coughing as much. and iri stove anymore. and there's actually sci support that. i can't prove that's what's helped her, but, you know's doing better and i think that that alone if parents that they could help protect their children with this kind of versus gas and even if they're you deniers and they don't care about climate change or they don't think they can do anything about it, they would still want make this change because it's an upgrade, because it's good, because it makes sense and i tried ilth similar kinds of propositions wher' wint around was■ that's the big tent that brings people together you feel empowered. okay. we don't like waste. we can do something. it. yeah, definitely. stove any day now.

you talked a little bit about bands, not something you're you're in favor of and they can become political and charge and things like that. but there is some talk of some policy changes that are mo efctive than an outright and you know, we're in seattle here uple examples in the book of the city of seattle doing some th gd from the policy sense. one around public transportation and another wh something that we huge fans of. if you had to give advice to a city like seattle or another city some policy category that may be more effective than outright bans, ind change and getting interested. where would you tell them to go? wow wow. most powerful things that's going on and it started in the state maine and spreading to other states our producer responsibilityay laws you've probably heard of them and quite quite a few states had

have followed lead on this and it's such a simple proposition because it places the responsibility on the producers of products to take care of them and to if saying for instance that a bottle or a form of plastic is recyclable they have to seet 's done. and if it's not being done, they have to pay for it and they have to clean up after this in, maine, she went like rubber mom. she's an environmentald she yo'o town council and she'd make the same target. you know, i man up their room when they make a mess. why are we paying to clean up big brands mess and and it took her eight years for toing from e there to you know what that makes sense that's capitalism should be paying for thatu you guys probably familiar with bridwell so it's a thank you

think about what he's doing our mainstream recycling systems arf our plastics in this country. it's a it's a horror. they're in everything are everywhere. plastic pollution is a plague solution is we can we can find a home for this material whether it's decking or picture frames or this this problematicfilling the gap but s subscribers arein they are doing something altruistic and it's it's a deal with a $15 surplus. le of lattes. okay. it's still it's a big ask because you paying for the system that's supposed to be taking care of and, you know, and we'vethis as producer responsibility. they should be paying you f bece

they've created this mess that is unprecedented i human history since colonial days. the sellers of things came in, bottles and containers were responsible for that material, and ey took it back and they reused it because they were valuable. this economy is is the exception. this age we live in not the norm and it doesn'hao t way it's stupid that it's this way. and the thing that ryan said to me, i look forward to day when i'm obsolete and we don't need rid well because, if our systems were working, we wouldn't it but you know we that was the most impressive thing that really stuck with me. thank you. yontioned the bottle companies and things like that. and there's a little bit of history lesns. the book, which i enjoy reading about and the bottle detector bottle that was a career these

these sellers were so anxious to get their bot bcompetitors steat there was actually te down missing bottles. can you imagine that? we've gone from tot tech detectives to the crying indian, all of us, for you know, people cause pollution. people can stop that. 've been stuck in that mode so long because of that powerful greenwhi and with its curated trash. so you couldn't identify a of the the sources of the litter and, the the italian indigenousb appropriating culture in order to beat legislat to restore the reuse system a laws pending in the late sixties row away containers and.nrs that ad helpedt all of that because it was our foot.

we have to go pick up the litter and the companies did it themselves. i mean, they would take them back and you'd have your coca-cola, you bring it in the hing plants. you have to look at the video of the it's like watching flag pins said those mechanical pin centers times just they're so cool not a single piece of silicon in there and yet were able to have thistn they grind it up and make a new one out of it because glass, unlike plastic is infinitely recyclable. yeah and was that tied to remember the of the plastic must taken off around thenwas convene convenience is sort of what everyone died andnow can be conveniently. so people asked me your book a do said, the very first thing yu read is that wait 284 or a five pieces of plastic today, cas worth a week.ds to a credit that's it. we have been so low in meat

society. collectively, we in how deal with this a natural material that we've turned that last forever in the environment and out of it with. no no way to actually reuse of material. that's a downer. but it's fixable. an polluters laws are powerful. they will drive. theyil put financial burden, and therefore economic model atuprts disposable the already out of reach and big when a company has to bear its costs, iokfo way cut those costs and we got disposable plastics because. it was a cost cutting measure. but if that doesn't work anymore something better that would be something reusablerecyclable. and you're the person in may, and i tnk packaging epr passed'm not mistaken. yes, yes. and they're implementing it now.

