Plastic Podcast Episode 11: Plastic Poems: Albatross, Atomic Bombs, and Autobiography

Episode Description: In this episode, host Clark Marchese delves into the world of poetry and plastic with guest Allison Cobb, author of "Plastic: An Autobiography." Exploring the intersections between environmental activism and creative expression, the discussion uncovers how poetic perspectives can deepen our understanding of plastic’s pervasive presence and its impact on the environment. Cobb shares her unique approach to environmental issues through poetic narratives, revealing connections between plastic pollution, historical events, and personal experiences. By integrating themes of war, wildlife, and wastefulness, Cobb's work serves as a catalyst for broader environmental consciousness and action. Join us as we explore how creativity and environmental responsibility can coexist in the pursuit of sustainable solutions.

Episode Guests: Allison Cobb

More information about Allison Cobb here

Find Allison’s book, Plastic: An Autobiography here

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, written, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong. 

Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos 

Transcript:

[00:00:10.050] - 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 Markesey, and today we are serving literature, poetry, and plastic. All right, but before we jump into it, we always get started with the Trivia Question. So the question for today is, it is difficult to see which of the following animals with an infrared camera. A, snakes, B, sharks, C, polar bears, and D, frogs. Now we have a reptile, a fish, a mammal, and an amphibian. That's not necessarily a hint, but those are your choices. Spotify listeners can answer directly on the episode page of the app, and everyone else can DM me on Instagram at pineforestmedia for a chance to win a monthly prize. And stick around to the end of the credits to hear the answer to last week's Trivia Question and also a lovely review from one of you. Okay, plastic and poetry. That's what we're here for today. And we're going to speak to a poet who about plastic. Allison Cobb is her name, and in addition to being a poet, she is a published author with 20 years of experience in the field of environmental issues.

[00:01:39.240] - Clark

I came across Allison Cobb's book Plastic: An Autobiography when I was looking for books on the history of plastic. Her book is and also isn't that. It's a collection of vignettes of poetry and prose that, when woven together, reveal the interconnectedness of plastic on our planet. It draws lines between the milestones in plastic's invention, the Second World War, ocean debris, wildlife stressors, the automotive industry, intergenerational justice, and the author's own life. So obviously, I needed to have this person on this show. Together, we delved into her creative process as a poet and discuss the role of literature in recognizing emotional responses to environmental destruction as a vital component of activism and change. We explored the major themes and metaphors that weave through her pages, and you'll also get some bits of plastic history. Now, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode. All right. Welcome, Allison. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. The first question I have is if you could just introduce yourself.

[00:02:51.600] - Allison Cobb

Sure. Thanks for having me, Clark. I'm happy to be here. I'm Allison Cobb. I'm a writer, author of four books, Most an Environmental Focus, and I also work as a Director for Justice and Equity at the Environmental Defense Fund, a US-based environmental nonprofit that's been around since the late '60s. They do work all around the world now, and they have many programs, including mainly climate, also work in oceans and food production, and a range of things, but a really big focus on climate right now.

[00:03:26.690] - Clark

You have written four books so far. One of them is titled Plastic and Autobiography, and that's the one I'd like to focus on primarily today. You probably could ask this question a lot, but why did you decide to write about plastic? What is it about plastic that you find so poignant?

[00:03:42.690] - Allison Cobb

Yeah, that's a great question. When I started thinking about writing this book, it was back in 2010, and I wanted to write a book about the current era and all of the global changes happening with the climate and pollution and plastic. At the time, it sounds maybe a little odd to say now, but at the time, climate change felt quite abstract for many people still. I thought I would write about plastic because I think Pretty much everyone has an intimate daily relationship with plastic. So that's why I settled on that.

[00:04:20.920] - Clark

So to give people an understanding of what this book is, because if you say someone wrote a book about plastic, that can mean a lot of things. It's not like, Well, the first cellulose nitrate was developed in 1897 and so on and so on. So it's not a strictly historical book in that sense, but it's also not a scientific book either. It's more a work of poetry. Can you explain to us what this book is?

[00:04:44.960] - Allison Cobb

Sure, I'd be happy to. The book is where it goes on book shelves in the bookstore. It's classified as creative non-conviction. I agree with you. It dwells in a middle space between poetry and prose, which is where a lot of my writing dwells. And as you mentioned, it's written in very short sections that overlap with one another and weave together. You're right, it isn't 50 ways to cut down on your plastic use or a historical look at plastic. It is much more personal.

