Plastic Podcast Episode 27: The Evolution of Anti-Plastic Norms

In this episode of Plastic Podcast, host Clark Marchese dives into the emergence and spread of anti-plastic movements, tracing their roots from local grassroots actions to global health policy. Clark speaks with Leah Shipton, a PhD candidate specializing in global health policy, who explains how health concerns drove the formation of anti-plastic norms worldwide. They discuss the role of norm entrepreneurs in spreading these norms, the challenges posed by industry-backed anti-entrepreneurs, and how this momentum led to the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution. This insightful conversation ties together themes from previous episodes, setting the stage for the series finale, where the treaty itself will be explored in depth.

Episode Guests:  Leah Shipton

Find more information about Leah Shipton here. 

Find a link to Leah Shipton’s article here.

Find more of Leah Shipton’s research on Google Scholar

Follow Leah Shipton on X

More information about the episode and the Plastic Podcast

Episode Transcript and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website.

Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia

Hosted, produced, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos 

Transcript:

[00:00:10.400] - Clark

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Plastic Podcast, the show that tells the science and the story of our relationship with plastic. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and today we are talking about anti-plastic movements, Kenya, norms, anti-entrepreneurs, plastic bags, Flooding, Bangladesh, Corporate Playbook, Microplastics, Global Health Policy, and so much more. Okay, if you thought that was confusing and chaotic, I apologize. But there is a through line connecting all of those things. In fact, this particular episode is going to be touching on and connecting the dots between many of the topics we have already covered on the show. What this episode does is it traces the emergence of anti-plastic movements, how they spread around the world, and ultimately, how they led to the UN Treaty on Plastics. More specifically, the way we trace this in this episode is by examining how and when health concerns regarding plastic began to form and how they spread around the world. This is based on research that came from an article published by this week's guest. From it, we get a very logical timeline of plastic awareness and activism, and it explains perfectly how we got to where we are today, which is just a couple of weeks away from the Fifth International Conference to Negotiate the Terms of the United Nations Treaty on Plastic Pollution.

[00:01:41.550] - Clark

I thought this episode was a perfect setup for the next one, which just It happens to be all about that treaty. It is also the last episode of Plastic Podcast. Quickly on that, and I'll also say before you get too sad, Pine Forest Media has other podcasts about science and other things, and we are making even more. So hold back your tears. But in any case, Plastic Podcast was always meant to be a limited series. Before I started, I imagined it would be about 10 episodes. But as soon as I started to dig my hands in, I realized just how much there was to cover. And I think almost 30 episodes later, we have covered quite a lot. And I think that also comes through in the conversation we're about to have with our guests, because those of us who have been with us for a while, we'll hear references to a number of topics we've already covered. So this is all to say, I feel like this episode ties together neatly what the series was set out to accomplish. I think one final episode next week on how to better understand what this treaty is and how it works, seems to be a natural stopping point for the show.

[00:02:41.090] - Clark

But more on all of this later. Back to the topic of this episode in our guest who is going to explain how we got to where we are today is named Leah Shipton. Leah is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Political Science and an expert in global health policy and governance, with a focus on extractive industries and the impact they have on health and human rights. I came across an article that Leah published, and this article was trying to trace how antiplastic norms driven by health concerns, began to spread around the world. So what is an antiplastic norm? Well, we will figure that out. I will say this episode is a journey, as has this introduction been. Probably the best thing for us to do is just to get started, and I'll see you on the other side. Without further ado, let us welcome Leah Shipton to the show. All right, we are recording. Well, Leah, welcome to the show. My first question is if you could just tell us a bit about yourself and about your research.

[00:03:47.280] - Leah Shipton

Yeah, thank you for having me, Clark. I'm Leah Shipton. I'm a PhD Canada at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. I live on the unseated lands of the Coast Salish people in what's now Vancouver. My background is in public health. I spent about eight years in public health and global health before I moved to a political science PhD program. Now I study the politics of global health governance, often with the health angle. My previous work was on Canada's mining industry overseas and impact on health and human rights. Then I also dabbled briefly, but looking to go back after being retrained into this topic via your invitation into the overlap between plastics, pollution, and health.

