How to make choices in a broken system
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 9, 2021
How to make choices in a broken system
There are bigger systems at play in today’s society, which means the weight of change does not rest solely on your shoulders. It can still feel pretty damn heavy, though. The good news: You do have the ability to make your choices and actions matter. And it’s not just about straws. Explore ways to think about your choices in a world designed for waste.
A conversation with:
Madeline Rotman (Imperfect Foods)
Maia Tekle (Dispatch Goods)
Sally Garcia (Call Me Flower Child)
Ella Hedley (Ellen MacArthur Foundation)
Full transcript.
Kristen Winzent: One of the first things that we all encounter when we decide to take climate action or, shift our being to act differently in the world or try to become more sustainable, whatever terms you want to use. We first encounter, it's pretty hard and it's really confusing. It seems like all of the solutions are too small to fix what is obviously a very big problem. And day to day, a lot of us are wary about whether or not, switching straws actually matters, using different cups, does that actually matter? Especially when we look around and we see so much waste out in the world. So that's why we brought together this next panel.
There's a few folks who know very intimately how and why our world is designed to be wasteful. And they're going to offer ways for us to navigate what we can do in our day-to-day lives, whether that's at home, at work, in our communities to make progress, even if it is a little imperfect. I hand it over to Ella.
Ella Hedley: Thank you, Kristin. My name is Ella and I'm the innovator's manager at the Ellen MacArthur foundation. And at the foundation we develop and promote the idea of circular economy. One in which we eliminate waste and pollution. We circulate products and materials and, perhaps most importantly, we regenerate nature.
Our current economic model dates back to the boom of the industrial revolution when raw materials seemed limitless and labor was cheap and abundant, and it's characterized by this take- make- waste mindset. So we take products and materials from the ground we make things from those materials and then often after just one short use phase they're wasted.
And we're now beginning to understand the full extent of how problematic that is by which point of course, entire systems are now designed to perpetuate these flows. So how is this relevant to an event called Climate Con? Surely instead we should be talking about wind energy and we now know that only 55% of greenhouse gas emissions can be tackled by renewable energy.
So there's other 45%, almost half coming from the way that we make and use products and food within the system, which means that there's a need for us to really redesign that model using that eliminate-circulate-regenerate framework. But it also means that we have the opportunity, all of us, to play a role in mitigating those emissions, both in our capacities as individuals and as professionals.
I am delighted to be joined by three brilliant, innovative voices today who are not only passionate advocates who create. Also using their choices to take action. So thank you so much for joining us. Madeline Rotman, head of sustainability at Imperfect Foods and Maia Tekle co-founder at Dispatch Goods and Sally Garcia, content creator at Call Me Flower Child.
Three things that we'll touch on today. What does it mean for a system to be designed for waste? How.
Sally Garcia: Sorry. Repeat yourself.
Ella Hedley: Did I get to introducing you?
Yes. And I think you went into something else and I forgot. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Sorry about that. That's unlike my internet, but we'll carry on regardless. So we'll touch upon what it means for a system to be designed for waist. How we can balance living our lives and doing our jobs and still making actions towards being more sustainable. And what a wasteless system might look like. I believe you'll also have the opportunity to get your questions to our speakers using the chat function. I can see there's lots of very active participants already. As things come up for you throughout the session, really welcome you to add your questions there and we'll pitch those to our speakers near to the end of our conversation. So now to kick things off, we have three really brilliant speakers. We'll get straight into it.
I would like to ask each of our panelists to share their story what is your role and what did your journey look like up until this point? Sally is on my screen now I don't know whether you'd like to kick us off. Oh, and you were on mute.
Sally Garcia: Okay. Sure. I, hi everyone. My name is Sally Garcia and I am a content creator based out of Los Angeles. I'm also an advocate for outdoor access and park advocacy. Sorry, could you repeat the question?
Ella Hedley: Yeah, of course. So what is your role and what did your journey looked like up until this point? So what brought you to to what you're doing now?
Sally Garcia: So I. Honestly, I attribute everything back to this little program that a couple of my classmates and I started in high school. We had, we realized that there was a lot of paper waste that is made in high school in school. And so we started our recycling program and we would go around classes, just taking everyone's paper waste.
