Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining. I'm just going to give it a minute to see if more people will join. So thank you so much for coming guys. I will be starting really soon.
Hello, hello. Hey Maggie, I think you invited you to speak. So there should be like a notification and you can click on accept. Oh, I think she's rejoining. Okay. That's also fine.
No worries, we'll wait for Maggie to come back, but in the meantime, hello everybody, great to see you here today, and of course it's a special day today, it is World Environment Day, June 5th, so happy World
environment day everybody. I hope you're having a great day just in general and it is another special day as it is our midday as well. We'll have to be talking about that a bit more later. Hi Maggie.
Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,#
with Flo and our special guest Maggie who is a conservation expert so it's great to have her here. So welcome Maggie, thank you so much for joining and yeah feel free to introduce yourself to everyone. We'd love to get to know you.
Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Maggie. I actually am associated with well chain. So I am one of the directors of well chain. But I also have other hats. Some of my other hats include that I work for WWF, which is one of the more well known international wildlife and
and of course environmental NGOs of the world. And also, I also now am an author for environmental children's books. So I'm based in Bangkok, sometimes Singapore, sometimes Hong Kong, and I'm very happy to actually be amidst you guys today.
Well, thank you Maggie, what an introduction. Amazing to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us. So yeah, like we mentioned, it is a special day, it's World Environment Day today and the theme this year is Solutions to Plastic. So we're going to dive into this topic a bit more, see what Maggie has to say about this and yeah, it started
discussion and of course we'll open the floor at the end to questions and answers if anybody wants to ask, you know, "Myself, Flo, or Maggie, any questions?" So thank you so much again for joining. So we can just jump straight into it really. So Maggie, what are your opinions on like the theme this year on World Environment Day about solutions to plastic and why do you think
important to raise awareness about this topic? Yeah, well plastic has been a hotter topic than ever, but of course several of us may actually remember that maybe long ago, maybe in 2015, let's say eight years ago, we haven't really heard anything about plastics, right?
We know that plastics piled up at beaches and around river banks and also even on land. It's more noticeable when it's actually in a body of water because it's really not supposed to be there, but it's not really a thing until recently. And today, or maybe as of the recent days, it's
actually a much bigger topic than before because the world is actually coming together at these UN assemblies to discuss a world, a global binding treaty, which means that it would be something that a document or regulations that countries must ratify and must
implement in their own jurisdictions, meaning that Italy will have Italy's regulations on plastics, China with a China's plastic regulations, and so on. And so member states must actually come up with their solutions and regulations, and also whatever that works for them. Now that
That is actually a key issue here is that when we talk about solutions of anything, right, even when it's solutions to, let's say, toothache or solutions to how your house or my house has a problem with termites.
That is an issue in our physical environment has solutions. Right. We know this. It's just the matter of whether or not we can afford it or the solution is actually on hand or we have thought up the solution. Okay. Sometimes there are such issues that have that takes very
long time for us to come up with solutions. So plastic is actually one of those things that was originally a solution, but it became more of a problem. So we thought of actually using something that could help us move products across great businesses without spoiling, without being
touch with other products without having the gas or the water or the oil leak out. And so that's also why we invented plastic packaging. And so this hasn't been a long, it hasn't been around for a very long time. It's actually only since maybe one or two generations ago. So the people who actually
recognize the beginning of the what we may call the invasion of plastics into our life. They're still around. They're still actually with us today on the planet. However, it has gotten so out of hand that we're now dealing with the consequences of the plastics that first emerge during
those days. And so with plastics, we do need to think of solutions that actually are not a one size fits all solution because that's exactly what plastic was. It was designed to actually fix everything. It's a low cost solution. But right now the world is coming together in a very, very good
type of dynamic and momentum that carried forward since 2018 when WWF along with other organizations first rallied for a global treaty. Now without going into the boring details, I'd like you to let you know how monumental this is because
very, very rarely do the entire world come together to fix a problem. One of them in the past was the ozone layer. We have come together to agree that we're not going to use certain substances that would harm our ozone layer because the ozone layer is really our last shield defending the planet and every
living being on it against these harmful rays, right? So that was actually the first. And then of course, what we now know as the climate change or carbon emissions is actually the second one. And now plastics will become the third that the world come together to discuss. And so it sets the good tone
for us to actually look into seeing how the world would come together to solve a very complex issue. At the same time, I really do hope that this actually becomes a pattern, that when it comes to wildlife protection, when it comes to other types of conservation, that we can all join hands just like what we're doing
for plastics and we can actually define solutions that work best for our individual countries, our individual biomes and individual ecosystems so that at the end of the day that it begins with this one common agreement that we will take action and then the rest of it will be history.