[00:04:29.000] - Clark

Okay, perfect. Well, Those are very interesting and important. So thank you for your research in that space. It is lovely to have you on the show. Plastic, obviously, is a major health concern. We have covered plastic and health on the show before, but today we're not necessarily talking about it in the same context. We're going to be talking about global health policy rather than clinical research. Our conversation is going to be largely based on a project of yours that looks at how health-related concerns relate to anti-plastic norms. To set the stage, let's start at the beginning. Maybe can you tell us what is an anti-plastic norm?

[00:05:06.130] - Leah Shipton

Yeah. Maybe I'll start with defining a norm first. Norms is for my training in the international relations literature. It's essentially a norm. It's a should statement. It's an idea about how we should behave about something. In Canada, for example, and I'm usually very simple examples here, when somebody lets you in when you're driving, for example, there's a norm that you would wave thank you. Someone send you a favor, you should wave, Thank you. Not everyone does it, so you can break this norm, but it's noticeable if you don't. Just to convey the idea that norms are standards of behavior that essentially try to govern or provide some order to a group of people, a group of countries, a group of organizations.

[00:05:43.030] - Clark

Okay, got it. How do we understand these norms begin or form in the first place? I also came across a term in your research that was a norm entrepreneur. Can you tell us what that is?

[00:05:56.420] - Leah Shipton

Right. How do these norms get created? They don't come from nowhere. The most standard way of understanding it is they come from individuals, groups, or organizations that are called norm entrepreneurs. They're persuaders in the world. They're organizations or people that see an issue that probably needs to be addressed in a more productive way, and they work to convince others that we should embrace this new standard of behavior, and they'll use different tactics to do that. This very simple idea here, you have a set of norm entrepreneurs who are advocating a new standard of behavior that we ought to follow. If they're convinced enough, you have critical mass of other stakeholders that sign on, and then you have something called a norm cascade where everybody now feels the pressure to align with this behavior

[00:06:37.510] - Clark

Okay, so that's what norms and norm entrepreneurs are.

[00:06:40.690] - Leah Shipton

Then we have the anti-plastic piece here. The anti-plastic Plastics norm, if I could say in a statement would be, plastics should be under strict regulatory control because they're a societal and environmental threat. That's the should statement here. There's something wrong with plastic pollution. They're doing harm, and therefore we should We don't act on them. We shouldn't regulate them. By regulate, I mean impose fees on their use at the consumer level, for example, or we should abandon their use completely.

[00:07:10.410] - Clark

Okay, I think that's a perfect foundation for what we're going to discuss today, which is the evolution of these anti-plastic norms over time on both a global and local scale. In a general sense, can you help us understand where these anti-plastic norms started to form?

[00:07:28.740] - Leah Shipton

I think there's something not different, but the anti-plastic norms goes against the conventional logic, which is that norm entrepreneurs at the international level set standards of behavior, and then that trickles down to countries. That's maybe what we initially were thinking when this literature and research was established in the '90s and 2000s. Then in the next iteration of this literature, we're saying, Hold on, we can't forget that like, countries around the world are leading normative efforts and whatnot. In the case of anti-plastic There's general agreement that these norms emerge as a result of norm entrepreneurs at the local domestic level that were responding to issues of plastic pollution as they saw in their own countries or their own context. Rather than created at the international level, these norms were pioneered by domestic stakeholders, often civil society, often sometimes as well as academics who are part of civil society, who eventually got allies in government, and they saw plastic pollution as a problem, and they began persuading those around them to do something it. There's a lot of problems that these actors are trying to solve. Sometimes it's a waste management problem, sometimes it's health, sometimes it's the way plastic impacts the environment or agriculture.