[00:05:17.720] - Clark

Yeah, it was very interesting for me to see this different approach because we don't often see poetry in the mainstream media when it comes to addressing environmental issues. But environmental issues have always inspired art all its forms, particularly in protests. Can you speak to the power of poetry in addressing environmental issues?

[00:05:37.170] - Allison Cobb

Having worked in the environmental field for more than 20 years, I've really come to be deeply committed to the idea that the fundamental changes in our relationship with the planet that we will need to undertake are going to require not only technological legal and policy solutions, but also a real commitment to environmental justice and equity. But all of that also is going to take enormous amounts of imagination, different kinds of thinking, and an honoring of lots of feelings involved grief about species we're losing, about changes in our own lives related to climate change, and hopefully also joy about the possibilities for change. I think all of those together may begin to be adequate for the kinds of solutions that we need. But I'm very committed to the power of creativity, emotion, and feeling to drive really serious solutions. Those ideas are often discounted, I think, in a European-based culture that's very focused on science and rationality, but I consider them really critical.

[00:07:00.030] - Clark

That's so interesting because I do see almost a slight contradiction in the way that your approach may be considered a niche because we don't see it often. But when we think of a niche, that's typically something that applies to a very specific subject or appeals to a very specific audience. But I think in this case, it's actually the other way around. On this show, I talk to academic researchers who have dedicated their entire careers to focusing on that specific topic or that very specific solution to address a larger problem. That's essential, right? We need scientists, economists, policymakers to engage with challenges like this. But your approach is much more accessible than the majority of the scientific papers that get published about, I don't know, OXO biodegradable plastics that are impacting soil microbiomes, et cetera. I like that you're filling this space that despite having broad appeal, is still underrepresented. I hope that people start to engage more in this area.

[00:07:58.370] - Allison Cobb

I feel like one of the great gifts being trained as a poet is that it gives me, I joke, poetic license to explore science and history and do even ethnographic interviews in a way that people who have to maintain within the confines of their professional field would not venture to do. I do hope that that's a very human approach and matches our very human curiosity as a species, right?

[00:08:25.410] - Clark

I want to start to talk about the book itself, which you approach through a very personal lens. Can you tell us about your personal relationship with plastic and how it finds its way into the pages?

[00:08:37.690] - Allison Cobb

Sure. Well, trained as a poet, I have a master's of Fine Arts in Poetry. I feel like everything that I write, even if it looks like prose on the page, comes from a creative, poetry-informed lens. I approach topics as a creative writer, not as a journalist or historian or environmental scientist. And the way that I found to get my arms around this vast technology of plastic that takes so many forms that it almost disappears in our daily life because it's so ubiquitous was to just really take a personal look at everywhere my own life intersected with this technology. I hoped that by approaching it through a really personal lens would make it very relatable for people. Small.

[00:09:30.630] - Clark

One metaphor that comes up quite a bit is that of the albatross. What can you tell me about that?

[00:09:36.460] - Allison Cobb

In terms of the albatross, that actually was the original inspiration for writing the book. Years before I started I think it was about 2004, 2005, I saw a photograph of an albatross that had died after ingesting plastic. I don't know if you or listeners are familiar with these photographs, Albatross Chicks in the Pacific Islands are fed, usually things like fish eggs, by their parents who go out and hunt food, but they're also increasingly picking up plastic waste and feeding it to their chicks. And eventually, the chicks get so much plastic inside them that they can't digest that they die. And there are very haunting photographs taken by a photographer called Chris Jordan of decaying albatross chicks with the plastic inside them fully intact. And I think maybe the very earliest of these photographs was taken by a different photographer named Susan Middleton. And the plastic inside of that bird contained one shard that had the markings from a World War II airplane squadron. So that piece of plastic had been floating around in the ocean for like 60 years before a bird picked it up and fed it to its chick. And I read about that.

[00:10:53.480] - Allison Cobb

It was just a stray thing I read, and it just lodged in my brain as something that I wanted to know about and stayed there until I actually started to investigate and engage with it.

[00:11:04.740] - Clark

Listeners can find this photo through the show notes or in our socials, but also the albatross. If we're doing a bit of literary analysis, is a very poignant metaphor and a very famous poem. It's called The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. I read it when I was in eighth grade. Shout out to Mrs. Baker. But I imagine it is not a coincidence because the metaphor serves a very similar function in your work as it does in poem.