Well, that was so interesting. Thank you so much Maggie for sharing that. And I think what I found most interesting there is the way that you touched on how plastic was a solution in the past, but is now becoming a problem. And then how do we turn that problem back into a solution again? So I think that's
super interesting. Thank you so much Maggie. So just bringing it back to wildlife and ecosystems that you just touched on. What do you think are the main sources of plastic pollution in our environment at the moment? And how do they exactly impact wildlife and ecosystems in such a damaging way?
So plastic, as we all know, right, they're everywhere across any type of industry. Sometimes we see it, for example, the things that we can buy from supermarkets are definitely one of them. And during the pandemic, I think a lot of people have actually explored how to get food delivered to their houses.
So that's another pathway that plastic enters our lives, but there's so much more that we can't actually see because they may be phased out in the intermediate supply chains that do not end up where the end consumer, which is us, would be. So maybe these could be big drums of raw
these may be parts to a machinery that actually we cannot access as end consumers. And so plastic actually exists everywhere and don't get me wrong because plastic is actually an excellent material. Like I mentioned, it's low cost. It actually has all these different
types of characteristics in terms of how malleable, how bendable they are, how much they could be molded into different things, how they are very inert, they don't react with anything. And so I can go on and on about the chemical properties and physical properties of plastic. They're also not conducting
electricity, which is also a great thing, right? In any type of electronics, we do need these substances that can actually stop currents so that we direct the currents to where we want them. And so plastic is great as a material, but right now we need to focus less on the old
overall and quite overbearing in fact this dependence on plastics and switch to other materials and/or recycled materials such as recycled plastic whenever we can because right now there's just a lot of plastic that's piling up. It's almost like if you
walk into a bathroom that you see the bathtub running and overrunning, meaning that the bathtub is overfilled and that all the water is leaking out. So what is the first thing that we do, right? We don't actually go find a mop because that would actually be useless. The water keeps gushing out. The first thing we should
do is actually to turn off the tap. So to stop our reliance or over reliance on using plastic for everything, only reserve it for the places that really needed. For example, syringes is in one of them. During the pandemic, we may have gotten some shots. And these shots are made out of
plastic that is disposable and it's required so because of hygienic reasons right and so that's why when it comes to things that cannot make any concessions as to their chemical and physical properties we do need to retain the plastic components however we should start migrating and we should start thinking about that and so it's not a
about exactly where plastic is being used, but how this plastic is actually being used with the rest of the product, with the rest of the services that it's acquainted with, and also how the consumer uses it. So all that together must be something that we call a systemic thinking process.
Yeah, totally agree there and that actually leads on to the next point I wanted to touch on about, you know, what are the most significant challenges we face in tackling plastic pollution on that global scale? And I know you kind of answered that by, you know,
rethinking how do we use plastic and what do we actually need to use it for but are there any more like significant challenges you can think of when trying to tackle this particular situation on that global level?
Yeah, there are so many different issues that are associated with each and every single solution that people think of in fact. So when we think about let's say we want to replace plastic with something else, usually the first thing that comes to mind would be paper because that's actually another substance that we're very used to, right?