there's there's at least 18 other states, ihink that either have it or are looking think washington is still working on it's been on the docket for for several years now. haven't got a guy and we have others in■fassed recently. there's a light bulb, one a battery, one electronic. so there's different categories that have them. and concept is great. it just you pay have the incentives to to adapt what they you know, on the back end, there's more capabilities for companies like red wall too with it. so that helps us add paint to our service or something. we did after the epr passed, whh see. you mentioned, you know, some people might sees way. and i think many of the readers oh no, i'm telling them it'not a downer. they live up and part of that is because there's many things, other things we can do. they're not very big things to do that can make a difference. and you know, we don't a lawn in our house, you can already check that one off. you know, the shirt i'm wearing is ward. where from? patagonia, where a lot of my used in high quality store

they're store another good one. you know the food waste is there'chapr on that. and the amount of food waste in this country is staggering. the stats on that and duction we mentioned you know are there a few that you want to highlight for the audience? well, we were talking to a city, georgia. i love this. so so i went to georgia to visit the person i call the trash genius in in the book because she li genius jambeck she's amazing. andt person to quantify in the peer plastic pon was going into our oceans and rivers. and it was much more than anybody suspected. sh in. 2010 and figures that team came up with was. 8 to 12 million tons of plastic a year globally you can visualize this by having

a full sized dump truck. dumping plastic glued after asti every second of every day for a year. that's that's approximately how much thawo up to and she other awful visuals. remembering right now since she did that study. it's so that's why we're eatinga credit card, because these on although they don't break down like becos smaller particles. r all plastic. now, when we wash them all fibers are shed intohe in down the drain and they're often small to be filtered out. and our wng mhines don't have filters unless. you live in france where they make them put them on their solution. the cs obledon't want to pay for and anyway, tha's jenny's story.

but i got off track. sorry, i get excited about talk. i'm sorry. i mean there a there's a gender anecdote that i really like too. i think you made me move. you went around the grocery er and oh, god, she okay. people cryrket. i'm warning you and you'll never look at the■. same. i said, sure, yet i'm a i've been a newspaper. i've been to airplane crashes. yo can't me i came away feeling so sick to my stomach after the. so we spent all this time the rice aisle. she challenged me. find the product and the most and the rice section and you know, you about what? al packaging is for a product that maybes four variations of the. typical supermket and this was in a wal-mart supercenter and finally i found i think this is most sustainable product but the unhealthiest it was in a simple

cardboard box and ite most proc, the you know, atiural thing on there. and then the organic really like harry heritage rice unrecyclable combined plastics pouch is that only you only really kind of piece and it was it was so disheartening and the packaging is confused saying you cabe recycled came as poorly marked or not marked at all and it's so ary ere is maybe five different varieties of rice white a couple little it was wal-mart so they didn't have that extensiveendless and and it sorf dawned on me that we were not being sold. the food was an afterthought. this packaging and real product and the rice was along for the ride. it was really awful. i, i would just go rightp always

do or what's on sale. and now i'm paying atttion likeh three things in my bag, you know, that'cai wa to buy this stuff. i go to the farmer's market a lot. yeah. the thing that stuck out to me hearing that was around the waist, really the product, the packaging is what differenti ate. that's what they invest in. yeah, that's easy because we make the packaging a best can to sell it and then the food is i think i counted, you know, 30 different varieties of rice with different brand names, but it was foe e s. we're making all this and repackaging it differently for that variety. yeah, i want t get back to transportation history. yes, sure. yeah. you said that was the biggest of waste, i think. i think you said yes. so these are all so this town in georgia since the 1970s has been this kind of pathway system, it's like a secondary road system,eet wide r concrete and in different them now, all the wind through

