What's Up with Plastic, Berks?

Emily Smedley, Environment and Energy Program Officer, hosts a conversation with representatives from What'SUP Berks, a local initiative whose mission is to reduce and eventually eliminate the use of Single-Use Plastic (SUP) bags in all stores, restaurants, and businesses in Berks County by 2027. By providing educational opportunities, engaging with community leaders, and encouraging the use of reusable bags, What'SUP Berks hopes to ultimately help pass legislation banning SUP in the Commonwealth. Listen to the episode now to learn about the environmental, health, and financial repercussions SUP has on the Berks community--and how you can join the fight against SUP. Tom Crotty, Executive Team Member, and Linda Dapcic-Angst, Treasurer of What'SUP Berks, join the conversation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Sparking Change, the official podcast of Burks County Community Foundation. Join us each month to learn about the good work happening in Burks County. Each episode will feature some of the change makers who make our community a better place to live. Opinions expressed in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of Burks County Community Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, I'm Emily Smedley, the Environment and Energy Program Officer at Burks County Community Foundation. On today's episode titled What's Up with Plastics, Burks, we'll talk with Burks County Community Leaders about the benefits of eliminating single-use plastics. Joining us today are two dedicated volunteers from What's Up Burks, the community initiative looking to eliminate single-use plastic bags and educate residents on the impact of plastic waste. Welcome to both of you. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Can you both introduce yourself and share your role with What's Up Burks and maybe a little bit about your connection to Burks County? Tom, we can start with you.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Sure. My name is Tom Crawdy. I am the acting president of What's Up Burks, have been for about a little over a year now, I guess. I am not a native Burks County and I've been living here for about 18 years, though, and went to graduate school in Philly, and southeastern PA is kind of home to me. My wife is a graduate of Boyertown High School and uh native Berks County, and as were her parents. So it's a beautiful place to live and raise families, and so that's part of what motivates me.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

My name is Linda Dabsick Angst, and I am the treasurer for What's Up Berks and the Grant Writer for What's Up Burks. And I also am not a native of Berks County, however, from New York originally, but I've been here since 1978. So it's been a long time I've been in Berks County. It's a beautiful area, great farmlands, and I'd like to continue to see it to stay that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Well, thank you. We brought this group of people here today, thanks to the innovation fund of Berks County Community Foundation, which provided some of the funding for What's Up Burks to get started. Tom and Linda, at the time the application was approved, the organization was relatively new. Can you tell me how What's Up Burks got started?

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Well, I'll tell you the I think of it as the origin story of What's Up Burks. Myself and retired Judge Art Grimm and his wife Louise were participating in a citizens climate lobby meeting, which has a local Burks chapter. And it's a national, international organization actually focusing on climate change, but pretty much at the federal level. And so I was sitting at this meeting with Louise and Art Grimm and feeling like it's such a big issue and the national government sometimes doesn't seem too responsive. Louise asked, is there something we could do more locally? And she said, What about single-use plastic bags? And I said, Yeah, I could get behind that and work for it. And Art joined in as well. So that is how it really got started. And then people like Linda and Nancy Sellers and just so many others kind of got invited or connected through word of mouth and networking. And here we are.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Linda, how did you get involved? Well, I'm friends with Nancy Seller. I had not met Tom or Louise and Art before that. And we decided to have a meeting and she asked me if I would come along, single-use plastics. And I said, you know, once you retire, you always look for something to do. So it sounds like a good thing. Then I met them. And with me being somebody who believes in nature and loves nature and hikes a lot and does that kind of stuff, I thought this is a cause I can really get behind. So I joined and here we are now.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Here we are today. Before we get a bit more into what's up is doing, can you tell us what is the deal with single-use plastics? Why should we try to eliminate them?