So if it's not a plastic bag, it usually is a paper bag. And that also is definitely an alternative for certain plastic products. But when we actually just simply migrate into another type of material without thinking about the consequences, that's when actually we all are stumbling on the exact same problems that
people have faced maybe 50 years ago when they actually converted to plastics. So we do need to think about the entire supply chain, how it's being used, and how it's being disposed, and even after it's being disposed, how do we handle this? So I would advise anyone who's actually really thinking
thinking about this problem to actually adopt what I just mentioned as systems thinking that we look at it as an entire system, how each and every component interact with one each, each, each, each and everyone. And that we don't actually make rash decisions without considering all the alternatives and also how each
one of the footprints work. What footprint means is actually how much of certain types of materials do we use and emit. So when it comes to carbon footprints, this is probably the most usual term that is associated with the word footprints, is when how much carbon emissions or greenhouse gas
emissions come from the entire supply chain of creating a good or a service that actually we have to tabulate with the calculate add it all up and then come up with the final sum. And so if you look at plastics carbon footprint and paper's carbon footprint, sometimes paper actually has a higher carbon footprint because of the wood
that actually is from trees and trees actually are able to absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. And so if we don't think about it as a big picture, we don't take a step back, it creates a lot of problems. And so when we come to fixed environmental problems, it's very important for us to actually consider
that are all the different alternatives and also everything that's affected when we implement the change or a solution. Yeah, I think that's super important. And also just to make people aware of these things, of course, we're not taught about these things and it really should be implemented in the education system for us all to learn about and then
How can we try to be better with it if we're not aware of it in the first place? So yeah, those are some really interesting and insightful points there. Thank you. And yeah, just moving on like with more about the environment and climate action and stuff. How does plastic pollution interact with climate change and other environmental issues? Would you say?
So as mentioned, plastic is actually one of the most commonly produced manufactured goods in the world. It can be a product by itself, but it usually is a packaging. So any type of manufacturing involves some sort of carbon footprint. Right now there are some ways
what we call knit zero footprints for certain types of materials. So that actually comes with a lot of reduction of whatever we can in terms of in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, there are also some things that are called offsetting. Offsetting means that you don't actually reduce it to zero.
But some other person that is actually doing something else, it could be another process, for example retaining forest or actually planting trees. Sometimes they could be planting mangroves in or around rivers, or it can actually be capturing actively sucking carbon or
any other greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere filtering that out. Those ones are also ways to actually reduce the overall carbon emission. And these carbon offsets could be sold to manufacturers that are saying that we want our products to be completely net zero carbon footprints, meaning that whatever we use someone else
is helping me offset. And so this actually has a lot to do with carbon footprint right now because investors and also governments as well as environmental units, I would say international organizations such as the ones I work for and also governmental organizations and inter-governmental organizations such as the
the UN. All of these are actually looking at how can we actually pair up plastic and carbon footprint so that we actually minimize our dependence on petrochemicals because we know that carbon, a lot of that comes from combustion of machines. So this is actually coming from the
fuel that we consume. And a lot of us are actually converting into using other types of power, for example solar or electricity. And that is actually one big part of it. Another part of what petroleum or petrol-based chemicals go into is actually the creation of plastics. Both of these come from the source, which is crude oil.
In crude oil is actually something that the earth has accumulated for millions of years, and it's actually not considered to be something that's called renewable resource, meaning that we don't actually see it being replenished in our lifetimes. So that's actually another topic that we can actually focus on is that how does plastic deal or how does that
interact with the petroleum industry, and how can we lay off our other dependence on petroleum chemicals and oil? Wow, yeah, no, totally. I didn't know about those things, you know, so it's so great to have these discussions because it's really eye-opening and the way that everything really does interact
and does, you know, affect each other and has that domino effect as well. Yeah. Super interesting and definitely the way that plastic pollution doesn't just stop it in the way that of course, you know, plastic straw goes into the sea and a turtle could swallow that and obviously kill it. It's so much bigger than that as well. No, definitely. So yeah.