thisn of 30,000 people, almost thousand now as and it goes everywhere to, the local airport. and for them all the restaurants to the business district, the industrial park and cars are allowed on this separate road system. and there's crossings that are ed wre it intersects with the regular roads and the main vehicle theyrive carts. in califa.vehicles. evs. they think of you as golf cand . a lot of them have very prime m. they go about 40 miles and that's everybody has a regular car, but that's their main form transportationause it turns out this whole that we need tesl really match how we drive. i mean, 50% of our trips in a r or three miles or less, 93% of them are 25 m's we actually d

town has figured out that well these these golf carts are how ■we drive maybe i went the high school parking lot and it had it strapped these golf carts but it was like line after line of these golf carts with a high school banners on it. mascots is a rite of in this town. it's so normalized they're this kind of transportation that when you turn 15 and if i can drive school now and you're driving a golf, you go it out, you know with dates in your golf cart because normal there you know sounds crazy abnormal i got there but when i arrived i had talked to going to show you around you're going to love this and that was really aol you could do some things. it's a really crappy substitute car is a really crappy substitute for, a golf cart, b ause that's how we actually drive. why i think if■■vnto clean carse

't be trying to convince people to get really expensive enormously heavy cars to replace what they have.think we be pitcs the best second car you'll ever turn out to be the one you mostly drive for short trips, which are most tr. imagine 93, you do 93% in a smal format vehicle of your driving test because mostly iv mostly you know, our main trips are to the grocst go to eat andree is a con average drive about in america 37 miles a day. that's it that's our average day, our aveles a day. so we could get -- in cars if we could convince people, keep your car, just keep it, park. they do in the street. most of the if only 9% o trips, 7% of your trips are in a fossil fuel powered car.

we get really close to where we need to be. that would make a huge difference. policy to to get there too. and there's a name for someone to kind of impact those changes that was in the book and out of me and i think the person talked about can you talk about the margins oh tarha to. so sarah nichols, is this the real driving force and the architect behind producer responsibility. polluters pay laws and in fact, that piece of legislation that she crafted has to all other states that have known they're it as a kind of model. so amazing. sarah but she only could it if she could get volunteer hours to support her inmunities in maine that she was visiting and talking to and she and ely her career of environmental advocacy she had this like wonder woman type of of volunteer d and now

she says i always go to coy toind my marge and so in the book there's there's a list of ten wa tbe a marge. that she wrote and gave gave for the book. but what it really marge is sarah it is a person and. it could be a female or male. but she is a person who knows. she wants to do something and to to be part of of creating change, positive change, but 'reow to go about it. so one of her margins in book is a woman named laura marston, who was starting refill store in portland, maine, and. she was a real embrace over she

sarah how can i, uh how can i sort of take part in the political process? so actually walked her through or here's how you comment on legislation and this is the website you go to put yourself out as a witness and and to it testimony. and pretty soon she was actually testifying before the she said i didn't know i could do this and i didn't know actuay part of the solution. uuthat's not just your own individual action, but acting as part of the political process too, to makellective effort. and and it worked. of marches behind this piece of thatas a bipartisan bill in the maine legi is powerful and and un it it got rid of the logjam other states were

emboldened to do the same thing because you know the first mover had been had been solved for sure. were to start with a video. you know, we've been doingcc a t of talking and things like that, but can we get the video? weld we've already said all this stuff, but the visuals to g that. with my computer this before. there we go. all right what if our biggest environmental crises from plastic are all symptoms of just one disease? and it' something we can actually fix that's, right? the planet has an in waste. we live in the most civilization in history. and this goes way beyond what we roll to the curb week. it's in what we eat and drink and how we cook. it's the main thing you pay for and your utility bills. and at the gas pump waste is so eply embedded our daily lives

