Hello and welcome back everyone to part two of our briefing series reduce and reuse how to cut greenhouse gas emissions of building materials plastics and food today we will consider the climate consequences of plastics. I'm Dan Berset, executive director of the environmental and energy study Institute. The environmental and energy study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. And more recently, we have also developed a program that provides technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on bill financing programs for their customers. It provides informative objective non partisan coverage climate change topics and briefings written materials and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing recordings fact sheets issue briefs articles newsletters and podcasts are always available for free online at www.esi.org. The best way to stay informed about our latest resources is to subscribe to our bi weekly newsletter climate change solutions. And when you're visiting us online, you can certainly take advantage of that resource. Yesterday, we kicked off the week series with a briefing on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with building materials, and the steps we can take to make the most use of materials we already have. I'm going to see all of the resources from yesterday's briefing, including an extensive list of relevant reports at www.esi.org. Today, though, we turned to plastics, both the climate consequences of single use plastics, and the range of policy solutions available to us to change our course. I'm going to defer my introduction of the briefing today to a very special member of the esi family. Richard Ottinger represented New York in Congress throughout the 1960s 70s and 80s, at a time when some of the most consequential environmental legislation was enacted. He made environmental policy a top priority at a time when that was less common. And part of his commitment led him to co-found with several of his colleagues, the precursor to esi, the bipartisan bite and bicameral environmental and energy study conference in 1975. After esi became an independent organization, Dick chaired our board of directors. And in addition to his work as dean emeritus and professor of law at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, he remains very actively involved with esi as a board member and source of invaluable guidance and insight. For example, our briefing today was his idea. We could not do what we do without Dick, and it's a privilege to have him join us today. Although plastic pollution poses a major and growing danger to marine wildlife fisheries and human health, plastics are unfortunately not just a threat to our oceans.  In fact, if plastics were a country, it is found to then be the world's fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter. Whereas yet, the fossil fuel industry plans to triple US plastic production by 2050. If this is allowed to happen, plastics greenhouse gas emissions are found likely to reach over 56 gigatons tons, 10 to 13% of the entire remaining world carbon budget. If we allow this planned expansion to occur, it alone was found to undermine our ability to remain within one and a half degree centigrade global temperature rise that scientists agree are necessary to avoid the worst ravages of climate change. In short, if the plastics industry succeeds with his planned build out, it is likely game over for climate change.  At least the planned expansion must be stopped immediately. Achieving this will be a major fight. Plastics are made from cracking of oil or gas. Their production creates greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of production. From oil and fracking and transporting gas to emissions from their deterioration in disposal. The fossil fuel companies are banking on the increase in plastic production to make up for falling demand for fossil fuels, as alternative energy becomes a widely available, affordable and sought after. Simply put, plastic production is a big oil and gas company top priority of fact that the industry openly acknowledges. The role of ESI with its strong relationship with congressional and environmental leaders in bringing plastic climate to the attention of the world's climate crisis negotiators is essential. And the team of experts ESI has assembled to make the case for this is incomparable. I have received my education on the subject from panelists Judith, and former EPA regional director and founder of the beyond plastics organization with whom I have partnered in collaboration with my pace university law school energy and climate change center to address the climate crisis deployment threat. Thank you very much, Dick, for introducing our briefing today. And before I introduce our panelists, let me remind everyone that we will have time for questions after our panel is finished. We will do our best to incorporate questions from our audience. And if you have a question you have two options to ask it. The first is by sending us an email email address is ask ASK at ESI.org, or even better you can follow us on Twitter at ESI ESI online and send it to us that way. We're going to introduce our first two panelists together because they'll be co presenting Judith, Inc. is a senior fellow and visiting faculty member at Bennington College, where she teaches classes on plastics pollution. She is the founder and president of beyond plastics and initiative that works on plastic pollution issues. As Dick said Judith is also a former EPA regional administrator during the Obama administration, and the former deputy secretary for the industry in the New York governor's office. And Judith will be co presenting with Jim Vallette. Jim is founder and president of material research L3C, a small business based in Maine. Jim and his international team specialized and analyze specialized in analyzing the global supply chains and impacts toxic chemicals greenhouse gases and waste material research works in service to nonprofit academic media and government institutions, Judith and Jim. Welcome. I'm really looking forward to your presentation today. Thanks so much Dan and thanks to ESI for sponsoring this and what an honor to hear the inspired words of Congress