And we recycle it that eventually evolved into an afterschool program where we started our own native food garden, native plant garden. And that led to even more involvement with organizations, such as LA Audubon and learn about birds and conservation and why it is that being an environmentalist and being in this field of work is important.
My parents always did. They taught me. It was important for us to conserve and reuse as much as we needed, but as out of a necessity. It wasn't this is the best option and we're doing it because we're, quote unquote saving the turtles or anything like that. It would because we needed. We needed to make our things last. We needed to use our items as much as we could because that's, part being part of a low-income family. You make the best with what you can. Obviously, as I got older, I realized that even as an individual, I have an important part in this field and anyone, and everyone can be an environmentalist.
Everyone is an environmentalist. And that just has led me to be able to find community online of like-minded people. And it just continued to evolve into all aspects of it, whether you're into fashion or cars, or just like anything there, it can always be tied to environmentalism or trying to be better in your different lifestyles with whichever resources you have. And so I like to advocate for, a friend of mine also another content curator by the name of Jasmine Rogers, we all, she likes to say, and I completely agree with her is we do sustainability unperfectly, and that is totally okay. And that's a big thing that I advocate for as well.
Ella Hedley: Great. So really that holistic view as well, I'm hearing that it came from lots of different places at different points and has built to where you are today.
I'd like to ask the same question to Maia as well please.
Maia Tekle: It's funny because I feel like I get, now I've been asked this question quite a bit over the past two years since I'm one of the founders of Dispatch Goods, which is enabling reusability in our, in businesses, small and large in the restaurant industry, but also in the larger food industry and then hopefully beyond but I realise how instrumental my upbringing was .My dad is an immigrant and was always really taken aback by how wasteful American culture is. And I think my mom also, I laughed because I was visiting them recently looking for birthday candles and there was a cookie tin from like the early nineties, that's where our birthday candles are kept. And she was like, it's clearly marked. I was like, it looks like a cookie tin. She was like, yeah, but this is where the birthday candles go. She does not get rid of anything. She reuses as many. And this is where I get it. This I have always, throwing away is the last resort. And even from we collected our rainwater growing up, we canned a lot of our produce for the winter and we, I grew up composting. But then I moved to big cities and there, I realized that if you don't have the systems or the infrastructure or the access to better choices, then it just becomes a really hard decision. And I think that what the plastics industry and the gas and oil industry have done really well is ashame people. And I think shame is like is a really powerful tool. If you can't do things, perfectly well, or if you feel bad every time you do anything, then you know, we're not going to get anywhere.
And so I think I agree with Sally completely, like every, we have to make imperfect decisions and imperfect steps forward in order to help to combat. But it could be delightful too. I think, I've recognized that, we can, we have the opportunity to create better systems. We have the access and the tools and the technology and the minds and the beautiful brains to create better systems and to demand it from those people, those organizations, and those people that are in power that things, just because things have been going forward for a certain, in a certain way, doesn't mean we can't change big systems, but it can also start really small and then grow really big.
Ella Hedley: Great. Thank you. And Madeline same question to you. What was your journey and where are you now?
Madeline Rotman: Yeah, I really love what Maia and Sally both said.
Just thinking to my family, like my family's complicated. But my mom always forced, no matter who was living in the house at the moment, we would all sit down to dinner. And we would fight, we would hug, we would love each other. We would express every emotion at the dinner table and that was a hundred percent warranted in my family.
And so I think that's where I always saw conversation happening. I was living in Rhode Island where there's the most expensive farmland in the country and found myself having lots of conversations with growers and farmers in Rhode Island. And just realizing how hard this was, where these are folks that had inherited their land this was their family space and they couldn't figure out how to currently survive at the time in the 2000s given the state of our food system. And so I started asking questions there. I know that love and joy comes from food and that's was what I grew up with, but I was seeing all these junctures or moments where it was just getting harder and harder for people to have this joy.
And, but there's still this honesty where it's so hard to grow food. And so trying to figure out those questions I found myself working in the food space and specifically the retail space and trying to figure out how to basically merge this challenge or conversation that's happening at the farmer producer level and seeing what's happening at the dinner table.