What I'm really interested in as well is the way the intersection of technology or scientific solutions and dealing with plastic pollution or conservation in general. What kind of tech or solutions do you think are in place to tackle these global problems like plastic pollution?
Yeah, so definitely there's a lot of tech that can go into helping with alleviating the plastic or the global plastic pollution problem. I think it's very safe to say that plastic has been found on every corner of the planet, every nook and cranny is actually filled with plastic or microplastic pollution.
Right now, there are a lot of technology employed to identify types of plastic that can be circulated back into use. So that's what we call circular economy is that we don't take make and dispose. We don't take resources from the planet such as crude oil, make a plastic product, and then dispose of it so that it's outside of
out of mind that we put it back into circulation so that we can reuse it over and over. But that is actually a very high energy consumption process. And so it's actually not in our best interest to use that as our first resort. Of course, reduction is the first. But coming back to this technology, right? So there are now
Now, vendor machines that are reverse vending machines, meaning that you actually put in things and they give you, they spit out money when you actually put in things. And these are some of the ones that are being employed by different types of take back systems. These take back systems usually either charge a deposit
it upon the purchase of say, let's say your Coca-Cola's or your beverages or any types of containers of plastic. And then as you return them, they actually give you the money. But as I mentioned, plastic is actually not all the same. And of course, not every type of plastic is recyclable or is there recyclability comparable?
some of the plastics are completely not recyclable. Some of them are very recyclable and there's a high chance that they have a next life as the same product. So artificial intelligence is actually some of the things that can visually detect what a type of material is upon the insertion of that, let's say a bottle into the
the vending machine, they can actually detect what type of material is and how much the deposit was originally, whether or not it is actually a product that is susceptible for, or actually part of the scheme where the deposit gets returned to the user. Sometimes a simple barcode reader is already what you
use so that the on vending machine would read the barcode and actually know that this is a product from the local market and that it is actually part of the deposit scheme. On the other hand, there are other ways that we can actually leverage technology from recently, from recent to actually incorporate
it into how we tackle the overall plastic pollution problem. One of them is using blockchain, which is something that I guess our wall chain audience would be more acquainted with. So blockchain is actually used in place for traceability reasons. We want to know when there's offsetting that's occurring, such as the ones that I mentioned for carbon.
For plastic is usually two types. It's usually the collection of waste plastics and the recycling of that collected plastic. These two processes usually generate separate types of plastic credits. And so upon having these plastic credits, it would be useful to know who actually pays, like such as a sponsor.
who paid to buy those plastic credits. And so that type of traceability would call for something that actually would be aligned with blockchain. So blockchain can provide this ledger that cannot be altered or tampered with that it proves that this flow of money and the offsets
are actually in opposite directions from the same parties, meaning that the parties that actually created the plastic credits is the one that sold it to, let's say, a large beverage maker and that the large beverage maker is claiming that this is the offsetting that has occurred for their products and their products can say
claim that it is net zero or net circular plastics for their customers so that their consumers such as us would prefer that as long as we actually want to actually be conscious of the environment. So this type of blockchain applicability has been around for a long time. Tracing
disability has always been something that blockchain promises to the world. And so a lot of companies are looking into having service providers of blockchain in place to make sure that their accounting of their offsetting would make sense, not only to themselves, but also to stakeholders such as
for example, which requires some sort of sustainability reports for whatever they claimed to have done for the environments or even just to end users, such as us when we drink something, maybe we want to know whether this plastic bottle has been offset somewhere else in the world that some this has been used from a research
cycle source and where this is plastic come from. So blockchain can enable that as well. Yeah, definitely. I think using this Web 3 blockchain technology is definitely amazing because of that traceability, the transparency, the accessibility, all of those things that you just mentioned. Do you think that leveraging that Web 3 blockchain technology would