member Richard Ottinger I think Dick is one of the single most effective environmental lawmakers ever to serve in Congress so that was incredibly special to see him today. We all know that plastics is a water quality issue and in fact December 1, the National Academies of Science put out a really exciting and important report on plastics in the ocean. It's a water quality issue. Plastics has been unfortunately a recycling failure, I'm a big supporter of recycling, but plastics is only achieved about an 8.5% recycling rate. So when you see all the advertising saying recycle all your single use plastic know that over 90% of that actually doesn't get recycled. Plastics is a very important environmental justice issue, both where the plastics are manufactured, and then also if they are buried or burned in landfills or incinerators unfortunately those facilities are almost always cited in low income communities and communities of color. Plastics is a health issue. But what we did it beyond plastics teaming up with the brilliant Jim Vallette in his research is we wanted to look at the plastics climate change connection. We published this great report, the new coal plastics and climate change, because we know you are all really busy, we kept it to just 25 pages, and the findings were really important. When you followed what was happening in Glasgow, you didn't hear anything about plastics and climate change. And when state legislatures and Congress look at the climate change issue, there's hardly a mention of plastics which is really too bad because our report took a detailed look at 10 distinct ways that greenhouse gases are released associated with the use and disposal and manufacturing of plastics from fracking to cracking to incineration. This report finds plastics to be a major source of greenhouse gases. And it's an issue that quite frankly very few people are talking about let alone addressing. We compared the greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired power plants to plastic production. And I will let Jim walk you through all that but I want to tell you in summary that in the near future, the US plastics industry contribution to climate change is on track to exceed the greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants in the United States, and those health impacts are disproportionately felt by low income communities and communities of color. The good news is 65% of coal plants in the United States have been shut down. This is an important accomplishment driven by many concerns including climate change, and hats off to the Sierra Club and the Beyond Coal Campaign and Bloomberg authorities and others for achieving that enormous accomplishment. However, our report has found that plastics is replacing coal as a major source of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, and just think about what's happening in the US More and more renewable energy projects and energy efficiency commitments are being experienced in the US, which is a fabulous thing. We're seeing more investment in mass transit, electrifying the transportation sector, who among us is not on a long waiting list to get an electric car. So the fossil fuel industry saw years ago that the demand for fossil fuel for electricity generation and transportation would be on the decline. And they've decided to make a major shift toward plastic production plastics is the plan B for the fossil fuel industry. It was 42 plastic facilities have opened or expanded since 19 since 2019. Many more under construction. So the new coal plastics and climate change also looked at where is this plastic production happening. And what are the greenhouse gas emissions. We were surprised to find that 90% of greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production facilities comes from just 18 low income minority communities, mostly in Texas and Louisiana. Because of the huge increase in fracking. There's a super abundance of fracked gas, which has turned the US into the global engine of plastics production. I just want to spend a moment explaining exactly what's happening. So there are about 1 million new oil and gas wells that are hydrofracked in the United States. And at the well site. Gas is vented directly into the atmosphere, it's a thing gas it's a very potent greenhouse gas. What we see now in a handful of situations is new pipelines are being built that gas is being sent to new multi billion dollar facilities called a thing cracker facilities. It's heated at high temperature and cracked. That's the funny name cracker. And that then produces massive amounts of plastic pellets or noodles and sometimes plastic powder. That is then shipped around the world to make new single use plastic packaging. It's very energy intensive. It also emits a tremendous amount of air toxins greenhouse gases and water pollution, probably the most high profile battle going on in the country is around the saint James parish Louisiana proposal by for Mosa. I'm honored to feature the amazing citizen activist Sharon Levine on the cover of our report. Sharon is working with her community in cancer alley in Louisiana to try to block this proposal which is essentially two ethnic factor facilities. I'm going to stop there. I just want to say that plastics is the plan B for the fossil fuel industry. There's no plan B for the rest of us. So now I'm delighted to introduce Jim Vallette with material research, who was the author of this report, and who did just an outstanding job pulling together a lot of data in a short period of time. Thank you Jim. Thank you very much Judith and thanks also to ESI ESI for your educational work and for this opportunity to share the findings of our collaboration. I'll start with an overview of the resources that we have developed for public use. This is all open access information available to everyone for free. Next slide please. Beyond plastics website on climate and plastics features this report and supplemental resources that I hope you will find useful. These include the methodology for our calculations, a map of plastics industry facilities in the United States, and a spreadsheet with a lot of information about these plastics factories. The cornerstone of our report is this spreadsheet. It