And how do we build bridges in this space that can enable easier decision-making. Easier decisions for consumers, but also easier decisions for farmers. Fastforward to 2021 here we are. So I am head of sustainability at Imperfect Foods, which is D2C e-commerce brosure, that's w orking to eliminate food waste in the system.
So we partner with farmers and producers to eliminate food waste that from items that would typically not make it into conventional grocery stores and enable consumers to purchase into this and buy apples that are too small or lemons are too big through the system. And so I found myself, around this table, around this conversation having a lot of love for, this conversation of how do we make better choices? How do we eliminate waste in a system that we've designed imperfectly. And Adam perfectly joke it's not the food, it's the system that's been broken. And it's this conversation that I love to have and it's not a straight line, my personal journey to get here, but it's through these imperfect steps of seeing these conversations, seeing how hard they are and how do we make them better.
Ella Hedley: So what's interesting I think about your stories is how different they all are, but with a lot of synergies and a lot of connections And really taking you to those different routes to Sally, that advocacy Maia was with the reuse business model and Madeline that kind of disrupting the supply chains and making sure that we're getting the most out of what might have become waste.
Madeline 1/3 of edible food is wasted, which we now know contributes to around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Why is that? Why is so much food going to waste? And from your perspective, working to reduce waste in the food industry, do you think it's possible for us to eliminate food waste entirely?
Madeline Rotman: Such a good question. So if people aren't familiar, ReFED is an incredible organization that does a ton of work to show us where food waste is. And if you go to, they put out the insights engines every year now. Dana Gunders sums them up and it's an incredible resource that really illustrates quite clearly why food waste happens and where it happens.
So we know about a third of food, 35% of food that's grown doesn't get. And it happened at a few places and it happens at the farm level, it happens in a consumer level and in the retail chain or value chain through the way as well. Imperfect was founded to work with the farmers, at the core, the field level to say, how can we help them and support them with purchasing food that is really breaking the beauty standards that we have conceived at the grocery store level. So we have this conception of bounty and perfection that we have gone to farmers and said this is mother nature, right? If you've ever grown up with a garden, if you have a garden, if you've gone to a pick your own orchard, you'll see these sort of beautiful blemishes that really show you that this was grown from the ground from mother nature.
But we have decided in grocery stores, there has to be this conception of perfection. And so that's one of the huge contributors of food waste. And so Imperfect was designed to really start there and work with our growers to say, you've put all of these resources into growing food there's people there's labor there's soil there's water and all this energy. And so how can we respect these resources and not waste them by letting food stay in the field or possibly go to the open market where it doesn't have a guaranteed outcome and Imperfect is really working there.
We also know that there's a lot of food waste that also happens at home. And in our refrigerators or through our shopping patterns or in restaurants, we're leaving food on the plate. And so educating and helping customers know like here's different recipes and tricks. Here are some tips to how you can shop better. Here's how you can plan so that we can help reduce that food waste as well, because it's not only at the farm it's along the entire chain. But those are just a few of the places and ways that I think about almost every day of how we can help eliminate food waste. And can we get there? Yes. Is it really hard? Absolutely. It is going to require us to redesign the system, add in new infrastructure, added new sort of modes of existence, new businesses, and also a huge consumer shift. Like we need a behavior shift of what, how we eat when we eat what we're eating and what we're considering good to eat. Everything from best by dates and use by dates being centralized, but also everything from is this carrot too small to eat. Like those kinds of conversations are really micro and also really macro. There's a lot of work that has to happen in a lot of, along the way, along the journey. But a really important thing that we need to do to respect our resources from our farmers, but also in our fridges.
So I feel really optimistic that we have to do this, but it's not just Imperfect. It's not just me, it's everyone and an entire paradigm shift of how we eat.
Ella Hedley: And I think foods quite often has a bit of an undervalued perception in lot of ways. Perhaps, in the Western culture, we don't look at waste and see the embodied emissions that have gone it to our plate or the fact that if farmers aren't able to sell their produce and it's going to waste, then that's a massive economic loss. And I think that's, that speaks to your point is that kind of mindset shift as well. But I guess more broadly, at the end of the day, no matter how well-intentioned we might be as individuals or, in your case with Imperfect Foods as a business, we're still operating within that system, as you say, that fundamentally is designed to waste in some ways.