[00:08:40.520] - Leah Shipton

The problems at the domestic level can be different. I don't think there's consensus that there's just one problem that plastic's caused that galvanized everybody to address the platform to create the anti-plastic storm. I think we have to make space for the fact that the world is diverse, and so the issues that are happening at the local level are going to vary. But I think what is consistent is that you have people at the local level who are seeing a specific problem that matters in their context.

[00:09:06.740] - Clark

Okay, you're saying a lot of things that will make complete and total sense to anyone who's been following the story arc of this podcast. Sustainability in context, the power of local and grassroots actions, plastic is a multifaceted issue. It is music to my ears. We know plastic being such a multifaceted issue, there's lots of different concerns that one might have or a community might have that will drive action. One other term I came across in your research was a value, and your paper is focusing on health. Can you explain how health is a value driving these norms?

[00:09:43.150] - Leah Shipton

Yeah. We've got them, and In my work with Peter D'Bern on this paper, we've called them values, labeled them as values. The problem is the plastic pollution. The value, as in the thing that we value is health and tourism and whatnot. This is the protecting that value, the protecting that thing that we value be the driver. I know other people would maybe flip it. They would say that the problem is the impact on health, for example, or the problem is the impact on tourism. But we've just separated that a little bit because we see that these norm entrepreneurs are motivated to protect this particular area that's important, culturally, politically, economically, economically, et cetera.

[00:10:19.190] - Clark

Okay, that makes total sense to me. I do have a question, though, because your research has established that health is a very effective value at driving these anti-plastic norms. However, we did do an episode on plastic in human health, where the main takeaway was that we have way more questions unanswered than answered by empirical research, that is. But we also know that norm entrepreneurs are responding to issues in their communities. Then in light of the fact that there's still large numbers of research gaps in the medical field about the impacts of plastic on health, what types of things might local communities encounter that would result in having health as the central value?

[00:11:00.240] - Leah Shipton

I think there's layers to this. I think the first layer is that there's some areas or impacts where you can much more easily identify the connection between plastic's pollution and poor health. While there's an underlying science to it, the layperson can easily understand that plastic pollution is contributing to poor health, not with the naked eye, so to speak, but the causal chain between plastic pollution and health consequences is not that long. When we go back to some of the norm literature, one set of that literature argues norms can develop more easily when one bodily integrity is harmed, especially for vulnerable people, and when the causal link between the cause and the impact of that bodily integrity is really close. Now, it can be close either because maybe there's not that many steps or because we have, I think, sufficient scientific literature to justify the solid relationship. So think about smoking and lung cancer. It took a while to establish that literature and evidence, but now that causal relationship is very clear in our minds. But I think speaking, and we'll get to this after this first point, the microplastics, nanoplastics, connection with health is big right now.

[00:12:06.530] - Leah Shipton

We know it's relevant, but we don't have that, I think, really secure scientific causal link yet in the way that they used to not have the smoking and cancer link. Anyways, I think the first step of this, as it played out in what we call early normal doctors like Bangladesh and in Kenya, is that you would see things like livestock dying because they ingested plastic bags, and that directly impacts food security security or livelihood sustainability, which have direct impacts on health. Those are affecting what we call the social determinants of health, where you have social structures that are going to impact health in the long run. Or plastic bags that are harboring stagnant water, and then you have mosquito-borne or other infectious diseases as a result. Rodent infestations due to plastic garbage heaps, drains getting clogged, and then that's causing flooding, which is compromising agricultural yields or creating pools of stagnant water or compromising food insecurity by affecting the livestock. I think, of course, there's a science that underpins disease spread in each of those scenarios, or the relationship between food sustainability or food security and malnutrition, for example, or other health outcomes. But I think that those are impacts that are much more visceral, unavoidable.