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Linda and I both feel that over the past year or so that we've been involved with what's up, we've learned a lot. And our awareness of the deal with single-use plastic has really expanded beyond what I really imagined. So the thing about it is I'd say in three or four broad categories, the impact of single-use plastic on our environment, the impact on our health, on human health, and the impact on our economy. And the cost of litter and waste is pretty astounding, is what I would say.

SPEAKER_02 4:34

Yeah, it really is. I mean, and it's plastic is something that remains in our environment forever. There's no way to get rid of it as of today. So we may say that we recycle plastic, but in reality, we don't. It some plastics, levels ones and twos, are recyclable. They can be made into lower grade plastic that is no longer recyclable. So it remains in our environment and it affects, like Tom said, everything. You know, our health, it's in the air, it's in the water, it's in it's all over the world from Mount Everest all the way to the Mariana Trench. They found a plastic bag in the 35,000 feet down in the ocean. That to me is incredible. And that's why I got hooked on this. And again, starting to read things and learning more about this myself in my own house. I looked at all the plastic in my own house. And I've made some significant changes in the past year. Absolutely significant. My kids don't know who I am anymore. But it really has made a difference, I think. And hopefully it will make a difference in my health as well.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Many of our listeners uh I think it's issues like Linda describes that my initial motivation was single-use plastic bags, they're a pain. They're hanging on trees, they're on the roadway. So I thought of it more as litter and kind of a visual issue. But it's as Linda's describing, it really goes so much deeper than that and so much more kind of challenging in terms of the impact, negative impacts single-use plastic has on us.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Aaron Ross Powell So Tom, you mentioned two things I want to dive into a little bit more here. You mentioned the cost of litter and also mentioned the health outcomes, the negative health outcomes that come from these single-use plastics. Would you be able to dive into that a little bit more? Tell the folks listening to the podcast what you mean?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I can with help from Linda. Of course. So, yeah, the cost. Pendot spends an average of $13 million a year on litter pickup, on cleanup. And especially at this time of year when winter is ending and we're driving around roadways. I don't know, I live just off at Route 222, and it's a mess. There's bags in the trees, in the bushes along the roadway. And my understanding is Pendot waits a little bit into the spring, and then they have a big cleanup campaign. Well, that cleanup campaign costs money, and it's our taxpayer dollars. The city of Reading, as I understand it, a study a few years ago found that they spend $2 million a year to clean up and manage litter and illegal dumping. So that's a huge chunk of cost for a city like Reading. There are a lot of needs, you know, in the city. To spend that much money is really something. Then you asked too about health impacts. Linda's done more reading on this, so I'll defer to her. But I think we're learning more and more as time goes by about the potential impacts on our health.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Yeah, I think plastics, like I said, are everywhere. So they're in the oceans, which means they're in the fish. They're in the agriculture because sewage gets dumped and as fertilizer. So it's in our plants. It's everywhere. So ultimately it's in our bodies. And there's lots of research now being done because we now have the awareness more. And the chemistry people, I love this one chemist named John Warner. He developed a lot of patents and all these different chemical applications and stuff. But when his child was born, his child had a birth defect and his child died at age two. And he said to himself, Did I have anything to do with that? My being around chemicals every day, did I have anything to do with that? So he started a thing called green chemistry, where you test. Chemists were not taught to test whether a chemical is harmful. So we have thousands and thousands of chemicals, and we don't really know whether they're harmful or not. In fact, in the United States, we only have nine banned chemicals in the United States. Europe has 11,000 banned chemicals. So there's a big difference there. So what we're finding is through my reading this year, just alone, that there's a doctor, Shannon Swan, she's been doing a lot of research into reproductive issues. And they're finding that she did a study, a very small study, of six couples who were having reproductive issues, weren't able to get pregnant. And she did a 12-week study, and the study showed that the sperm count for men particularly was way low when they did the initial testing. And when she went in and taught them how to eliminate plastic as much as they could from their lives, after 12 weeks, three of those couples got pregnant after trying for two and a half years, and their sperm counts went way up. So to me, that's like, oh, really? So if it that's affecting not only the babies that are born, because babies in the embryos are also have plastics in them.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Microplastics.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Microplastics. Yes. And so what's happening as they're developing as well, even to the point where she's been doing research with this in terms of the male is determined whether the an embryo is a male or a female. There is a spike in testosterone. But the microplastics throw that spike off. It's an endocrine disruptor. And those endocrine disruptors change how that person turns out. It's really amazing what we don't know yet and what we're just beginning to find out.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