And I know for us at the Ellen MacArthur foundation, we often hear from businesses that it's really hard to, find suppliers who hold themselves to the same standards, or it's hard to eliminate waste in certain areas of the value chain. Which is to say, no matter how hard we try it's not going to be perfect, but which I think is something that you've all mentioned. How do you approach those scenarios in which it doesn't feel like there's a great, the perfect scenario both, within your role and within your life. And do we need to acknowledge that compromise is kind of part of the journey.
Madeline Rotman: Yeah. I'll take this. I think it's all partnership. And I'm going to take us out of food for a second, but one of the things that some folks might not know is Imperfect actually partnered with Dispatch Goods. So me and Maia work together because one of the places that we've seen, all of this waste in the food system is actually in packaging. So we deliver you food, you order food. And one of the things that you didn't order that we have to deliver you is packaging to keep it cold, to keep it safe, to keep it held in something. And so one of the things that Imperfect has done is actually say, okay how can we rethink this system that is very linear?
Like we order food, we pack food, we deliver food to customers and it just ends there. It ends with the customer. And we've said, how can we rethink this whole system to be circular? And we've actually partnered with Dispatch with Maia to say, can you actually help us sanitize and reuse our gel packs. So we deliver gel packs to keep your food cold. If you order any dairy any protein. And that's just one of those ways where you're like, we can't do this the same way anymore. We have to rethink this really radically in a way where it's pre-competitive and also partnered. Like I can't Imperfect build every system or every vertical or every, and that's me as a person too, like me, Maddie Rotman at home, like I can't do it alone. You're stuck in certain infrastructures. I live in Los Angeles. I don't have the luxury of institutionalized or municipal composting. So I need to go figure out what to do as a Los Angeles resident. And that's not easy. And I had to call a lot of people and figure out what's going on and see what infrastructure exists.
And that sort of gets to your point of what do we do. We have to partner up and really think about not being silent or not being this individual, which is very a part of our culture, but actually being part of a system. If anyone has listened to, I really love, Melinda Gates talks about this, a lot of like systems thinking and how do we actually build an entire ecosystem? And if one falls, we all fall. So we have to balance each other. And I think of that a lot when we think about making better choices or eliminating waste or redesigning a system. It's not that I can redesign the system and redesign it alone and build it better to profit.
That's not the answer personally. I think the answer is how do we build synchronicity or build any ways that we can fit together and actually pull everyone up along the way? Which I don't know if anyone else, Maia.
Maia Tekle: Oh, I'm so glad. Yeah. We love working with you. But, you were one of our first enterprise partners that we, helped us realize our larger vision, which is. Individual businesses like Imperfect, can't do a full circular reusable system alone. You need partnerships because the collection, sanitizing, sorting and redistribution is its own business. And that's what we're building, is that enabling that those companies that want to do better or recognize things that really aren't single use or can be reused, should be reused. And if we build that infrastructure to enable it, there is a huge amount of not only consumers, but businesses that want to, that see the business value and reusability as well as just yeah, it's so much easier getting it processed locally than shipping across the world. And it's been really cool to see that partnership come to life. And I think that this, I'm excited for more emerging, so for an emerging of businesses that are much more collaborative also that are planet centric and not human centric. I think humans are definitely a huge part of designing businesses but if we keep the planet as our center, we keep, we practice planet-center decision-making. And at the start of every decision we're like, what is the, what is, we'll do the least amount of harm to our planet. And it might mean that it is a little bit less convenient for the consumer, but that just means that it is so much better in the long run.
And so I think what we're, so yeah, in partnership, but also yeah, designing for a planet and for regenerative businesses also, I think what's really exciting. I could feel like I took it on a tangent, but I love talking to Maddie. So obviously
Ella Hedley: I see that Sally you've admitted as well. It'd be interesting to know your perspective on that kind of advocacy and individuals' level.