[00:13:20.880] - Leah Shipton

I think any person can, at least at a general level, connect the dots there that this is not good for a person to be experiencing. Certainly not at a large scale like we saw in some of these countries. Bangladesh, two weeks of flooding, 75% of the country was covered in the late '90s. Plastic bags clogging the drains were attributed as a huge cause of that event. I think the first wave of this is that for community members that push this in the early stages, you don't need a medical degree to see that your life is being negatively impacted by plastic's pollution. I think this next iteration that we're at that is a bit trickier is what you were speaking about earlier, which is exposure and the buildup of nanohemeral and microplastics pollution. I think that causal chain is longer, it's less clear, it's a bit more delayed. I think a lot of the recent bands that have come into place are operating a bit on the precautionary principle where we know that something is probably not quite right here and we need to be careful, but we're still waiting for the full scope of knowledge around what the health impacts of those micro and nanoplastics will be.

[00:14:28.610] - Clark

Okay. It's interesting that you're saying because another common theme of this podcast so far has been examining where the problems of plastic are most visible and why. It seems like these early norm adopters, some of them coming from places where the consequences are most visible or inescapable.

[00:14:46.570] - Leah Shipton

A hundred %. I think that speaks to why countries like Canada could avoid this issue for so long, because, one, good waste management systems and also exported an enormous amount of waste. The countries like China or Malaysia Philippines. It just makes the problem so visible in global sales countries in a way that those of us in Canada can often avoid, for example, as well as other countries.

[00:15:13.450] - Clark

Do we know when these How has the health-driven antiplastic norms started gaining traction or spreading to a global scale?

[00:15:20.990] - Leah Shipton

This goes back to at least the late '90s. I'll say this. The way that I would say we're tracking this is by looking at the adoption of antiplastic policies, because the adoption of a policy implies the internalization to some degree of a norm. Often what we use to track the norm is the adoption of these policies, because the argument for a lot of us to do this research is we wouldn't have the policy, but the norm didn't exist in the first place. A lot of these things that are tracked are specifically anti-plastic bakes, fees or bans. That's what we have as the biggest guidepost here. Anti-plastic bague policies have been adopted since the late '90s in different countries around the world. Bangladesh, for example, Kenya, Denmark, Ireland, by the mid to late 2000s, early 2000s. The 2000s saw an uptick by African and some Asian countries. I think we had about 23 or 25 countries in the world with these vans in 2010 with anti-plastic bank ban. But that number doubled in 2016 to 60 countries. And then by 2019, we had 111 countries. Just to say, we've had this massive uptick. I think a lot of the early movers, I would argue, were in the global south.

[00:16:32.790] - Leah Shipton

Not to say that there weren't early movers. There was European countries like Germany and Denmark that made some efforts here. But when you look at some of the maps around who adopted these bands sooner, it's a lot of Asian and African countries, less so Latin American countries, not North America, and then some in Europe. Then we can talk about how maybe that started to travel a little bit. Then it's all culminated with the negotiation of the UN Plastic Treaty right now that was launched in 2022.

[00:16:58.930] - Clark

Okay, I just had It's an aha moment because I've been hearing about this treaty in a good number of interviews I've done for this show, and I've been asking myself, Well, how do we get to the point where this is actually something that's on the table or being discussed? But yeah, hearing you tell that full story makes that connection really clear.

[00:17:16.760] - Leah Shipton

It's definitely a groundswell movement that came up right now. It's been adopted across the world horizontally that we need to address these issues, and now there's international cooperation around it. Definitely a story there.

[00:17:29.870] - Clark

Let's dive a bit deeper then. How do we get from these local responses from different places around the world, ultimately to a high level of international cooperation and a collective global response?

[00:17:42.960] - Leah Shipton

This is our punch from the research, but essentially, we definitely need more research on this. Our sense is that there's a learning process that takes place between these early adopters and later adopters, we call them. That happens in two ways. One, you have media coverage that is covering these issues to international audiences, and They persistently mention public health concerns and scientific evidence supporting these concerns about plastics pollution. You have coverage. There's several high-profile examples in the case of Bangladesh and Kenya, where there's coverage of the particular health issues stemming from plastics pollution. Some of it is not very flattering. This is coming up as a major issue. But the policy diffusion literature talks about how policymakers literally look to their neighbors and learn about what they're doing to address a particular issue. That's one way where we're pitching is the media coverage. The second is that norm entrepreneurs that we talked about sooner. These are people that are championing the anti-plastics norms. They participate in different regional and international forums, and they exchange information and ideas, and they build different ideas around what ought to be do about this issue. These include government as well as non-government stakeholders that go to these sorts of forums.