So let me say a little bit about what is the what are microplastics. So microplastics are bits of plastic less than five millimeters in diameter. So that's about the size of a grain of rice, or or smaller. There are also things they call nanoplastics, which are basically invisible. So they found microplastics in our blood, as Linda's describing, related to reproductive issues, but in our blood, our brain, and all parts of the body system. So again, it's not completely understood what the impact of all that, uh those plastics and the chemicals associated with plastics are, but it seems prudent to be careful about that and to know it before it's it's already a problem.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah. So what's striking me here is that most people, they and Tom, you alluded to this earlier. We see litter from the single-use plastics, particularly the bags or takeout containers, and we just kind of see it as visually unappealing. It just seems like, oh, it's it's dirty. But there's so much more underneath that, as you both have gone into. Now, you're bringing up a lot. There's a lot of work to be done, but can you tell us specifically what What's Up Burks is doing? How are you narrowing down that focus and bringing this to Burks County?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

That's a great question, Emily. I our initial conversations as a group, and Linda can jump in here anytime, but we felt like plastics in our daily life, that's a big issue. So we decided, at least initially, that kind of as a strategy, we were going to focus on single-use plastic bags. Now, in the state of Pennsylvania, there are 40 municipalities that have plastic bag bands. About half of those have what are called expansive bands. So that includes not just plastic bags, but plastic utensils, styrofoam, food containers, and straws, that kind of thing. The other half are just focused on plastic bags. And so we decided as a small group in Berks County, which by the way has 72 municipalities in it, just in Berks County alone, that we needed to focus. So we decided to focus on single-use plastic bags.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah. And I think just by talking about it, it opens up other facts and details about what plastics do to the world. So it helps to open people's eyes. So for us, I think it's been more about education, educating ourselves as well as educating everybody we come in contact with, which is for me a big thing. I like to do that, and it's been very helpful. Single-use plastics is the focus. Reading is close to passing a ban, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 12:50

This fall, they hope.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

They hope to pass it this fall. We've approached some other municipalities and they were sort of thinking about it. Lancaster Township has a ban on plastic bags. I mean, so if it can be done in Lancaster Township, it can be done in Brooks County.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

But as Linda's saying, that raising awareness and educating, that's in our mission statement. That's been our focus from the beginning. So we're just hoping people hear some of this and decide to do something about it because consumer choices are powerful. And I don't think we realize we underestimate the power that we have in our choices about what to consume, what to use, including single-use plastic bags.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, that's the truth of the matter is oil companies and gas companies are not going to stop making plastic. The only way we can stop them is by not using plastic. So we need to take control of it and not let them take control of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Aaron Powell It seems like there's been some positive reception. You mentioned that the city is considering come October, it seems, a ban on single-use plastic bags. What about the rest of the county?

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Aaron Powell We have done, I lose track of how many tabling, I call we call them tabling events, where we go to an event and we set up a table, we have sign-up sheets and information about our cause, our campaign for single-use plastic bags. We have, I think at latest count, over 700 signatures. Wow. Of people who signed in support. Linda can speak to this too, because she's been at those tabling events many times. Overwhelmingly, the response is positive. People say, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. I think there have been a couple of people with objections or disagreements, often around if we ban plastic bags, how do I pick up my dog's poop? So we have challenges like that, but very seldom. Overwhelming support. Would you say, Linda?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Yes, I would say that. What are some of those other objections? Do they come from economics, concerns with, you know, the small bodega to um restaurants?