details 150 million out of the 232 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions that we associate with the US plastics industry. Each year, each year facilities with significant amounts of greenhouse gas pollution must report this information to the EPA. In 2020, there were more than 120 plastics factories that filed these reports. Our spreadsheet groups these facilities by the communities in which they're located. It includes a lot of details like what the plant makes, which resins, and how much, and what else is planned for that facility. Next slide please. Our calculation includes estimated releases of methane and extremely potent greenhouse gas. Methane is leaked into the atmosphere when natural gas liquids are extracted by hydraulic fracturing and then distributed to the plastics industry worldwide. At least 36 million tons of methane greenhouse gas emissions are leaked per year. These estimates are based on rates calculated recently by Dr. Robert Howarth of Cornell and Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford. In the report, we provide estimated releases at 10 different stages from extraction to disposal. And these estimates are expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents. So one ton of carbon dioxide has different factors, there are different factors of emissions for different chemicals in relation to that carbon dioxide. In the report you see on the on the left hand side icons and each icon represents 2 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. And this 2 million tons is the amount of greenhouse gas released in 2020 by the average 500 megawatt cofire power plant. Methane leakage from supplying the plastics industry is causing the equivalent of climate pollution from 18 average coal fired power plants, but really much more than that. For consistency with EPA, our methodology for this report uses EPA's regulatory framework for carbon dioxide equivalents between gases. The agency uses a factor of 25 for methane, and that is that factor is based on 100 year timeframe. But methane lasts in the atmosphere for only 12 years, during which time it has a much more severe climate impact. In that short term, methane has not 25 but at least 84 times the impact of carbon dioxide. So using that conversion rate, our estimated releases from leakage of methane for the plastics industry balloons to 120 million tons. And that's the equivalent of 6060 coal fired power plants. Gas liquids extracted for plastics are transported by pipeline to massive chemical plants that have the ethane crackers that Judith was describing. These crackers super heat the gas until the molecules crack into new components, including ethylene that are the essential ingredients of plastics. Our report provides details on where these crackers are located and where new ones are planned. Next slide please. Beyond plastics web page also features this map of facilities interactive map. These are the facilities that reported greenhouse gas data to EPA in 2020. The colors are keyed to the amount of climate pollution reported. As you dive into the map, you can see clusters emerging like this cluster between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Many people look at petrochemical plants in isolation from each other, but there are many interdependencies between them. One of the key relationships is essential to assessing the public health and other tolls that this industry imposes, mainly upon communities of color. In addition to the climate pollution, these facilities release massive amounts of toxic pollutants, plastic dust powder into the air. This pollution causes extreme cumulative impacts in some of the country's most vulnerable communities. Next slide please. One of this report's key findings is that plastics factories in 18 communities. The factories in these communities are responsible for over 90% of the plastics industries reported greenhouse gas emissions. You can find this table on your screen in the methodology appendix to the report. This shows the number of people in closest proximity to the industry. Weighted by population, it reveals that on average 67% of residents near plastic plants are people of color and have far less income than the rest of the United States and are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of this pollution. Next slide please. For tractors, major sources of climate pollution are chemical plants that make chlorine, which is combined with ethylene to make vinyl plastics and methanol. Methanol is used to produce formaldehyde resins. These adhesives are used in engineered wood products like countertops. Methanol facilities are outsized contributors to climate change. They are pictured here in Beaumont, Texas, and it reported releasing 1 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2020. New methanol plants are among the biggest sources of potential emissions from the ongoing petrochemical buildout. 10 new methanol plants are planned in communities like St. James Parish, Lake Charles, and Geismar, Louisiana. With the environmental integrity projects analysis of permits, these new methanol to plastics plants could emit a combined 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year when they're built. Next slide please. Another trend that I saw in researching this report is how much of the US plastics industry is export oriented. 