that we see it if we see it all. but here's the good new doesn'to be about giving up stuff we love to stuff we're going to lose more. and that shift in thinking can save the planet. my name is edward■u humes and my new book is total garbage how we can fix and heal our world. it's the story of game and ordinary people in our neighborhoods tacklingnmtal cats it drives.aner turnedurban farml grass lawn food for whole neighborhoods where it's needed most. there' town in minnesota that■owith tho make wind, solar their cash crop. and y'll meet the seattle dad, who's father and son. we can project is now a werhouse social impact company

just in plastics, otherwise it would otherwise become landfill or pollution and just that's just a taste of the total garbe story. sorry you're supposed to do at theeg i think we're probably the q&a section. like to ask, they can about us. do you want to give us instructions there? you want to come up. we can come in here and ask your questions. you. just like main. so it's+# not. hello. hello. i can. i think everybody can hear. re h question you but

i'm definitely not walking out of here without at least two of your booksgn them. one for my daughter, who's doing of course. and green work inorad some ccu economy type projects in southeast seattle. got five restaurant owners who are willing to hold a signedyer plastic cork and styrofoam and i'm trying to understand how i work with bridwell to mand i reachedl well and sresidential channel se which i will do. but i also wanted to make a point but this can something that if a pilot like this or little pilot could show oh this is how much waste we

held back the rest through working with restaurants, then maybe we can to the city and say anybody from the city out there. and say, youwell to do the comml department. yeah. so thank you. yeah, we'd love to work with re. we're a relatively small team, so we've chosen oct there's even bookstores andaurants and other commercial establishments. i think connecting us with the city and, with your restaurant, we'd love to chat aee we do have some restaurants and coffee shops that we do limited pickups from and so we can see capabilities. and we are near south seattle, so it's just a quick little hop skip and jump to where our interest.s so thank you for your

and oh the mike's■ work. amazing. and above this i'vei just wanted to share that i, larger y outlets i have exe salad that are frequented by worng ti. and i would go to place i like is burger other time but i one time i was like well they don't even have compostable items that you put your things on and i was going to get my tuna there and then i was like, no. ppened twice. and then another time i went there and they had totally compostable, garishly compost of all things to put your food in and and i really like the way the upgrades are you they plastic utensils and as a the store because i found some like i just love to keep they're not throwing corners and they're combustible kind of but even have this attractive compostabls

that you can undo and it was ths is a real example of commercial upgrade happening in the impossible that' on thank you for that shift is really important and i'm glad you asked about that because it's just such a simple solution or bringing your own container to bring home your take of is and also ask or even have silverware that. you can your cutlery that you can use while eating there too. i would love more salad bars to do that type of thing as well for sure. i have ast mentioned working in california and washington and people in maine, other think y'd about making■d changes to legislation, working with libus?

how do you think driving change changes depending on where you are because you know the difference between larger cities, smaller cities or just differndsets across the u.s. and of cou but i so i didn't start writing ok i d/s a journalist, you know, communities where i lived.c of and that's where i■ for the kind of solutions to these problems i wanted to highlight in the book. and so tried to have a broad geographical representation becae there's cool things going on in different places know who do you know who would the most renewable state in the country is? it is surprising? it surprised me. it's it's so the farmers there got an i started following us ten years ago forming electrical cooperative and using that investing in turbines and their

cornfields and their, you know, t'ng tractors around the turbines and and their harvesting the wind, which is a great r iowa. and so they have incredibly 8[ there they are. if thecoh'd be the second most renewable powered country in the world, which is crazy there their greatest by renewable energy, you know, rivaling washington don't do it because they're climate activists, they do it be■ncac sense for them because. it is part of their economy. and they'd be foolish not to exploit and it's a completely read state, but they■p■k also helping to save theorld, save the planet. and that's they're efficiency and on and they saw the waste in their ests.

