tv Documentary RT July 6, 2019 11:30am-12:01pm EDT
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all film begins in hawaii in the middle of the pacific ocean in spite of the island's remote location it is also foreman that day and to the epidemic of the 20th century plastic. and plastic pollution is littering beaches and endangering certain species of animals no matter how remote or out of reach the end is. in this laboratory in the north of the occupied ago scientists study marine animals not plastic at least in theory. and no idea what that. but it's certainly plastic. jessica
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perelman is a biologist accustomed to finding plastic in fish stomachs she has started a very unique connection. casually often plastic bags. and this was all coiled up in the stomach when i found it had no idea what it wasn't all that it just. or did you react when this storm i was shocked i started you know documenting it measuring it taking photos showing whoever else was around in the lab and we were kind of. we were just you know a shock to think that that these fish are are really ingesting this i mean. to her disbelief the scientists has found plastic in an unlikely specimen known as the long fish. the young researcher was not expecting such a surprising discovery when she began her work on this species. the.
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fish live at a depth of about 200 to 400 meters and they're clearly you know coming in contact with plastic and it appears that plastic is is truly a deeper problem that we might have imagined. even swimming at these depths the long sit fish manages to swallow trivial plastic objects. i mean occasionally you might find a brand name such as this decide bottle label. what is this so this is a label from a water bottle dishonor bottle clearly and found amongst the plants that fish stomach. is a. design design is a pretty well known. bottled water company. you know finding finding a label such as this in the stomachs. makes it that easy to determine where you
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know where it may have originated. this is always more to things than just watch. and decide is much more than just want to know bottled. in fact sunny is one of the world's best selling bottled water brands. and if you are not familiar with destiny you will certainly know the name of the group behind it the coca-cola company. everyone knows coca-cola but not everyone necessarily knows that the group is in charge of dozens of other brands does own the is part of the coca-cola company and sprite 2 there is also minute maid powerade and of course from one of the company's flagship brands. every year the group sells more than
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$120000000000.00 bottles across the globe that's almost the bottles the 2nd and this mass production is creating a devastating mass pollution. in january 28th and the multinational made a bold announcement by 2030 the brand is promising a world without waste. and its james quincey coca-cola c.e.o. who is leading the movement. what we need to create is the circular color we need to create value for the out there is absolutely doable a world without waste thanks to unlimited plastic recycling but how reliable are the promises that this multinational can recycling really make this problem go away . with plastic becoming a global catastrophe brianna. yes to gauge if the company's promise is and on
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competence secret strategy which contradicts that convincing prejudice and none of us who have those we don't know that they found these are just starting over effect on the political front for decades the multinational has been aware of the damage that it's plastic bottles off capable of causing but responsibility has never appeared to for long then. what is the reason behind this because ultimately it means it means higher costs for them in africa fall from the soda giants american headquarters we are going to expose the truth behind the so-called recycling economy that coke is trying to promote in the similarly you are going to see. what is the path to help get us into this particular mode tied together then that's when i. come on one last drink for the road welcome to the wonderful world of the plastic promises of the coca-cola company.
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the. coca-cola and plastic have a long standing relationship and one that is full of surprises. to find out more we traveled to the united states to meet a man who is well informed on the subject he lives in this small house in the dounia. i got back nice to nice to meet you yeah really welcome to join here coming out of this if we go to 5 guys right now i doubt what i have to drive is good that i wanted to find out yeah. but elmo is a historian. he's the author. the book about coca-cola
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a best seller it retraces the multinationals and time environmentalists strategy particularly from the sixty's on woods when past it began to revolutionize consumer society we begin to see massive amounts of litter piling up around the country coca-cola trying to respond to this wow we're getting blamed for all this aluminum waste all this ultimately plastic waste what do we do and one of the things they did was partner with a organization called keep america beautiful what. are you here keep america beautiful you think like wow this sounds like an organization started by a bunch of kind of bearded environmentalist or at least that's what i thought. you know because you see the sign everywhere in the united states is still a very present organization but it was founded surprisingly by the beverage brewing in canning and packaging industries right the idea was that let's tell consumers
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they're the bad ones they're the litterbugs they're throwing this away industry shouldn't be blamed for all this waste. and so this native american looking like a character from an old weston makes the keep america beautiful and huge that sense some people. are bright. as one species. and this guy throws in his car he throws this packaging waist down it is feet and then and this great camera man unless the camera up towards the crying indians face and there's a tear in the snare it comes on the screen and says. people start pollution people can stop it right and it's this message.