44% of the resins made in the United States are exported. Then in the last five years, a whole new category of ships were launched that are gathering ethane from the United States. Ethane is the key feedstock for many plastics. These vessels, which are over 600 feet long, are called very large ethane carriers. They saddle up to the end of pipelines in Texas and Pennsylvania, and they haul ethane to crackers overseas in India, China, and Europe. Ethane obtained by hydraulic fracturing in West Texas becomes single use packaging in India every day. Through these exports, plastics is very much like the new coal because the coal industry also is counting on exports to stay alive. Next slide please. Another very concerning source of emissions from the plastics industry comes from fluorochemicals such as hydrofluorocarbons used in plastic insulation as blowing agents. Just one year's production of fluorochemicals used in plastic insulation in the US will have the climate impact of at least 13 coal fired power plants. But there's been very little public attention on this, even though the United Nations says that eliminating the use of fluorochemicals in plastic insulation worldwide would prevent over one billion, which would be tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Hydrofluorocarbon gases escape from plastic insulation from the time it's installed to the time it's buried in landfills and thereafter. Next slide please. A year ago today, I was walking on a shoreline, not far from here and on coastal in coastal Maine. And I joined people who were picking up pieces of plastics from the intertidal zone of Penobscot Bay, shred by shred from pebbles and seaweed. These shreds of plastic wastes came from a bale that fell from a ship that was delivering this waste from Europe to a municipal waste incinerator in Maine. Among this plastic waste, I found dental floss. Most floss is coated with PFAS chemicals. When PFAS chemicals are burned, these types of plastics form extremely potent gases, which are released into the atmosphere. Some of these gases are over 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Most of the incinerators in the United States were built decades ago, when waste was very different. Their air permits are based on decades old assumptions. The proportion of household trash that is plastic today is double what it was in 1990. It's now close to 20% of municipal waste by weight and fluorochemicals are in a lot more products. Regulations have not caught up. This is a critical gap in federal policy that if it were closed could have great benefits for the climate. This is also a major data gap. Our estimate that the U.S. plastics industry is responsible for 232 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year in this report. That's just a floor. It's not a ceiling. It's really quite conservative. Thank you for your interest in this vital subject and for considering actions that you can take based on these findings. Thank you Jim and thank you Judith for that excellent presentation and overview of the issue and also an overview of how multifaceted the issue actually is. I would like to share a reminder that the slides and other presentation materials will all be available online or actually they already are available online at www.esi.org. So if you'd like to go back and read those slides or find links to the Beyond Plastics report, you can do that there. We'll also be taking questions. Actually, we are taking questions and we'll do our best to incorporate those questions into our discussion. You have two options. You can send us an email at askask.org or you can follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Our next panelist is Miriam Gordon. Miriam is the policy director for upstream nonprofit organizations seeking to reduce waste at the production level and the leading architect of local and state policies aimed at reducing single use plastics and packaging. Prior to upstream Miriam was the California director of Clean Water Action where she developed a program on waste prevention and launched the award winning program rethink disposable, which is demonstrated unequivocally. Food service businesses can save money, reduce waste when they transition to reusables. In the last 15 years Miriam has been a leader in advocacy campaigns that reduce plastic pollution and toxic chemicals exposure. Miriam, welcome to our panel today. I will turn it over to you. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to share some slides today and talk about why reuse is a climate solution for plastic pollution. First, a little bit about upstream. We are a national NGO that's been focusing on waste policy since 2003. We are named upstream because we believe that to create a good quality of life for a planet of 7.5 billion people and growing, that we have to redesign the systems that deliver products to consumers. And that means rather than focusing on managing waste once it's created, we need to redesign our delivery systems to move from throwaway to reusable or to eliminate packaging altogether. So I want to delve into that idea that recycling and end of life management are not going to solve our waste problem because that's a little bit counterintuitive for a lot of people. But I know many of you have heard about the myth of recycling that was unveiled when China stopped taking our hard to recycle and mostly plastic waste. But let's dive in a little bit more into that myth. Most of the materials that are recycled are downcycled, which doesn't turn off the plastics tap, for example, because we continue to have to use virgin petroleum feedstocks to make the plastics. When it comes to food packaging, which is the biggest place that foodware is where most of the plastics are going that are being created are going to be used. Foodware is generally too dirty to recycle when it comes into contact with food. Research by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality found that recyclable products are beneficial for the environment in only 56% of the cases of hundreds of studies evaluated. Now with compostable products, that is also a bit of a challenge. I live in California, where we've been all in on composting, packaging, and foodware. But the reality is that only 14 of the 182 commercial compost facilities in California will accept or process compostable plastic. And when they do, it creates a whole separate and contaminated compost stream that is less valuable and has limited uses. And packaging overall has been found to lower compost quality and also most compostables don't end up getting composted. They end up in landfill where the greenhouse gas impacts are 30 times higher than when products are actually composted. So if we can't recycle or compost our way out of the problem, how about just banning the plastics all together? Would single use plastic bands be the right solution? From our perspective, banning one problematic disposable material results in a lot of regrettable substitutions like bio-based plastics, aluminum, paper, wood, and bamboo. And I don't have time really to delve into all of the problems with these regrettable substitutes. I would point you to our reuse wins report. But our conclusion is that the problem isn't just plastic, it's single use itself.  