[00:11:31.060] - Allison Cobb

Yeah, in the Western literature canon, that poem by Coleridge is quite famous. It's a 19th century poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And what happens in that poem is that One of the sailors on the ship shoots an albatross that has been following the ship and eating its scraps. After that act of wanton violence, because they don't use the albatross for anything, it was just first it was shot, the ship becomes really cursed, and actually everyone on it dies except for the mariner. Because this was happening, the rest of the crew took the dead albatross and hung it around the mariner his neck and forced him to wear this decaying bird. And that metaphor has taken it on a life in our culture. Listeners may have heard about, Oh, this albatross around my neck, which means a burden. That's something it's just hard to carry around. And what happens in the poem is that then the mariner, who is the only one who lives, goes and just tells his tale to anyone who will listen. And it was right at the height of the industrial revolution in England. It was a warning to the rest of the world about the dangers of environmental destruction.

[00:12:55.230] - Clark

Well, I think the albatross also represents an action that can't be undone. Theoretically, we could stop all plastic production soon, but we can't undo all the plastic that is already out there. But I think it also signifies a visual representation of a mistake, something that you can see that constantly reminds you of your crimes, we might say. And I also think it represents guilt. I think guilt is one emotion that comes up a lot with environmental destruction. So this photo of the albatross, the reference to the literary canon and the emotional dimension of plastic pollution. This is just one example of how your book draws connections, But there's one more connection with the albatross, which is you were mentioning that one of the pieces of plastic found inside of it is a war artifact, and war becomes another major theme of your work. Why did you decide to highlight war? Perhaps what is the link between the history of plastic and the history of war?

[00:13:47.290] - Allison Cobb

Yeah, they're actually really intimately linked. The reason that war shows up in the book is not only the link to that piece of plastic and the albatross, but also because of the link to my life. I was born and raised in Los Alamos in New Mexico, in the United States, which is where the first atomic bombs were created and which remains one of the nation's three nuclear labs. My father was a nuclear physicist there. I just happened to learn in my research about plastic that polyethylene, which now is the most common plastic on the planet, it's in water bottles, it's in your pipes in your house, probably. It's in just about everything. It was a new material, brand new material in the 1950s. People weren't exactly sure what to do with it, but it turned out to be critical to the design of the hydrogen bomb, the first thermonuclear bomb. So I happened to cross that. And so there was a link to my own life. And I also came to understand that World War II was really the inflection point. It's, post-World War II is called the age of acceleration, when fossil fuel and other technologies really took off.

[00:15:00.210] - Allison Cobb

Polyethylene was one of the first petroleum-based plastics. Plastic production and nuclear weapons and nuclear technologies just really blasted off after World War II. Plastic had existed before then, but It didn't become so integral to everyday life until after that. So the two are really linked. Many, many of our technologies, from the internet to fast computers, have come out of war-related research. It's just a fact of our lives. That was an important link.

[00:15:38.940] - Clark

It seems that war is something we really have an easy time spending money on if we're examining our human history and also our human today, unfortunately. But a lot of money went into researching the development of plastics for military applications during the World Wars. The production of plastic quadrupled from 1939 to 1945. Just in six years. Nylon, which is a polymed polymer, was invented in 1935 and used for military rope, parachutes, uniform liners, helmets, to name a few. Pvc, which is polyvinal chloride, also a synthetic polymer, was used for waterproofing military uniforms and tents, also for handgranades and tanks, rubber and elastomer polymer. I know lots of big words, but it was used for synthetic tires and goggles for military planes and vehicles. And of course, as you told us, it was essential in creating the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. And also still for war, because the United States is always at war. We've been continuously involved in a war somewhere for the last two decades. And according to Fricanometrics, there have been less than 20 years since the Declaration of Independence, where the United States has not been at war. So a lot of plastic is being used for war right now.

[00:16:56.980] - Clark

A lot more could be said on that, but moving on a bit. The last symbol I want to talk about today is the automobile. There is one specific piece of plastic that found its way into your pages, similar to the war relic in the Albatross, but this time it is a car fender. Can you tell me about this artifact and your choice to focus on the automobile industry?