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consumers are the problem right not us industry but consumers are. since the success of this ad but in the us in the seventy's keep america beautiful has branched out. now there are organizations throughout the world designed using the exact same model and new ways backed by the company with the red and white logo. i. want to stand how coca-cola is recycling its reliable old consumer guru technique we have to go to their son i not to the chateau but to an event that is being held at the town. it is an important conference with several elected officials from all over europe
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and they're here to speak about the men in this at that and it's serious stuff they're even discussing the color of that trash cans that every catholic on. the holiday that. he immediately goes. to conclude the meeting the guest of honor makes a speech this time it's the director of keep scotland beautiful an association partly financed by coca-cola like keep america beautiful and it seems derek robertson is a fan of soda. and listen closely some of his slip ups are extremely telling. i have a clear well i don't finish and so all of the things out. there get get. as it does here we go yeah it was exciting she went there as
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well to the south and came to something right here on. the emphasizing individual rather than collective responsibility clearly nothing has changed since the advertisement of the native american crank. assume that you were drinking google it this morning is the single use a lot of plastic and the problem today. is the plastic i mean. stick packaging has a very useful function in society and we need to we need to remember that the products are very creative they are very very useful and they obviously perform a function as important as how you me again as individuals dispose of these packages so coca-cola for example one of the packaging rightly want to be ready to get it fiery safely and music. what you don't want is a and then environment according to the head of an association which claims to fight against pollution coca-cola is supposedly the example to follow but does he admit to being financed by the american multinationals he asked the question
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a few minutes later who is financing your targets. in order to finance these are the targets nobody anticipated. would you want to doing here i don't know i mean i'm asking you these are judged until this question i see my organization and scotland as my digital ok i'm fundamentally fruitarian committed to that will i volunteer my saying. by asking the finance question we have identified it touchy subject the conflict of interest in this book of conflict of interest do you think there's going to ensure that our city of thing you are trying to create a measure of our fun site of interest about one thing you're trying to do you think there is one no. one source are you have sponsors again that's it's a different model than a mob or to start explaining her child if you think that the secret to her doing and good humor terakhir you so if you were to see see what it says bring her to
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a house once i want an option for the scottish government discouragement its policies and they hire experts and some companies and some companies and i'm. like i want to join more than. mcdonald's bring starbucks. most of real or some big brand names. we had to insist since the sixty's coca-cola has been paving the way for other. multinationals. with just manufacture come sentenced to public wealth. when the ruling classes project themselves. with the financial merry go round to listen to the one percent so.
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we can all middle of the room sick. i mean real news real world. join me every thursday on the alex simon sure and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. as we speak large organize care of it are on the march to the united states. and then 70 and a player coming out for carrying. just wars remains littering dad. this is a virtual invasion of our country. so far bigger than anything we
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see. in the form of. you know it's going to stuff it in. a nice powerful. as you do is you know we're going to see a more locals who noticed. that. the . but what if the soda giant really had decided to change a few months ago upon launching its program for a world without waste the company announced a set of very ambitious measures to resolve the plastic pollution problem for
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coca-cola the solution is recycling the concept is simple collect used bottles to make new ones out of them. coca-cola promises to put 50 percent recycled plastic in its bottles by 2030 and that's on a global scale that. is absolutely doable there's a model there for the china's a lot of parts of the world on how to create value out of plastic and get it we use . of course that would be great news. but with all that we have learned about the company's strategies we wanted to check how often they actually keep that promise is the american company has been promising to make bottles out of recycled plastic begins take the year 2008 for example in its report on sustainable development coca-cola announced that it wanted to put 25
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percent recycled plastic in all of its bottles by 2015. for a long time we so want to find any trace of this in the report from 2015. the company never really states whether or not that promise was kept we end up finding . single 12.4 percent at 1st glance it's easy to believe that this is the percentage of recycled plastic used by coca-cola but after taking a closer look 12.4 percent turns out to be the total percentage of recycled and renewable materials used the problem is that recycled and renewable plastic are 2 very different things. to decrypt the soda giant's jargon we arranged a meeting with an ngo that has been interested in the coca-cola group for
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a long time. is a specialist in ocean pollution and she's going to explain how the multinational twists words and statistics. are best. see you put your best sort of the visit of the most i mean the most they are not. supplanted every country. back to 11. renewable plastic is essentially plastic made from a plant base but it's still plastic and therefore it's still bad for the environment that clears up the words now let's move on to the statistics it's all concerned about. not 7 vegetarian now. so 6 feet. that's soon set for the plastic or sickly.