would help overcome those green washing scandals that are happening as well with big businesses or corporations or other projects as well. Oh, definitely. Well, recently, offsetting and also the entire concept of environmental credits, they have
been under a lot of fire. And this fire actually came from a place that actually has its sources quite well grounded in fact on substantiation. What I mean is that a lot of very reputable entities such as the Guardian, which is actually a news media agency, they were
Accusing that some of these credits that we talk with such as carbon credits are actually very useless and they actually don't do what they claim to do for the environment and so I would imagine that Web3 technology such as Proctane Can help with identifying what exactly has been done and also how this flow of money is
come from? Where does it actually, where is it getting funded? And also how is the funder using this sponsorship of this, like, be it a carbon capture or be it plastic collection or recycling? How are they using this to benefit? How are they using it as claims? And whether
or not this could be audited is also something that would be a very interesting potential that we can see with blockchain. Yeah definitely. I mean that's why we're using blockchain technology with wild chain of course and yeah we just want to bridge the gap between people wanting to make a difference and actually making an impact as well in the most
transparent and inclusive way as possible. Yeah. So, um, do you have any like last words of wisdom? How can we beat plastic pollution together? What are some things that we can do as the everyday kind of person do and what are the next steps that we can all take? Yeah, right now I think, um,
It's actually a very complex scenario out there. It's not at the point that us bringing a straw or bringing a cup could actually really salvage the entire plastic solution problem. It's much deeper than that. It requires a lot more regulations. So I think
the best solution that or the best actions that we can take would be to vote for the political parties that actually would implement plastic regulations. Because without regulations, no matter how diligent we are, we are only a very small portion of the
population that actually consumes plastic. And so it would be a feel good factor if I say that you brought your own bag that's great, but it's really, really far deeper than that. And I'm sorry that I don't have more encouraging words for those of us who are as diligent as maybe myself or others who keep washing their recyclables and
and putting them in the bin, recycling has effectively really died. It's not very viable. And so the best bet is really to actually implement the policies that are now being discussed in the UN assemblies. So hopefully these parties will deliver on their word saying that they will actually
have in place laws that would govern manufacturers, make sure that they actually use as much as possible other materials that make sense for their applications. Instead of just migrating massively from plastics, which I mentioned would be a disaster in itself. It would be good for them to actually employ people who are
Much more geared towards systems thinking and understanding how this entire thing works. Instead of just saying, "Yeah, use paper or use cassava." Sounds really cool. Or you see weed. Many of these inventions are great. And they have very limited applicability. And of course, it makes sense for the
them to actually investigate how it could be applied to our daily use. At the same time, I wouldn't advocate for anything until I actually see the data. So really vote for the people that you believe will actually do all this instead of actually just doing having in place band-aid solutions. Definitely super important.
Of course, as you mentioned, real change starts at the top and then we can all come together and make a difference as well. Thank you so much Maggie. So now I'd like to open up the floor to anyone who might have any questions. Feel free to request the mic if you want to chip in or have anything you want to ask us. Oh, flow, go ahead.
So, thanks so much, maybe, it was so interesting. So, I haven't looked much into plastic credits, but it's very interesting. So, I was just... So, I have a question on plastic credits. And you mentioned two types of plastic credits, right? So, one is the...
collection of waste and the other one was recycling. So I was just thinking, so how does this work? Like how is this measured? Because I guess, you know, waste is not always the same. So with with carbon credit is very simple to measure that, right? Because you can, you know, energy has a unit
and you can measure that. But with plastic waste, not every, like you mentioned, there's many different types of plastic. And I was just wondering how does that work? Is there any sort of plastic waste standards that may be outlined that as well? Yeah, thanks for this question, Flo.
So I have been associated with two different types of plastic crediting standards. One of them is Vera, the one that I actually work for, and they also run the biggest carbon crediting standard in the world, which is called VCS. The other one is PCXP for plastic.