This is a conclusion from an EPA report. In our own report, reuse wins, we looked at the life cycle analysis, which is basically the technical tool that practitioners use to evaluate the environmental impacts of products from cradle to grave. And we looked at the life cycle analysis of food packaging primarily because that's the biggest contributor of plastics in our environment is food packaging. And we looked at 14 different LCA's, the ones that were determined to be most credible and most timely. And on balance what they found is with the, you can look at the little champion or trophies in our chart here. On balance, most of them found that the reusables beat the single use through every environmental measure and LCA's generally look at environmental impacts through 14 different environmental measures from climate to water consumption to pollution to resource impacts. And so on balance, and for the most part, they are finding that reuse beats single use all the time. And I just want to highlight one example of why reusables are better for the climate than disposables, taking cups, for example, a very common disposable product that we all probably feel a bit of guilt about how much we're throwing away. And in the, in the report we showed that the LCA's show that disposable paper plastic and bio plastic have CO2 impacts that are three to 10 times higher than the reusable alternatives that were evaluated ceramic stainless steel and glass. And we've looked at the LCA's and looked at the per product per item CO2 emissions of one disposable product compared to one reusable product and pull them out of these LCA's that we evaluated. And you can see that the CO2 emissions of the disposable products are always higher than the CO2 emissions of the reusable alternative. Just for clamshells cups and plates. The other find big finding of our reuse wins report is that reuse always saves businesses money. And the program that I started in to launched in 2012 rethink disposable has worked with approximately 300 food businesses, primarily in California, but expanding to other states. And in 100% of those cases and every business that it works with the business saves money. And on average for small businesses, the annual cost savings, they save money when they transition to reuse for on site dining. And on average, the savings for small businesses are between three and $22,000 a year. They're eliminating high quantities of waste and and disposable packaging items and saving money at the same time. Now on the right side of the slide I'm showcasing the result of a Starbucks report that found similar results. For example, they found that if a cafe used 10 reusable cups per hour, that the annual cost savings would be about $6400. And they also found that there would be a substantial greenhouse gas reduction as well as solid waste reduction and water reduction. So we transitioning to reuse is something that a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their mind around because it's just not part of our culture currently. I want you to imagine a city where this is happening where all restaurants are serving on real plates cutlery and cups, like McDonald's actually does in in Europe for so many of their cafes, or where to go coffee is being provided in returnable or reusable or takeout and delivery is provided in reusable to go containers that are easily returned. Now I'll show you I'll point to the bottom picture which is me and two of my friends last night. We were able to have a meal delivered a takeout meal delivered in reusable containers from dispatch goods so it's already happening in my community. Where you could go to public venues and water and cup and drinks are provided in reusable bottles or cups. And when you go to get groceries and cleaning and personal care products they can be delivered to your home in reusable containers, or you can get them at the store as with the loop program. This is actually happening now as a result of many of the policies that are being introduced in communities and states across the country. And in these cities, 10s of thousands of people are starting to be employed in this new use economy, litter and solid waste costs are down. And none of these innovations required you to bring your own anything it was provided by the company to you. So it's a really exciting what policy can do, and just signaling the kinds of policies that we're going to need to make this the norm in all of our cities and communities across the country. We need to stop focusing on managing the waste once it's created and focus more on preventing it through reduce and reuse and policies can be can be an accelerator of this paradigm shift. We recommend two policy approaches the first is to focus on reducing and eliminating the unnecessary packaging. And the second is to make the rest reusable or refillable. And I'll just close with an overview of some of the strategies and policies that you can find in our recently released we use policy playbook. So for reducing as much as possible. So we're recommending sector wide business sector targets for reduction being built into extended producer responsibility and bottle bills, and we're starting to see some of that with break free from plastic pollution act and advocacy for the national national bottle bill. There can be bands on throw specific throw away packaging products where the replacement is a reusable and accessories on request, which means that you don't get unnecessary accessories delivered with your take out or deliver order. This law has been enacted last year this year in California and Washington and many local jurisdictions have been enacting it. And then in terms of transitioning the rest reusable and refillable. We are the break free from plastic act that was introduced has some refillables spending on infrastructure for refillables and targets for refillables. We're also seeing reusable bag policies and reusable food where for onsite dining being enacted in many local jurisdictions, primarily in California, and a host of other policies that I really don't have time