SPEAKER_03 14:57

Yeah, I think there are some expenses related to any kind of change like this. I think the good news, though, about that is that, as I say, in Pennsylvania, 40 municipalities have made that shift successfully. And 12 states have statewide bands, which I think Linda and I w agree that that's really what we're we need. Because, you know, there are no municipal boundaries around the Schuylkill River or Topehaken Creek or, you know, those waterways which are have microplastics, those are statewide issues. And so, or regional issues at least. So that needs to be done. But yeah, I think it is a challenge for some of the smaller restaurants in bodegas to make some of these shifts. But at least in terms of using reusable bags instead of single-use bags, I think that's something people can get on board with.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

I think too that uh King of Prussia Mall is the third largest mall in the United States. They have no longer use single-use plastic bags. So if they can do it, I think the bodegas and the restaurants can do it as well.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

In terms of grocery stores, Lidl and Aldi already in Berks County, already, as part of their business model, are not using single-use plastic bags. Kimberton Whole Foods and Wyoming. So there are places that are doing it. Yeah, it's just a matter of, I think, shifting it. And I think us as consumers supporting businesses who make that shift and really showing them that we support them.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Have you seen any enthusiasm from the younger generation?

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Oh my gosh, yeah, we have. There are some very early last year in our our development, we had students, Garrett Heinemann, Stella, and uh Belinsky and Lillianne. They, as Governor Mifflin students, were very active in our organization. Stella actually designed our logo, did a beautiful job of that. I'm wearing a t-shirt with the logo on right now. So they were, they've just been wonderful in their enthusiasm. And on their own initiative, without adult supervision that I'm aware of, they developed a draft statewide ban ordinance, or law, I guess it would be, and presented it to Senator Judy Schwank. Senator Schwenk was so impressed that she took what they presented, they worked through some of the language to fit the legislative process more closely, and opened it up for co-sponsors. So looking for Senate co-sponsors in support of that ban. To me, that I was just blown away by that, that these young people would do this. And now we have two additional young folks from Fleetwood High School who are on our executive team, and they're just full of ideas and energy. I think they're going to lead the way, Emily. I really do.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

I agree. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

When I first heard about this project, I met with Art and Louise Grimm first, and they mentioned that they wanted to have students involved and they wanted to take that multi-generational approach. And honestly, that was the part that I was so enthusiastic about. Because you can have these campaigns so often. And if you're not really using that multi-generational approach, it doesn't quite move forward. But like you said, when you get the students involved, it's their future. They need to carry this forward. Yeah. My favorite part about this project and the organization as a whole. I want to wrap up here a little bit, but before we do, Linda, you mentioned some changes that you made at home with plastics. And are there any other tips? How can people jump on this bandwagon?

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Well, I'm a coffee lover. Okay. So, you know, I had that machine that you put a little pod in once in a while. And I I felt bad about the pods, so I changed to a plastic pod reusable one with a filter in it. And then I realized I was still getting plastics. So I eliminated that machine, I put it in the basement, and I went out and bought a new coffee pot, a glass coffee pot with a metal filter, and I grind my coffee every day and put it in there. Everything I use now goes into glass jars, which I've saved. Any big glass jar that I buy something in, I save. I have tons of glass jars, and then I just bring them out. If I bring orange juice home, I pour it out of the plastic into a glass jar right away. Uh I eliminated trash bags. I use paper bags for my trash. Paper lawn bags, which are paper. Oh, that's a good idea. So they decompose and and yes, they cost 65 cents a piece. However, that plastic bag is a lot cheaper, but it never decomposes. So I buy the lawn bags, put them inside my outside trash bin, which is a big trash bin, and then inside I just put it my trash in just a regular plastic container without any plastic bag in it, which my kids go, Mom, that's gross. I said I just have to wash it out every time I empty it out. It's not a big deal. Those are some of the ways. My next project is to go through my clothing because I have a lot of polyester clothing, I'm sure, which is all plastic. I'm happy to say our t-shirts are 100% cotton. I have a merino wool, 100% merino wool underneath here. Anything that goes against my body hopefully will be a natural fabric. I don't use makeup because it's even my shampoo, I now look for stuff without all the chemicals in it. If it says poly in front of it, it's off my list. My laundry detergent, I only use paper laundry. Uh it's a clean, I think there's so many brands now, Earthbreeze, Clean People. They're just little a little sheet of laundry detergent. I don't use the bottles anymore, so I don't recycle those anymore. Those are some of the things I've started to do.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