And PCX is originally they were called plastic credit exchange, I think. But now they are just dropping the full name and using the the acronyms called plus PCX solutions. And so now I'm sitting in their boards as one of their board members. So these two credits standards are examples of how we
actually define what a plastic credit means. So in their methodologies and in their standard, there is actually a way to calculate exactly what we mean by one plastic credit. Usually it means one metric ton. Sometimes some standards actually other standards use one kilogram, which is of course it
The plastics that is already classified in the categories that we have these include all the ones that are Commonly occurring around you. So probably propylene, polyethylene many of these different types of plastic that you will find in your fridge and also around your house. So these usually would be
considered to be viable plastics. If they're collected, one metric ton of that would equate to one plastic credit for collection. But then not all that collected could be recycled because recyclability is not a science, it's not it's not consideration of the scientific factors of the plastic
It's actually considering more the economics of it. In fact, recyclers willing to take the plastic bag back, themes the plastic recyclable. If they feel that nobody is going to buy the end product even if we recycle it, meaning that chop it into small bits, sell it as pellets. If no one wants that, they're not going to take whatever you give
them. So that's also why I mentioned that recycling has been dead for a very long time is because recycled plastics simply can't compete economically with virgin plastics. And so when we look into recycled credits, these should actually cause a little bit more because collecting one ton of plastic is far
easier than collecting one ton of plastic and bringing it to the recycler and the recycler takes that one full ton of plastic. So all of that being deemed recyclable, having the potential of a next life is quite rare. And so these two types of plastics, sorry, these types of plastic credits, usually
would cost a different price to those manufacturers or companies that are interested in buying them. Thank you so much Maggie and Chloe, great question there and great answer from Maggie. And we have James from the Carbon Counting Club. Hey James, how are you doing? I'm doing well, thanks for having me. I guess the
Earlier you said plastic is low cost but it actually sounds like we're just dumping the externalities on the wildlife and the low income communities and it actually isn't low cost. So and I think that where you said getting regulations to get these people accountable for these externalities is
likely a big deal. But how do you think, I mean, other than voting, is there ways that we can add value to these things? I personally believe in small actions people can do. I'd suggest at least promoting local recycling, and if you don't have local recycling,
look into precious plastics which teaches you at home plastic recycling. I don't know the solutions but thank you for talking about everything. I just don't like to think of plastic as low cost because we're still figuring out what it costs is kind of what I'm seeing.
Very true indeed. I can't agree more with what you just said. The low cost being how much is being paid for a certain type of material, not in the real cost of how much it takes for us to include the cleanups and also in like, reforest or actually regrow whatever is lost and also
So of course, some of the wildlife that's lost, those are lives that are lost we can't ever replenish that. So all the externalities, some of them are being, some of them are reversible, some of them are not. And so it's, it's very hard for us to put a price tag on that. But at the same time, it is a reality that it costs very little to buy a huge
load of plastics, right, whatever it looks like, even if it's in the virgin form or if it's actually molded plastic. So in response to your question, I think some of the things that we can do, of course, is like, for example, in Bali, the island of Bali in Indonesia actually is a great example. There were teams who actually
started off this whole movement about how to actually phase out plastic bags because plastic bags not because of their overall plastic consumption because actually a tiny bit of plastic would actually mold a bit of a bag which is actually quite reusable in fact. But because of how the plastic bags are so prone to being blown into
the sea. They are one of the worst types of plastics, not because of the sheer amount of plastic, but because of how turtles eat them, they get trapped somewhere and they never actually disintegrate. And they're so soft, they actually go into animal tissue. So that's also why it's actually a
a good grass root action from these two teenagers who actually started off this whole movement in Bali to actually just shift away from plastic bags. And so in places that are so vulnerable to plastic pollution, I think that's actually a great start to actually get the entire culture shift going. By culture shift, it means
that we start advocating for an action to be done and then the action cascades into people that actually previously may not actually want to do it. So the best example would be one of them would be Hong Kong, for example, where I'm from. In 2009, the government decided to actually start looking into charging