[00:18:54.340] - Leah Shipton

For example, the G7 declared plastic pollution a major environmental health issue in the mid-2010s, the UN Environmental Program in the Caribbean, how to focus on microplastics in 2014. You have essentially policy networks, stakeholders that are involved in policy in varying degrees who convene in these spaces and learn about what each of their respective colleagues in other countries are doing to address this issue. Our pitch is that these are two main ways that countries begin to learn or policymakers or civil society begin to learn about what's happening in other countries. But again, that's something that I would future research needs to connect the dots in more thoroughly. Then there's a process of considering, is this issue and solution applicable in our own context? Again, we're not saying that they copy and paste the norm exactly how it existed in Bangladesh, in the Bahamas, for example. But there's a process of saying, how is this contextually relevant here? What is the problem we're facing? What type of plastic pollution? What is it compromising that we value tourism, health, et cetera, et cetera? Then what are the the appropriate legislative tools in place or behavior changes in place, essentially at a state level that we are willing to accept?

[00:20:07.270] - Leah Shipton

Then we saw a whole host of countries that rearrange this norm in a way that was locally applicable and relevant. Then I think what was interesting is, especially in the mid-2010s, is that the efforts of those later adopters circled back to the early adopters, again through the media coverage in the international regional forums, and almost like, revived efforts in those original early adopters to reengage with these issues that went unresolved or it still resonated with a locally significant problem. Once microplastics was picked up, for example, in Bahamas in Canada, you saw also a revival of this issue in Kenya and Bangladesh, but centering microplastics this time instead of the flooding and all that other stuff. The social world is very messy, so we were trying to put frameworks that make sense of what we see, and it's all very complicated, but that would be the general cycle.

[00:20:59.650] - Clark

Okay, again, this is just connecting so many dots. If the early adopters were areas that were faced with the visible problems of plastics, we know why they all were in the global south, which is something we talked about on the show before, is the political, social, and economic aspects of the global plastic waste economy. But I'll also point out that the reason why that second wave that was prompted after identifying the presence of microplastics started in the global north is because the north has the money and the resources to do that research that's capable of quantifying them. Whereas we know that there are major research gaps in the global south when it comes to the same issues. Moving on to another vocab' word, because while this trend of awareness and action is nice to hear about, it's also my understanding that it has not gone unopposed. Can you tell us what a norm anti-entrepreneur is and how it applies to this conversation?

[00:21:50.990] - Leah Shipton

Yeah. Anti-entrepreneurs are essentially individuals or groups or organizations. Usually, they come in the form of companies or industry associations that work against the norm and those that are advocating for it. I think if I could put it simply, they'd be pro-plastics, essentially, and therefore working against the idea that plastics are harmful and require regulation. I would argue this is most often companies and industry associates organizations operating domestically or also transnationally that are the most ardent anti-entrepreneurs. Certainly, they have allies within other agencies of government. But there's something distinct here around pioneering a particular perspective. They might have allies in government, But you don't necessarily have the government who's out there championing these particular views. Their way of influencing things can look a lot of ways. Maybe I can highlight a few here. All of this is quite consistent with what those of us in global health would call the corporate playbook. There's a really consistent set of tools that corporations use to influence health from the products they produce through the production of those products, through the distribution of them, influencing policy, all these sorts of pieces. This is really getting on that. In the same way that norm entrepreneurs are framing an issue of a plastic pollution as a health issue, as compromise our health, these anti-entrepreneurs would frame plastics as an economic issue, meaning that plastics are good for the national economy.