Sally Garcia: Yeah. I love that you mentioned like the conveniency, cause I think conveniency has really ended, brought us to where we are now. Everyone wants everything conveniently fast and quick and no matter what the waste is, no matter like what resources are being used and wasted. And I think, specifically, I feel like COVID like being in this like worldwide pandemic, we really saw how our systems have really failed us and how, even if you, for example, on an individualistic level, if you have made this progress to either buy bulk, like at your local store, as much as you can or take your reusable cup everywhere, it all halted. It all halted, no one excepted. And then being someone that you were like, at least for myself being someone who like really tried hard to do the best I could, it felt like, I felt like a big failure because these were things that were beyond me that I had no control over. And, but if people would have seen the benefits, like now we have reusable masks or my bulk is like back, which is great. But I feel like these things, if convenience wasn't such a big issue? I feel like we could have mitigated, the not having, not allowing us to use bulk items or anything like that. It could have still been used, and it just shows how we do need our system to like really shift towards a more like planet friendly alternatives and planet friendly. I believe personally for people as well, because at the end of it to, social justice is a big issue when it comes to environmental justice to assess much. So that those are just some thoughts.
Maia Tekle: Oh yeah. Designed for the most marginalized in our society and it will work for everyone and is my thinking because our climate is affecting our most marginalized within our global population. Our trash still leaves, it's out in my backyard and I'm guessing in a lot of people's backyards that are joining us, maybe it is. But I think that's something we have to be mindful of that social justice, racial justice and climate justice are all interconnected.
Ella Hedley: I'd like to, I think that's a really relevant point and of course, yeah, it's again this holistic view that we need to be rethinking and approaching our systems differently and have this opportunity and I think particularly with that context of this time, when we're really reconsidering how things work it feels very exciting.
Maia Dispatch Goods is removing unnecessary waste associated with takeaway, I should say, take out, sorry, and replacing them with a reusable utensil, which can be continuously recirculated and used again a nd again. I really love these kinds of innovations because I think they feel quite tangible, we can understand them. They obviously have a complex system behind them, but at their core a really nice example of, again, that idea of rethinking a system that we feel just doesn't work for us anymore. And particulary from the ground up, you're doing it as a startup. And really hoping to break into, this becomes a mainstream solution that everybody gets their take out in these reusable containers.
Is there potential for this solution to really scale and what could that mean?
Maia Tekle: Oh, yeah. Really we, Lindsay and I, my co-founder Lindsay, she and I are obsessed with the fact that it is absurd, it is absurd, that we grow trees and then ship them across the world to be made into like boxes that get used for 12 minutes on average for a sandwich or a salad to go. It just is like crazy. And so we started there, we started in takeout delivery. It is the rapidly growing industry, especially in the pandemic. Single use, take out containers have increased by 250 to 300%. And we are, so it's a big, it's a big waste pain point. It's also a really great opportunity because there is there's no reason that we can't use a reusable container for that. It's going to people's homes. And what we are actually designing is a fourth bin system. So in California, we have landfill, recycling compost, and hopefully reusables at some point.
And what we want to do is divert as many things from landfill and recycling to reuse. Glass is a great example of a material that, why are we treating as single use? There should be the ability to collect sanitize and then reuse it. And there are a lot of businesses that have said to us much like Imperfect, that if you can get it back to us, we want to use them. It doesn't make sense that we are taking something that is made to be reused just as a single use, because there's not that connecting piece to get it back from the consumers' homes. And we've found that people are more than delighted to put out their reusables just as they do with recycling.
And it's, our larger vision, is to have anything, any product that is going to consumer's homes in a reusable, or it can be reused. And then anything that is not being produced in a reusable container is no longer allowed. And so I find it really exciting that there's legislation that's being introduced in California. But if anyone's in Maine, that's logged in, way to go Maine. The Extended Producer Responsibility laws are the ones that are going to hold the manufacturers responsible for the waste that they create. So they either have to be designing for reuse or they're being held responsible and it's no longer going to be on consumers to pay for their waste. Because if there's not an alternative, we can't be held responsible for that for only having single use. And so I think that there's a lot of really great momentum in that space, but that's our larger vision. We're just in Northern California right now. But ultimately we want to expand pretty rapidly and create this universal system.