and that was a tremendous motivation for them. and think whatever when we can agree on things that aren't divisive, we can make tremendoui learned those figures. and the secret then is to, you know, find what works for local communities, bh off s■=gislation per se and i think we need both. we can't shame consumers into like the lik there's all litter ads to it's all our fault we have to fixain our our individual collective do can drive those top down solutions but it also has to work the other way and i on plastic pollution we really need a down itution but on renewable energy where we're seeing a lot of progress and.

i mean, seattle're right. i think they only a tiny little bit of coal left maybe, but one thing on the plastic, just add my perspective a little bit. i definitely agree with the government side, the policy, but i thinkhat ■can do and small businesses, large businesses sometimes move a littlete lot of these laws that are around know they'll be kick in in 20, 30■e o"w■=r 2035 or someg like that. well how many millions of pounds the rainbow community and others like us save between now and that? innovation on the processing side? so when those things do happen, there's moremestically to recyc. so i think it's undoing the pace and knowing the role that consumers and kind of fast moving groups can do and then also advocate for the top as people like sarah in maine and have doing. but i'm thinking, well, i mean guess your generation are really intoif tse economy would you would you be

supportive o so and that's that's very powerful it's just the most fast growing part of the apparel industry reuse i saw some stats it blew me away. 50% of americans 2022 bought a used of clothing, 100% of the stage two. probably. well, get yourselves6, ahead. you know, there's a lot of there's there's very encouraging things happening. i mean, we have a huge challenge, even if all these great things happen all over away, we'd still also to be building resilience and to deal with the damage that's already been making now will mahi future andt from getting worse. so that's thank you. thank you you.

first off, i juswayou. this is giving us all hope here. i think this is great. so my questi is, what do you think about waste to energythat's a mixed b. it has a history of of imposing additional burdens. the and communities with the least resources in power. you know that's where the facilities up. on the other hand you have countries÷q like denmark who hae figured out how to make waste energy plants that emit less than a backyard barbecue view of some of the really nasty things that come out of it. and it's a big part of fuel i 'e considered that power sector so i, i think that trash is a terrible fuel because not it

just doesn't produce as much energy as other other things that we can get energy out but as a better than nothing solution maybe it's okay for some communities. yeah. i haven't dutocien too deeply. i know we operated in minneapolis where they have a facility and it's quitcontrove'g to change it and move it. i think from what ed mentioned as well around just the community, around it has had health problems to. other people i've got stoves and things like that. you know, thme are asthma and those sorts of things i think can cause it there. so i think it depends on the details of there are examples where i think it probably is a positive, but the's also, you know, how is it implemented? where is it placed? whatit can seen as oh, it's put it all in the garbage and it'll take care of it. there are higher up uses reuse are environmentally and ev is for the similar because it's a

mechanical rather than burning that is notes plastic dust an often well contained depngapture carbon and the emissions. and you can turn it into electricity now. so i mean the technology is evolving. oh, well the themy■z■d my first trash book garbage algae. i the main character was a place i called garbage mountain, which was the biggest landfill in the country,ndy for me. and but they a■ and extracted the methane emi and it was enour for 50,000 homes. so let's that's how much 50 years of trash in l.a. it made the 12th to structure in the city. so know but i don't think that's yeah well obviously doing away meantime we have all this waste

where's it going to go to have o something. no, no. you know, some of itprobably. that's the thiea tha recycle everything and, don't send anything to landfill. that was kind took hold of a lot progressive in the in the mistake it actually carries a much than if you just buried the stuff safely in adf least buriec doesn't give it all get it doesn't te disrupting emissions. so and it's not getting into the rise and then all bets are thank you. for what sounded like ant reusae cup just got cooked. so thank you for that. i looks g script. andreas, i have a question wifel