So you can see that plastic is so much a part of our lives in all kinds of ways, clothing. I didn't even realize that myself. I'm old, so I'm always cold. And so I love my fleece jacket. And sometimes we have a fire pit outside, and when the spark hits that fleece, it melts because it's plastic. It's not, it doesn't burn, it melts. I think at a simple basic level, though, and part of what our focus has been for What's Up Burks is use reusable grocery bags. Just do that. That's not hard to do. You forget once or twice or whatever, however many it takes. But that's just a great alternative to using those single use plastic bags. There are those collection points that groceries were recycling, but the best information I've read, the research, is that less than 10% of that is actually recycled. That means 90% of those bags that you put in a box, people do try to be responsible, I think. Think and return those. 90% of that is either going in a landfill where it's there for a thousand years, they say, to even break up. It never, as Linda said, never disappears. Or even worse, in my mind, it's incinerated and those chemicals and plastics go into the atmosphere. So, folks, Linda's in this pretty deep. She's she's a true believer. Uh, but if you do nothing else, get a reusable bag and stop using those single use.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah, I love the range of tips here from simple, just get one reusable bag, use that for your groceries all the way until you can change your look at the clothing labels, think about your hair and skincare products. It's a really nice range here, depending on how how deep people want to go with this issue. How can people follow the progress of What's Up Burks?

SPEAKER_03 22:52

I think the easiest way is to go to our website. We have a really excellent website. Deanna Witzel is our secretary, but also uh she and her husband, Kevin, can do that stuff, which I can't. So what'supbergs.org, W-H-A-T-S-U-P-B-E-R-K-S. What's upberks.org, O-R-G. Just do a search, you'll find it pretty easily. And there we have description, our mission statement, description of our activities, updates on those activities. We have a calendar on there, which we try to keep up to date. We do our best. We're all volunteers. I guess that that would be the best. We do have an email, which is whatsupberks at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

And we have a lot of scheduled events coming up already. We have 10 of them so far scheduled. April's going to be a busy month. There's a lot of earth days. We'll be at every earth date there is possible. Penn State, Alvernia has one, Reading has one, Y Missing has one. And then we'll be at a Grange. You'll be going to a Grange. He will be doing a presentation in May to Wilson School.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Actually, that's going to be a team effort because we're going to be talking to 1,500 middle school students. So I'm not doing that by myself.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Any wisdom to leave our listeners with?

SPEAKER_03 24:17

I think to me, I'm a retired psychologist. I think people change because of values, because of things that are important to them. And I think Berks County is such a beautiful place to live, raise families, and we want to preserve that goodness for our future generations. And limiting single-use plastic is a great way to do that.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

And for me, being a former and avid hiker, one of our codes of ethics was leave no trace. And I think we need to apply that in our daily living as well. And if we do that, this world will be a better place in the future.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

That's amazing. Thank you. Well, thank you to both of you for coming on the podcast today. And thank you so much for the work that you're doing in our communities.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

We want to thank you for the support. You're welcome. Couldn't do this without Burks County Community Foundation and Burke's Nature, who have been absolutely a wonderful support structure for us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

Amen to that.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

You're welcome. If you'd like to learn more about the Community Foundation, you can follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter. Thanks for listening. And remember, change starts with a spark, your spark.