to go over so I want to recommend you that you visit our website where we can we're showcasing these reuse policies and where they're being enacted and we're tracking them. And also our report, the policy playbook that I hope has been the link I think has been shared with you and you can also follow us and our many channels in order to learn more about this new reuse economy thank you so much. Thank you Miriam. I think the question everyone has on their mind is what was for dinner. Oh yeah. Yeah, so it was just a local Indian restaurant blocks from my house Casa restaurant and. And what we're finding is that this company dispatch goods is servicing is growing incredibly quickly, even during coven this solution is taking hold and very popular. My friends who are with me last night are not environmentalists and they are just so excited to enjoy a meal without all the waste. That's awesome well I had to ask because it's it's that time of the day I'm starting to get hungry. We are going to transition now to questions and I'm going to, Judith I'm going to start with you and then Jim, I'll be happy to give you an opportunity to weigh in as well and then we'll round out with Miriam I'd like to double back to a really, really important topic that came up, especially a little earlier in the presentation that is sort of the environmental and climate justice concerns with plastics policy. And so, I'm thinking, Judith will start with you again and I'm just like you to explain a little bit more about sort of what are those environmental and climate justice policy environmental and climate justice concerns that as we're thinking about what to do with cloud plastics policy what should we, how should we be really thinking about this what should we be thinking. Well, plastic pollution and extended producer responsibility legislation, whether at the state or federal level is very much linked to environmental justice. I'm always horrified when I personally use the term and I hear other people use the term cancer alley. And that is a very long geographic stretch along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, which is really the petrochemical center of the nation if not the world. Where people suffer every day because of the air toxins and the water pollution from those facilities, if they were located in more affluent communities they would have probably not been built, but certainly would have been shut down long ago. So, I, you know, I got active on the plastics issue. Largely because somebody concerned about the ocean, but I have now, you know, I teach a class at Bington College on plastic pollution which you should all take it's offered online, two thirds of the students are community people who audit it. And we focus on production use and disposal. So the production linkage is very clear. And then on the disposal and we know that plastic recycling is abysmal clocking in at about 8.5%. So that means the rest of that plastic is either going to be littered buried or burn. If it goes to a landfill or incinerator good chance that's an environmental justice community also people should realize a massive amount of plastic is exported to Asia and Africa where it becomes a headache in those communities. Folks should watch the movie the story of plastic, which follows the journey of plastic to other countries, and it'll really open your eyes to the global environmental justice implications, and for what so we can have, you know, plastic recycling that we use for 15 minutes for a mediocre lunch, you know, think of your typical lunch if you're back in the office it's the plastic bag it's the plastic straws the plastic cup it's the plastic soup container plate. And we're done, usually in 15 or 20 minutes and then that plastic outlives us. So, the environmental justice implications are huge. And then of course, more greenhouse gas emissions damages environmental justice communities disproportionately. Yeah, oh yeah just to add on to that. In research in this report. We saw the geographic patterns emerge. Many of us have been doing work trying to stop toxic pollution in the US for many decades and some of my earliest work was in Ben Rouge and again you know that showed up as a major center of of climate pollution, in addition to all the toxic pollution. Toxins and the PCBs and organochlorines that these industries have been producing for years. A lot of these plants have shifted their production from one toxic chemical to another in these locations over the over the decades. They've been producing for decades. You've seen plants, they've been making organochlorine pesticides like DDT decades ago, or, you know, all sorts of all sorts of or CFC is chlorofluorocarbons and now shifted to hydrofluorocarbons. The industry adapts to the time and now their adaptation is with this flow of cheap natural gas liquids from hydraulic fracturing, they're adapting to that maximizing their production in these in these in the same communities. And they're located there because this is where labor rights, environmental rights, democracy itself are at great risk. And you see that extended globally as well. One of one of the industries I've looked at over the years is the building and construction. And the flooring industry has transformed in the last 10 years. We've had a lot of build out in the US. There's also been a huge build out in China. And some of that build out is to produce cheap PVC vinyl flooring in the US over half of the floors that are sold in the United States are made of cheap PVC plastics made in China. And they're made there precisely because these floors are labor intensive. They're run by factories that are run by the government of China. And so there's no in regions where labor human rights environmental protections are the are the least. And that's what's coming into the US market. So the history of plastics is intertwined with the history and the layers and layers upon of injustices that have that the that the plastics industry has relied upon for its margins for decades. As the build out continues as the amount of plastics increase, these injustices will just continue to increase as well. Miriam I'd like to also make sure you have an opportunity to weigh in as well please. Thank you. Um, well, I