cuomers. thank you. you can have some coasters you made out of court. oh, green fridayah, that was a . how difficult would it be to take your business case and move it to municipal. ha thought of that have selling your idea smaller towns? maybe not seattle but other and and my question to you is how success is are miss palliatives or states i guess it's states that have deposits for bottles is that really successful or is it just the state of raising money and never giving it back to the customers? well, let'set's let's take that first. it does vary state to statebu te deposit was out recycle other state in the country. i mean not even of made it hardo

redeem those those containers so a lot of people just put it in general recycling and don't get their deposit back. is unfortunate. it's much less likely to get hat way than in the in the deposit system. but other states are really good at it and so on. thed with some cities, even many, not many, several in washington. the city of redmond has done stuff with us around pick ups of things that we manage that traditional waste haulers don't styrofoam home and holid that. and then the city of federal definitely won't to give them credit. we worked with them on a had sot would subsidize our membership cost for lowerthe community an'g fans, all those types of things. i think the of the struggles have been just the nature of the industry and these long ten plus year contracts with very large gauls who are very

much protect the status quo a seen as this little pesky startup that is trying to do things differently. and so there's not even been a willingness to really meet with when some of the larger cities ounderta things that even to keep our model from entering even there's tons of demand and people voluntarily do it so we would love to do more. and i want to giveci and federal way that have found a way to to make it work. thank you. i want to mention one one thing that we didn't really talk about in this, besides the plastics, rodwell deals wit me was usedyes nobody knows what to do with them, but now they're going to people who need glasses and they're finding a second life through various that they theirh i dids of seattle back in 18, it■%tarted just things that i had around my house and our basement room and eventuallymuries to us and actually of the read well

featured categories that we have today came from that experience of people saying, well, about this, what about that? prescription and were cracked. and so someone said, hey, what about glasses? and so we went down this path of researching it and lions club is great ornidoes eyeglass recycling. and so they have a facilitynolyo from here. and it was a phenomenal little tool they have dishwashers that wash them out. they hin and they send people on missions, bring big bags of eyeglasses, give people in developing countries, and then the ones that are way off the deep end of prescriptions, they have ways to that, too. and turn the g of mel and other products into, things that can be recycled as well. so it was it was we've and if another number but, i'm sure tens of thousands, if not hundreds ofhoople recycle since starting out every month. all of the we've we have time for maybe one more■0

home i don't think it's that but i'm a red i look at like the next four things that are coming out right. but my challenge is, is that when i have an object and i'm like, i think this something red bull does. but then i look and, it's i only know the list like the next four. and so i haven't been a customer long enough to actually know em. so when i'm making that decision, am i just completely missing somewhere that there's a massive list saying, here's we take? yeah and audience member can answer that one but if you have the we have an app that people use to manage pick ups and that goes someone help me out here i want to say theext 14 weeks something like that so you can see a much, much longer list of ■jwhat's coming. we also introduce something about a year categories.

and so there's six or so that yove knmany suits, one day andon't you don't have any of those, but you have red or bottle caps or yohavee corks. there's there's things like that that we wanted to just make it. so every tthmething that was kind of our goal. okay. so i think the other part was, was it your app only an apple phone? yes. yes. thank you. so now because i tried learn and i am an android users and so then i only know the next four weeks. wa of the changeable ones. really the next one. yeah. so your android. you like. we like to know bands allowed he maybe if the municipal. we'd have more funds invest in a an android app so you know we'd love to do it. i think it's just a matter of resources have a small development team and it's a big investment. need to see the list. on o website.

yeah. is it okay. yeah. you could i think if you're stuck, let help it red. well no. and we'll look up your account d tell the next group so we can, we can get we have a phenomenal memberslp give you te ability, give you a list. let's say you have really good things i about to 14 weeks isn't 52 weeks like 14 days. well it's every two weeks to be 28. it's about thele 's almost the whole year. so yeah these■8 thank. thank you. all right, let'shink of two speakers for being in.

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