for the use of plastic bags. People as dingy as the Hong Kongers could be, I can safely say that as I'm one, they didn't want to pay, like even for a few cents, they're not going to pay. And so that actually effectively phased out a huge amount of plastic bags that were being used at its peak. It was actually assumed that about 70 to 80% of all the
So it's not just the plastic bags that we stopped using because people actually now think twice if the plastic bag is actually a way to help the environment. That's actually a key phrase here. The cashier is
when they take your money or don't take your money when you ask, when you're asked, do you want a plastic bag for 50 cents? Then people would say, well, no. And then the cashier would say, well, thanks for saving the environment. So actually, it gives a halo to the in consumer. It actually empowers them because they now know that they have the choice that would actually alter
the fate of the environment. It may not be as grandiose as that, but altogether, 7 million people can definitely alter the fate of certain amounts of seagulls and turtles who end up swallowing plastic bags, can we? So that actually created this culture shift that resulted in people thinking about all types of plastics
that are being used in their lives. And for a very conservative Asian society like Hong Kong, which is actually very much looking into the efficiency of how money is being generated in the city, I was very, very astonished to see a whole movement about weeding out single
these plastics. Hong Kong still currently is still one of the metropolis in Asia that is actually the most plastic free when you look at how people actually bring their own cutleries, bring their own containers, stopped using super market bags. So I think it's actually very successful when you empower the people.
Yeah, thank you Maggie. That was excellent. I definitely agree and actually I was living in Bali and saw firsthand, you know people wanting to consciously make a difference and yeah, I wanted to create that community of climate action and sustainability and it's definitely having a ripple effect for sure and before that I was living in Vietnam another
Southeast Asian country that of course, you know suffers with a lot of plastic pollution and it's so heartbreaking to see that the people, you know, they don't have any other choice maybe because plastic is the cheapest material, you know, one of the other options really if they can't afford to pay for something that's, you know,
Maybe wrapped in paper instead of plastic. So yeah, thank you for that. And thank you James as well. Was there anything else you wanted to say on that note? I guess also about maybe touching on how plastics may not be as finite as we once did.
thought they were, as far as I'm not a chemist, but my understanding they can create plastics for natural gas and they have found ways to produce natural gas fairly renewably. Is that a fear for more low-cost plastics entering our environments?
Yeah, I'm not certain about which types of plastic you're talking about, but I can also share with you that there are different types of plastics that are actually called file degradable and that it goes under the name or the overall
We're all image of being able to disintegrate in nature without us having to worry that they'll just end up somewhere just like at the rest of the plastic pollution. However, we know that a lot of this plastic or so-called biodegradable plastic are actually not fully degradable and sometimes they may end up as my
So some of these additives that render plastic to be biodegradable have already been looked into and environmental groups have advocated for governments to to ban these additives that so-called are biodegradable. At the same time, there are actual inventions that
are in fact, biodegradable inside the lab under very optimal conditions and also in real life conditions, meaning that even if a plastic piece actually ends up between the rocks like in some crack, it can still actually be degrading over time when it's not exposed to UV light.
So there are so many of them. And so therefore governments should actually have like to verify whether or not these claims are in fact as they are portrayed because as a consumer I will never be able to tell. And if someone tells me that
this is actually a green or alternative to plastics. I simply believe it, right? I mean, I want to do the right thing for the environment and I believe that the government has this policed perfectly. And so the government is actually, well, many of the governments actually are falling short of that right now.
and that they are lacking a system to ensure that any type of green tank claim be it associated with plastic or be it with something else. No one is actually really seeing whether or not it's actually greenwashing or if it is actually really an initiative that can eliminate what we just
just called the externalities. So it could be a way like there could be ones that compete with plastic that can actually be one of the solutions that I that we spoke of or it can be a false Messiah as well. So it's really the government, the local governments that really need to look into this.
to make sure that their consumers are well aware and also they take these things off the market once they're deemed not effective at all. Thank you so much guys and if anyone else has any other questions please feel free to request a mic we'd be happy to have you here.