Ella Hedley: And Sally, we've heard from yourself, Madeline and Maia about your own journeys. And now part of your ambition is to really share that understanding and to build other people's understanding of what they can do better and what choices are available to them. But I think a lot of us are familiar with that feeling of frustration and overwhelm when you're trying to make better decisions, even in your personal life and you were coming at it from an angle of conscious fashion. I think a lot of us have had that moment where we think, okay, great cotton. Cotton's natural. And then you find out a bit more and you discover that it's very water intensive and that quite often a lot of pesticides are used and it feels hard to make the best decision, whatever that is.
How do you approach this? How are you guiding people in a way that they can make positive steps, but also not feel so overwhelmed that they just don't want to engage in the conversation at all.
Sally Garcia: I feel like, I like saying that it really all starts at home and it's using what you have and extending the life of whatever item it is, whether that's a shirt or even a notebook, you can use the paper for, if you have a fire pit or anything like that to like I use my old notebooks to make like little, to make s'mores at home or something, like everything in my home, I think about it okay, once it reaches the point of okay, maybe I can't wear, or I can't use it anymore. What is the next life that I'm going to give it? And specifically I know for fashion I like to, one of the biggest things for me was switching to mostly secondhand clothing and being from Los Angeles, I am filled with a lot of thrift stores and a lot of us, I grew up essentially having thrifted clothes out of necessity. And I think it's awesome that it has become a bit more accepted. Widely, accepted, which feels weird to say because so many of us were judged for wearing secondhand clothing, but now it's like very widely accepted, which gives me, which makes me really happy because now, the younger generations or just anyone who's trying to make the shift can feel like, oh, I can go secondhand shopping for a shirt that I need or a. Sorry. I lose my train of thought a lot. I like go on tangents and then I go everywhere. But I think the thing is that, I think Maia or Madeline said it how, I used to be very 'I want to be zero waste'. That was my ultimate goal, but that's not sustainable to me and my lifestyle.
So sustainability is not going to be reachable if it isn't sustainable to an individuals, each like lifestyle. It's not, it's going to be, it can get expensive. It can get just like really hard and you'll get down on yourself because you're not doing it perfectly. And when I started shifting my mindset of just reducing my waste in aspects that were attainable to me and made it easier and giving myself grace that, okay sometimes I am going to support a local own BIPOC owned business, and that might come with waste. But at the end of it, that money you staying with my community that ultimately can help pay for improvements within the community, or bring new resources to that community that seriously is lacking. So I try and look at the better picture and really do give myself grace and just meant, like essentially start at home, reuse everything you can and I'm finally about to get a sewing machine. That's a friend just got a new one, so she's giving me her old one so I can practice on. And so taking little measures like that, or even, I've also has started, I started doing clothing swaps at work, and so some of my coworkers, we would like swap clothes, which is another great way of just keeping everything circular.
And then it has moved forward to like gear now, like outdoor gear. I'm a big, I like some I'm someone who likes to camp and everything like that. And having accessible gear through like gear swaps not only helps keep all the gear circulating and extending the life of it, but it even gives outdoor access to people who might not have it, which then turns them into environmental stewards.
It's all about, essentially, influence and leading by example. I'm a big believer in leading by example. So any little change that you can do, people will notice and people will ask you questions, and then you have that teachable moment to, oh, this is what I do instead. Or, and then it makes it feel much more attainable and easier, because my neighbor does it too. So I've learned how to like compost from them or. Yeah.
Ella Hedley: As we say, that feels really relevant as well, to us, as we talk about ourselves as individuals, as consumers, but also we are a lot of us, working for businesses and whether we are in that co-founder position, or we are you know, assisting a project that we all have some agency to make this more changes and to inspire the people. I'm conscious that our time is gone really quickly.
So very quickly we have a few questions in from the chat which feel free to jump in ,whoever kind of feels ready to address them. But if we can get some kind of snappy insights, that would be brilliant. So we've had a few people commenting on rural areas or states in which there's not a great infrastructure for recycling or for managing waste.
What can people do in that scenario? That's quite a broad question because there are a wide range of scenarios, but.