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and our lives day when you found that a special projects funded me does a difference and we are clearly very far from the target from the n.g.'s point of view coca-cola is recycling targets are 1st and foremost a marketing ploy to ensure that the consumer keeps buying their plastic bottles. which is an element as it's. called out of us the clash lessers volatile. sabbats protests were so long that sanju would have called you some class seats to tell you. the pool of college costs only alexis on fox says to the. coca-cola subtle statistical distortions are bad but the worst is yet to come. we uncovered something far worse in this envelope which contains dozens of letters and
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internal records from coca-cola these documents should have remained confidential but they were published anonymously on the internet a few months ago we carefully sifted through all the information and found that we could not be further from the ambitious a world without waste slogan. amidst the mass of information this document caught our attention it's dated from 2016 and signed by the coca-cola as a law being manager in brussels. the bullet points are all the measures that europe could adopt but which do not coincide with coca cola's interests. in the mix we find carbon pricing restrictions on the usage of caffeine and eat you ban of advertising to children under $12.00. in other words anything that
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could lower the company's turnover figure on the right there's a circle entitled fight back these are all the european measures that coca-cola has decided to fight against through lobbying. and amongst the measures that coca-cola downright refuses we find increased collection and recycling targets. you heard it coca-cola wants to fight against increased recycling targets in europe while they're promising the exact opposite in their public pledges. other talent. 0. in that fight back category we also discovered that the company wants to fight
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against the deposit system. this is one of the systems that is actually effective in combating pollution and the oldest in the game are well aware of this. deposit system works like this when you buy your drink you pay let's say a euro for it and you also pay an extra charge the deposit let's say $0.20 per bottle in total it'd cost you $1.00 euro 20 but if you bring back the bottle you'd get your $0.20 back and so all of a sudden no one wants to throw their bottles away anymore. and what is most ironic is that the returnable bottle is virtually how coca-cola began in the fifty's a bottle of coke was not always served by a pin up girl instead it was served in a glass bottle with
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a deposit. so once empty the bottles would go back to the factory where they would be washed and reused this creates significantly less waste for the environment. the system worked very well but coke decided to put an end to it and use plastic instead completely disregarding one particular scientist's recommendations. would you like to know how coke decided to get rid of the return of the old bottle that the company has forever at. attempted to keep this story from getting out but we tracked down the only man able to tell it. today he is enjoying a discreet retirement in michigan in the united states i'm going to give it to reach him nice to me it's nearly thank you very much for the look on our precentor thank you thank you very much. and this gentleman is called a send down aked he was with the american environmentalists agency from many is
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he's also the 1st engineer in the world to investigate the ecological impact of coca-cola bottles. that does a very imitation there are smaller the typical quote battles about this this big green translucent all riskless. all risk less. than a is referring to the beginning of the 70s. that was when the coca-cola company began to show an interest in plastic and to reach out to him. what they wanted to know is if you take into account all other and environmental impacts on nature what is the best system the engineer works for over a year comparing the environmentalists impact of gloss bottles to that of any medium cans and plastic bottles he costs analyzes the data makes graphs does
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complex calculations and he finally comes to this conclusion a glance at the table shows that the returnable glass bottle provided it makes $15.00 trips before it is discard is the ecological container proposed also. thanks to this report the coca-cola company knows full well at the start of the seventy's that return apple gloss pollutes significantly less than plastic. but the company would never publicly shed this information. we put this together for them. they didn't publish it you know why. they were not interested in him to have everything the public see. the total picture why because they want to keep it in keep it quiet as to which way they were going to go. this
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is the new life way plastic. i watch them slowly introducing the plastic bottles easy go. for want i even remember clearly one time going to hold going allman to same to bridget my wife as they go into the plus or bottle the told you they would and they are not growing it's just a 1st step sound nice that 10 eco plastic bottles playlist and one glass bottle. with this add that for its new plastic bottle released in 1975 coca-cola berries ass and honest report once and for all. it's life's tough it's easy to let. the american company never looks back coca-cola imposes its plastic bottle everywhere and then isn't the only one flooding the
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market it's a tidal wave from the eighty's on with plastic devastates beaches. and the 1st ecologists begin to protest against pollution. certain american states consider a forced return of the deposit. little do they know the company's immense power. coca-cola has been a significant force behind. fighting legislation that would put deposits on containers or put some kind of price on packaging waste there are newsletters that talk about all the successes that coca-cola is having around the country and it's almost like this great you know celebration letter every day every week we defeated this deposit system in this state and we defeated it here why do you think they were fighting so hard against deposit system want as
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the reason behind this because ultimately it means higher costs for them in the end this was a way of this was forcing them to internalize their pollution costs this was a market mechanism that's very smart to try and get industry to recognize that you have to deal with this waste. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy people in sunday shouldn't let it be an arms race is on very dramatic development only really i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. my 7 years doing drugs my nephew was still in drugs my system just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america's public enemy number one in the
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united states is drug abuse the sort of one and the users in the prison population who are we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. the ready war on drugs. there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for. sins for owner minor offenders in the dry. it's a lot watching your children grow up in miss you in waves in saved by daddy as you're walking out of a business it's just it doesn't get easier. so the temporary orders that i'm on or before i go to final trial actually do allow me to address them as james and his male pronouns but i cannot do that in front of 3rd parties who know him as a girl so basically i can't go to a school i keep them away from any friends he might have at school but known as
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a girl at my home he's known as james and i use male pronouns when i'm prohibited from doing right now is trying to convince him that he's actually a boy. good goal is accused of interfering in last year's referendum on abortion in our land sparking protests in dublin amongst religious conservatives also coming up on the program tensions rise between london on to run over the seizure on the really an old timer off the coast of japan roll to take or to their roof the ship can be implemented for 2 more weeks. of german motorists reject the climate activism of swedish teenager of fun bird this being mocking stickers on their vehicle. over 810-0000 people signed up edition calling on the french president to intervene in the case of a mother whose life support systems are being.
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