And if there's no more questions, maybe we'll move on to the second part of our space just very quickly. As I mentioned before, we are having some NFTs live. They are dropping from today. So I will add another
link in the thread. You can check it out here so you can start bidding on our first NFT which is an ad wall. So head over to there now if you fancy it. And yeah, maybe Floken tell us a bit about our NFT drop and some more info.
Sure, thanks Emma. So yeah, so our first NFT drop for those who didn't see it yet was our Genesis collection, which we launched on Earth Day back in April. And yeah, we launched a brand new NFT marketplace, which is built on carbon
blockchain called Cello and yeah and it's we had a high level of engagement I would say high level of interest for a brand new NFT marketplace so we had over 106 bits made only on 8 NFTs and yeah so we released the first 8 species
And the most sought after NFT was actually the Blackfooter cat called Bobo, which received over 37 bits. And of course we're donating the proceeds to different wildlife conservation projects that we'll announce in the future.
Yeah, so we have a total of 25 different species in a campaign and what sort of special about the entire campaign is that all of those are one of one. So that means that those NFTs are single issued unique additions and later on we launch more species.
but the design will be completely different and also this is a quite unique design. And yeah, so regarding utility, we are creating these digital twins basically meaning that it's a digital representation of the animal in the wild.
And, yeah, so if the, for example, if the IOC and Red List says there is 6,670 cheetahs left in the world and there are 6,670 cheetahs as a digital representation of that animal. So that's sort of a real world connection.
Each NFT has a donation royalty, so that means it creates ongoing donations. So that means if let's say I adopt one from Emma and then Maggie adopts one from me, then every time this adoption happens, we create a new donation to a cause. So that's pretty cool. And also they are doing a lot of work.
dynamic NFTs and what that means is it's responsive to external factors that means for example the animal can grow up and the visual will change there can be different things happening in the real world that affect the NFTs so that is just a lot more engaged
because we think that you know just owning a digital collectible and then not doing anything with it is kind of like boring so we wanted to really make it dynamic and engaging and yeah today we released I/O so the auction is already live or the adoption is already live and I think Ardwell's are quite
interesting creatures because they have some pretty unique behaviors as well. So they are quite picky either as well. So they mainly feed on termites and mainly they termite eggs. So that's why they spend a lot of time close to termite amounts
because that's the primary food source. And what I didn't know before is also that they are actually not carnivores. So they are they're not eating meat and which is strange because other members of the hyena family actually are carnivores and but art will still
not each larger prey. So that's I found that quite interesting. And yeah, they're they're night active. They they have these wide range of vocalization to communicate with other animals with they they they use it to warm their mates to defend their territory.
They also have this cool defense mechanism where they raise their mains and then they stand on their forelegs to make them sort of look larger. And yeah, they live mainly in South-Saharan Africa, which is countries like South Africa, Namibia, Botswana.
And that's why I think it's a really interesting species and yeah, so it's now live we launched today and it's gonna run until 12 of June and then from then on we actually have a new drop every week so that's I'm very excited about that and we also
we're opening the marketplace for peer-to-peer adoption also soon in maybe one or two weeks. Thank you Flo, super exciting and yeah head over to the adoption center now you can check out the link that's in the thread here or head to our profile and check out the link in bio and feel free to pop into the discord as well and become part of our community.
community we'd love to have you there. And yes, I'm up to the newsletter of EFANCEA as well. So thank you so much, guys, and everyone for joining. And of course, for our special guest Maggie, it was really insightful and really interesting. And yeah, we just loved having you here and hope to have you back again. So thank you so much. And thank you everybody for being here.
here today and if you need anything from us just reach out via Twitter or Discord and we'll be happy to help you so thank you so much everybody thank you thank you maybe thanks guys and see you in the next one bye everybody and happy world invite bye bye happy world environment day bye bye