[00:17:15.670] - Allison Cobb

The involvement of the automobile industry in my exploration was a little bit of chance. I was picking up all of the pieces of plastic I found on my daily dog walk and cataloging them. One day, this large plastic fender liner, about 4 feet long, showed up against my front fence. So of course, I couldn't ignore that. And I did a little bit of research into it. It actually took me a while to do the research. And discovered that it came from a Honda Odyssey minivan, which is a very popular car in the US. And in fact, it came from the very first generation of Honda Odyssey in 1995. So that gave me an opening to really explore the full life cycle of plastic, because this is a piece of garbage that has no use at all anymore, but will last forever. So I wanted to think about if I treated this with the weight that it actually has as a thing that will last forever, what could I do about it? And what I ended up doing is dragging my family on a trip across the US to Lincoln, Alabama, where all the world's Honda Odyssey minivans are made.

[00:18:26.890] - Allison Cobb

They build themselves as a zero-waste plant, so we thought we would try to return the car part to them. I understood it as a bit of a theatrical gesture just to try to make the point that we could take the approach that the people who manufacture and use the plastic need to take responsibility for its end of life. We were not successful in having them take the piece of plastic back. And in fact, it was a suggestion that didn't even really make any sense to them at all, which again was an illustration of how far as a culture we are from that full responsibility for the life cycle of plastic by the people who manufacture and use it. One that actually didn't even know happened until after I had gone back. My spouse was videoing the whole interaction on a GoPro that was a little bit hidden because the Honda factory does not let you bring anything in. You can't bring cameras or even notebooks or anything. Our daughter, who was eight years old at the time, was the ambassador of the piece of plastic and asking them to take it back. And the woman, representative from the factory, looked at her and said, Oh, we can't take that.

[00:19:35.170] - Allison Cobb

That's yours. And I just felt like rewatching that video. I hadn't heard her say that when I was there. I thought that was so emblematic of how we're leaving plastic for the next generations to figure out what to do with.

[00:19:49.260] - Clark

Wow, that must have been such an interesting moment to have on tape. I feel like it belongs in a time capsule or something. We talk a bit about the balance between individual and systemic change on this show. And of course, we can each make our own small impact. But blame is such an interesting game to play, right? Because it's like, is it the producer's responsibility or the government's responsibility to regulate the producers or the public's responsibility to pressure the government? But I do not think that the responsibility of that car vendor was that of your eight-year-old at the time. I think by now we've covered the themes in your book on plastic that I wanted to address. However, you mentioned that you spent 20 years in the field of environmental communication, and plastic is one of many issues that you tackle. So I want to ask if there are any any other topics you've worked with deeply in the past or any that you'd like to cover in the future?

[00:20:34.960] - Allison Cobb

Yeah. Thanks for asking that. My previous book is a book called Greenwood, which is set in and departs from a 19th-century cemetery in Brooklyn, New York that I lived near. The thing that I examined in that book was attitudes in the United States around land and the environment, and came to understand that the concept of wilderness as a dangerous and bad place that needs to be civilized really comes out of a Judeo-Christian tradition that's a very specific philosophy and way of thinking. In the United States, it's also very twined with racist and anti-indigenous attitudes where people who are other than the dominant culture are linked to uncivilized lands. I'm working now on a book that's about more directly than I've written in the past about my own history as a nuclear colonist in the American Southwest and what it means to have grown up in a place where actually the majority of the population is Indigenous and Hispanic, and how many of those practices and lands of those cultures have really been transformed and death-secreting by the nuclear industry.

[00:22:02.050] - Clark

Wow. Okay. I'm definitely excited to follow your work because these topics are very important. Although despite being so, perhaps we might say they're not always the most uplifting, and it's not going to do any of us any good to succumb to despair about them. I want to ask you, what is your favorite part about being an author and a poet?

[00:22:20.490] - Allison Cobb

Thank you for asking that. I really support joy and delight in all that we do as a as a wise practice for sustaining our work. I have learned that really largely from Indigenous environmental leaders and environmental leaders of color. I have been, as many people have been influenced by the US Indigenous author Robin Wall-Kimmerer, who wrote a book called Breeding Sweet Grass, a book of essays. She's actually a botanist by training. She writes that despair is like anesthetizing and that actually the world gives us so much joy that we have an obligation to return the gift, which I love that characterization of joy as, It's not something heavy like an obligation, but part of what we're here to do is to experience the joy and wonder of where we are. I get so much of that as I write and explore and come to understand things I didn't know before. I get to meet a lot of people, people who are passionate about what they're doing. That, to me, is just incredibly life-giving and joy-giving. That's my favorite thing.