[00:23:17.210] - Leah Shipton

They provide jobs to a large portion of the population, and therefore, they're trying to work against the norm, the anti-plastics norm, by emphasizing the economic viability of this area. This is especially persuasive if the manufacturing industry industry is an important economic contributor in a country. In Kenya, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers argued that enforcing the bans would cause up to 70,000 jobs being lost and throw the country's 170 manufacturing firms into financial turmoil. That's a more persuasive reframe of this issue when there's a strong, I guess, economic base, right? Or there's a lot of people that actually would be affected by this. Then you have classic lobbying of government officials, both from domestic and international stakeholders. In 2018, 2018, the pro-plastic lobby in Kenya succeeded in blocking efforts by the government to extend the ban, the anti-plastic vague ban to all single-use plastic using a particular type of plastic. The American Chemical Council is a trade association for US chemical firms, they've been lobbying excessively in Kenya because they'd essentially like Kenya to emerge as a hub for distributing US-made plastics across Africa. And then they're highly present at international negotiations. So right now, at the UN plastic trading negotiations, they've been very present and lobbying.

[00:24:32.390] - Leah Shipton

And then I think the third way that they do this is promoting policy alternatives. So a very common one here on the plastics industry and trade groups is their promotion of recycling as a viable solution to plastics pollution, even though it's costly infusible. As we know, it doesn't really work. I think there's lots of stats showing 9% of plastic is recycled or something absurd like that in Canada. In February 2024, a study came out from the Center for Climate Integrity that unpacks this a little further and essentially shows how since the 1980s, big oil and plastics industry have known that recycling is not a long-term sustainable solution, but they push it anyways because it's a convenient alternative to essentially addressing overconsumption and overproduction of plastics. That's a third way that these anti-entrepreneurs can address this issue. The thing is, some of what they're saying, there's something valid about this. There are consequences to any policy intervention. It's not that these things... I mean, some of these things are flat out wrong, but some of it is preying on some legitimate concerns, if that makes sense, emphasizing it in such an excessive way that completely allows us to...

[00:25:40.780] - Leah Shipton

Allows them to avoid any complicity in this, right?

[00:25:46.110] - Clark

Okay, thank you for outlining that. I think you're right in mentioning that it can get tricky because there are some valid points sprinkled in there. Even this podcast is meant to tell the full science and story of our human relationship with plastic, right? Be it economic in terms of the jobs that plastic provides for people, even relating to health. As many health consequences as there might be from plastics, we also know that plastic also protects against some other health elements. It's a bit tricky to navigate at times. I think these concerns are a lot more valid if they're coming from stakeholders who are genuinely concerned with just transition. But I think we have to remember that most of the time, the people who are reminding us of these points over and over again, these norm anti-entrepreneurs are coming from a motivation that is trying to make money. I guess we just must take it with a pinch of salt.

[00:26:40.120] - Leah Shipton

I had done some research earlier on the negotiation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. For very valid reasons, pro-tobacco control coalition had no desire to engage with the industry, with the tobacco industry, because the tobacco industry had just behaved so poorly. They are like the poster child of poor corporate conduct and producing just an inherently harmful product. But the refusal to engage meant that we couldn't tackle issues like regulation of the supply chain because you can't tackle that issue if we're working in these companies. It's a very tricky space to navigate, and I would be so fascinated to see how this plays out with plastic. I mean, it's already different at the treaty level for plastics because it sounds like industry is allowed to be there, and they were not allowed. They did get in anyways through country delegations, but they were not allowed to be I guess, as their own stakeholders, they weren't approved to be let in. But anyways, I say that to say that inevitably, when it comes to, I think, these public health and environmental issues, we have to squabble with figuring out what is the appropriate degree of engagement with these industry stakeholders.