Madeline Rotman: Okay. Not the perfect answer, but I think to what Sally was saying, like so much of it's about building community. And so if there's ways that you can team up with the rest of your community, especially in rural areas where your neighborhood is so core, to do things like swaps or anything like that, where you can eliminate your waste out also lobby ask your legislation for recycling, ask them for things. It takes time. It's slow. It's not that solar bullet we want, but really important and really impactfull.
Maia Tekle: I was just going to say lobby. Also that your voice is a lot more powerful than you think. Companies are listening. Also elected officials are elected to work for you. And I think also make the business case. Waste is expensive, waste management is expensive. Trash is expensive. So a lot of times more circular systems are actually more affordable. So I think that there's also something to be said about making the business case from like a, from a business lens. And so I think taking that approach would be helpful. There's a lot of resources online too.
Ella Hedley: And I think, we're here at this moment in time because COP 26 is up in Glasgow. I dunno about other people. I personally feel very disconnected from the conversations and the decisions that are being made by those country-level delegates. So to another point that's coming from the chat, people who are trying to take their first steps, how can they have impacts and what would you say to those people who are starting to think about how they can be part of the climate change solution?
Sally Garcia: I think, just like Madeline and Maia have said, get involved with in your community, like level of like policy essentially go to those like community coalitions meetings, go to those neighborhood council meetings. That's where you're going to see the impact of like your efforts and your voice directly through your community.
And eventually that'll lead to putting, adding pressure to those who really have or have the bulk of the responsibility of why we are in the situation that we are in. Okay? Me throwing away a sock to the trash. That's terrible. I would never do that. But one talk doesn't compare to the, over 20 billion textiles that are being wasted by other factories or the fast fashion industry. Community organizing somewhere, at least personally, that I've seen a big difference.
Maia Tekle: I joined a lot of town hall meetings in locally in Northern California. You can make things, you can influence change very quickly. And I just watch as an observer mostly, but make things illegal in your town. We don't want to have single use plastic and make that, you can do that.
You can make local regulations that will have ripple effects. We're seeing so many changes made from town level to the county level. And now that are being introduced statewide. And I know California is very progressive, but again, I look at states like Maine and that to me is shifting the responsibility to the manufacturers should be just, I think there's no one besides the manufacturers that would be against that.
Communities want that and they want to not be held responsible for the, their only choice, which is a wasteful future. And so start small dream big. Support brands that are doing great things like Imperfect that are making the choice to say yeah, like I'm going to, yeah, we are trying to do what is the least amount of harmful impact to our planet. Take one additional like little research step and be like, oh cool. They're actually doing this. I want to spend my money here versus the competitor that might be, 20 cents cheaper, if you can afford it.
Madeline Rotman: And ask brands to do more. So even if there's a brand that, or somewhere you have to shop, or you want to or need to, ask them to do more, they are listening. You are the consumer the same way that your government works for you. Brands work for you too. They only are enabled by your purchases. So ask them to do better.
Maia Tekle: Same with restaurants, even if it was just, yeah. Even if we don't exist, we get so many conversations with my first conversation with restaurants, they allow their customers to bring their own containers now, like you can bring there's nothing. Like some will say no, but like they want to appease their regulars.
Ella Hedley: Okay, thank you so much to all of you for joining us for this conversation. And of course our speakers being so generous with their insights and stories. It's Madeline Brockman, Maia Tekle, and Sally Garcia, who I'm sure we could all agree, have been really inspiring.
And I think we can all come away feeling very positive about the kind of action that it can take. For me, I think that the idea that there's this process, right? So it's getting involved in the conversation. It's rethinking what's not working for us. And fundamentally collaborating, being such an important thing, but also to underpin all of that, acknowledging that it's a process, it's a journey.
And we need to go easy on ourselves as we make our way through that and as we learn. I'd also like to very quickly point to some resources that we have available on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website, we have lots of free of charge resources that go into all kinds of different levels of detail on various sectors and industries so please do head over there. There's also an opportunity to become part of our community and of course, follow our amazing speakers and find out more about what they're up to. So yeah, thank you very much for joining us. And thank you to Climate Con for organizing this conversation.
Maia Tekle: Thank you so much.
Thanks Maddie.