[00:23:42.160] - Clark

Wow. I love hearing that you love it so much. I want Can I ask if there's any final thing you'd like to add about anything that we've talked about today?

[00:23:49.270] - Allison Cobb

Because you mentioned guilt, I wanted to talk about the fact that one of the most surprising things that I discovered in writing the book was how much of I think that guilt around our individual environmental footprint is a creation of the industry, and it's old. So way back in the 1950s, before plastic was in wide use, people in the US state of Vermont started getting concerned about glass pollution, like people throwing their glass soda bottles out along the road. And so they got one of the first bills to require people to recycle. And Coca-Cola and the glass manufacturers got very concerned about this. And they started a campaign in the US that lasted for decades. I experienced when I was a kid, which was called the Keep America Beautiful campaign. And the tagline of the campaign was, People create pollution, only people can stop it. And so very squarely focused the responsibility for plastic waste onto individuals and away from the manufacturers and away from the companies. Then they also very successfully advocated for recycling programs, municipal recycling programs, which have been shown to be largely unsuccessful. Only about 9% of plastic gets recycled. That was a real surprise to me.

[00:25:24.360] - Allison Cobb

The industry also really engineered the idea that plastic needs to be thrown away. That was another surprise to me. As plastic was taking off in consumer goods after World War II, people who had come through the Depression in the US and through a world war were saving their plastic because it's so durable. The plastic industry understood that if they were to make profits in the future, they needed to shift that behavior. There's a famous quote from a marketer that says, The future of plastic is in the trash can. There were real marketing campaigns around encouraging people to just chuck this plastic because there would always be more new shiny things. When I give readings and talk to people about this book and about plastic pollution, people who care about these issues feel a lot of sadness and a lot of guilt. I agree that we can do what we can as individuals. Then a lot of our energy and focus can go upstream on changing laws, changing requirements for companies to be responsible for their waste.

[00:26:25.110] - Clark

Well, that, I think, is a perfect note to end on. Lastly, where can people find you?

[00:26:31.190] - Allison Cobb

I'm easy to find at allisoncob. Net.

[00:26:36.160] - Clark

Okay, perfect. Well, Allison, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I truly appreciate you coming on the show. So thank you so much.

[00:26:44.140] - Allison Cobb

Thanks for having me, Clark.

[00:26:54.450] - Clark

All right, a major thank you to Allison Cobb. If you're curious how Allison covered all of these topics that we discussed using poetry. You should be, and you should go track down this book, Plastic and Autobiography. You can find a link to it in the show notes. I really appreciate Allison's work because I think I've been trying to show throughout the episodes of this podcast so far, just how interconnected plastic is. I am using interdisciplinary science podcasting, but I think she did it really successfully through poetry and prose. If I may, I think both are pretty cool. 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 am your host, Clark Marquezi, and this episode was produced, written, and engineered by me. If you found it interesting, send it to someone you know. Plastic Apple Podcast is part of a larger network of sciencey podcast called Pineforest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description or on our website at pineforestpods.

[00:28:09.310] - Clark

Com. We're also on Instagram and TikTok at Pineforest Media, and we've got some exciting science podcast coming out this year and a five-star rating across platforms, and a review on Apple Podcast is one of the best things you can do to help the entire network to grow. Thank you to all of you who have made it this far. And today's review comes from JevDef from South Africa who says, I've never been to listen to podcasts, let alone podcasts about environmental matters. But PFM has made engaging with this topic so much fun and entertaining. I think PFM has tapped into a new way of learning, teaching, and presenting that not even Beyoncé has thought of yet. Also proud to see a queerly-produced podcast emulate such eloquence. Devdev from South Africa. I appreciate you so much. I was just writing in my diary about it. I am not lying. If you would like your review to be featured on the show, all you got to do is leave one on Apple Podcasts, and you're probably going to get picked. Now, for the answer to last week's Trivia Question, the answer was hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, thanks in part to all of these stars out there that all put together shine just a little bit less bright than all of you listening.

[00:29:19.850] - Clark

All right, kiss. We'll talk soon