[00:27:45.190] - Clark

I can't even believe how many things they're teaching me today. I had not learned that the corporate actors are actually taking up space in the negotiating process, but that is definitely something we need to keep an eye on going forward. In fact, I'll make a note to ask our next guest about that when we talk about the treaty. For listeners, stay tuned for next week. I think we are going to start to come to our final couple of questions, one of which is, is there anything that we missed today? Anything that you think we can't finish this conversation without talking about?

[00:28:15.630] - Leah Shipton

I think probably maybe two things. One, a lot of this, we're not starting from scratch. I think that's what I always think is important to remember. There's a lot of knowledge we have about how to build effective coalitions in international treaties so that we can We have strong provisions. We know how to overcome the corporate playbook in a lot of ways, or at least we know what it is, and we have strategies for overcoming it. I think we've alluded to it throughout this whole conversation, but I do think it's important to remember that we're not starting from scratch here around how to tackle these issues. Then I guess probably, and I have to remind myself that this is, too, is really centering the most marginalized in these conversations. Like the impacts of plastic pollution, whether it be health or environment or et cetera, is not evenly distributed in the same way that COVID impact was not evenly distributed. People who are made systematically vulnerable or marginalized are the most at risk for all of these things that we're concerned about when it comes to plastics. I do think that needs to continually be centered in these conversations.

[00:29:15.240] - Clark

Yeah, I agree with that 100%. I think it gets back to this concept of a just transition, which we need to keep in mind at all times, because when we mention that these anti-entrepreneurs are using legitimate concerns, it's true that changes we make sustainability will impact certain groups of people in negative ways. At the same time, we do need to make changes, not just with plastic, but for a host of climate and sustainability issues. I think the large conglomerates can probably swallow the cost of change, but we have to make sure that we're not leaving these more vulnerable communities or those likely to be impacted out of the equation. I think that might be the note to end on. The last question I have for you is, where can people find you and follow your Yeah.

[00:30:01.900] - Leah Shipton

I love how in the notes you said, If you want to be found. I mean, it's your choice after all. No. I'm on Twitter, but it's X now, right? I don't use it, but if you would like, I periodically update there @leashipton, L-E-A-H-S-H-I-P-T-O-N. I'm definitely not the most scintillating person to follow because I'm not a very social media person, but there's a few updates there. I'm more of a worker on X than I am. Maybe that's not a very effective plug that I just did quote, but yeah, that's where you can find me or my website as well, leashifton. Com. For contact information, feel free to email me there and we can get in touch more directly Perfect.

[00:30:45.750] - Clark

I will make sure to include links to those things in the episode description. At this point, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really feel like this podcast is coming to be wrapped up in a neat little bow, in part thanks to you. And also, I want to thank you for your very important research in this space. All right, everyone, I told you this episode was a journey. Thank you for taking it with me. And a final major thank you to Leah shipton. After putting together this series, I do think that that conversation, at least in my brain, did a really good job of bringing together a lot that we talked about in this series. I hope you feel the same. And the next episode, I hope, will just be the cherry on top. I just did that interview today, actually, and I think that anyone who's been listening to the show and hearing the treaty mentioned again and again or who has been curious to learn more about it will really enjoy the episode. So that's all I have for you today. I will see all of you again right back here next week for the final episode of Plastic Podcast.

[00:32:02.040] - Clark

You've been listening to Plastic Podcast. You can find more information about this week's guest and links to their work in the episode description. Cover art for the show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Tadeo Kbezos. I I'm your host, Clark Marchese, and this episode was produced and engineered by me. If you loved it and you think more people should hear a science communication like this, one of the best things you can do to support the show and help it reach more people is to leave us a one-tap five-star review wherever you're listening to this now or a review on Apple podcast. Also feel more than free to share it with someone who you think might find it interesting. Plastic Podcast is part of a larger network of sciencey podcasts called Pineforest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well or on our website at pineforestpods. Com. We are also on social media at pineforestmedia. We've got some exciting science podcast coming out this year as this one's coming to a close. I hope you join us for those and check out our other ones.

[00:33:01.500] - Clark

That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll chat soon.