mean, it as Judith pointed out the communities that live on the fence line or next to sites of extraction production and disposal and incineration are so directly impacted and their report shows that as well. But I think that, and I have seen that personal what I've seen personally in California, which is actually also a big gas producing and fracking state is that many of those communities also are impacted by other forms of single use product production. So, you know, like agricultural products so growing all the corn to make the bio based plastics. But these communities that are actually doing, you know, working in that in in agriculture and living next to these agricultural industrial agricultural farms are heavily impacted by the pesticides and all the chemicals that are being used, but also all the oil and all the energy and oil and gas that goes into growing those products so we have to think about not just the last environmental justice with plastics but environmental justice with, you know, all of the single use products that live near logging big logging sites where their ecosystem and water resources are being devastated. And finally I will say that there's also the issue of exposure to chemicals in our single use food and beverage packaging. So to our unwrapped project or website. We recently revealed that there's over 12,000 chemicals being used in food and beverage packaging and other food contact materials, and it's the people who live in food deserts in low income communities and communities of color, who only have access to food that's packaged they don't have access to fresh, fresh food and produce, they're way more heavily impacted by this toxic chemical exposure. Thank you very much. Mary, I think I'm going to stay with you for this next question which is actually from our audience but Judith and Jim I hope you'll feel free to weigh in as well. The question is, do, does any state or Canadian province, or countries elsewhere, have a single use ban on ban on single use plastics, or plastics packaging that you can share and also curious, whether or not these are actually enforced or are they in your opinion enforceable. Well, I think there are, you know, the EU itself and also countries within the EU are moving forward on bans on single use plastic packaging, and also many countries that are targeting or establishing targets for increasing the amount of reusable packaging that's being put into the marketplace. So, I like to talk about those that are setting the targets like the EU that is specifying that by 2030 10% of the packaging products have to be reusable. Romania is setting a 30% target by 2025. Germany saying 70% of their bottles have to be reusable by 2023, and certain regions in Spain are setting very high targets in an EPR model that is upstream and beyond plastics and others have recently released we are recommending that we get to reduce, we reduce, we reduce packaging by 50% within 10 years. So, that as, yeah, I'll turn it over to Judith because I think she has more to say about plastics bands. Well, there are hundreds of them if not thousands all over the world. You know, some are narrowly focused on one product for instance, New York State banned plastic bags. Last year New Yorkers used 23 billion single use plastic bags. So that's a big change. You go to the supermarket in New York and you mostly see people bringing in reusable bags that's huge one bill. In two weeks New York is banning polystyrene foam for food packaging and also those dreadful packing peanuts. How are we going to live without them just fine and lots of, lots of styrene will not be needed to manufacture them. So you've got these kind of narrow policies. Miriam mentioned the EU where 10 different types of plastics have already been banned the standard ones but also remember when we used to have q tips and the cotton swabs were held together by cardboard. In the EU, you can no longer sell q tips with the plastic connector, which, you know, somehow we will manage in the bathroom to clean our ears with cardboard rather than plastic. What I'm seeing happening is a real movement from the grassroots up. It starts with city or county policies and then often it'll lead to the state, but I will say the US federal government is missing in action on this issue. How about a national bottle bill. How about looking at the break free from plastic pollution act introduced by representative lo and fall and Senator Merkley. There are different proposals at the federal level to prohibit single use plastic beverage bottles in national parks. There's a ban on flushable plastic items. There's a lot that can be done. And I honestly think that the December 1 report from the national academies will be a catalyst for the federal government to look at this issue. The public wants change. I have met many climate change deniers. I've never met a plastic pollution denier because it's everywhere. And people want choice. When you go to the supermarket, you shouldn't have to stand there and feel terrible about the juice you're reaching for. So people want choice. We're seeing lots of innovation. And the federal government has a lot of catching up to do. If I could just add, each one of those policy measures presents an opportunity to drive towards what we want. So, you know, when we have plastic bands, we're talking we are talking about what we don't want, but we should be in every one of these policies driving different business sectors towards what we do want, which is we want things unpackaged and we want things, not just not in plastic, but if it is packaged to be in something durable and reusable that doesn't have all of these EJ climate and all these horrible environmental impacts. I can definitely imagine a world without packing peanuts, but my vacuum cleaner will have a hard time with that because it relative utility will decrease. Those things get everywhere. We have time for one more. I'm going to treat this as a lightning round and Judith I think it builds off what you were just saying so I think it works well. Do you have any, our audience congressional staff people they work for members of Congress who represent constituents all over the country. Are there other state local policies or initiatives that are underway or that are in place that reflect the solutions that you all are working toward that you can share and Judith I'll start with you and then we'll go to Jim and we'll give Miriam the last word today. In Oregon have adopted extended producer responsibility laws. I think they're really good first laws out of the gate, but could be much stronger on requiring reuse design standards, we're just reducing toxics in packaging. A small group of NGOs have drafted a model EPR bill, mostly for the state level but I think it's relevant federally. National bottle bill, you know, next year is the 40th anniversary of the New York bottle bill. It's the first bill I ever worked on. The nine states have effective bottle bills. Why can't that be done nationally. I can go on and on but I'll leave it there because I want to hear from Miriam and Jim. There's more on the flip side of things of what can be improved and there are these huge gaps in accounting for the amount of climate pollution that this industry, specifically this plastics industry generates. A lot of the data that people rely on on policymaking are based on the industry's own data is outdated 1020 years old. A lot of the declarations around products are that way. They don't reflect current realities, nor does EPA's strategy of counting as much as possible as recycling. That's really a real counter to efforts to prohibit single use packaging. EPA, here in Maine, you turn plastic waste into a briquette and send it to a cement kiln. That's called recycling. I don't think that's what we think of as recycling as consumers when we put things into bins. We need to get rid of these loopholes, including the chemical recycling loopholes that the industry is pushing as a so-called panacea for plastic waste, where that again is just turning plastic waste into fuel to be burned. There's more CO2. So we need to close these loopholes in ways to be out of space. So we are seeing a lot of groundbreaking work at the local level. We put out a model policy comprehensive foodware reduction policy in 2019, and Berkeley was the first city that enacted it. It basically says we'll only allow reusables for onsite dining, even McDonald's, which is now rolling that out. And for takeout cups, we're not going to allow businesses to give them out for free anymore. If you want a disposable, you're going to have to pay for it.  You can avoid the charge that way. And the Berkeley ordinance also said that accessories can only to utensils, straws, napkins, condiment packs can only be provided when a customer specifically requests them. And every one of these pieces, components of this legislation is being replicated in communities across the country. Cup charges, Vancouver passed a 25% cup charge. The cities of Dublin and Cork, we can't take credit for this. Maryland banned the use of single use cups at government facilities. So there's opportunities to drive reuse using government as a model. And then we have a whole bunch of local policies that are specifying reuse has to be a certain way to reuse at local events and government sponsored events. And even, even some cities and countries that are saying bottles have to be refillable. So Germany is now requiring that 70% of bottles in in use have to be refillable. And then this is filtering up to the state level and influencing state policies so we had the accessories on request as I said passed in California and Washington, we had reuse for onsite dining proposed in California last year it didn't pass. So it's a very, very exciting the movement towards reuse. And I could just mention one quick thing I promise to be fast. The Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act also has a provision that puts a three year pause on the construction of new plastic production facilities. And that is really essential and would match up with President Biden's commitment on environmental justice, because Texas and Louisiana are just so overburdened with air pollution and water pollution we need that three year pause for the regulators to catch up so we don't have, you know, continue to have health problems in these communities. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation today Jim. Thank you so much for your presentation today, Miriam. Thank you so much. It was so such an interesting panel and thanks to the thanks to the man who encouraged us to pull it all together did God and thank you for this is a great idea for a briefing and I'm really happy that we did it. So thanks to you. Um, I would also like to thank everyone in our audience for coming back. Those, some were with us yesterday, some are just with us today but I hope in any case, you'll come back for our briefing about food waste, reducing emissions by reducing food waste specifically as the name will be introduced tomorrow, special guest representative Julia Brownlee from California will be joining us at the beginning of our briefing which we're really excited about. Also, in the, in the name of continuity and tying things together we talked yesterday during building materials about insulation blowing agents installations a great thing energy efficiency is a great thing but I was something that I think is probably a little under appreciated in terms of how we think about HFC's and the bands that are are being considered and tomorrow of course food waste we're talking a lot about food packaging today. So it'll be a nice tie in for tomorrow as well. Thank you to our panelists thank you to our audience.  If you missed any of it if you want to go back and read any of the resources or any of the presentation materials you can do that. So by clicking on that link, visiting us at www.esi.org. Also, it would be a real shame if you did all that and then didn't sign up for climate change solutions which is a really great by weekly newsletter. Like to end by thanking Daniel Brian, of course for all of his hard work today but I'll see also Omri Allison, Emma, Anna Amber Savannah and Isabella for all the hard work that went into today, and for all the hard work that's going into tomorrow. Sorry for being a couple minutes over, but I think it's worth it. And if you've already stayed with us five minutes over the hour surely you have another two minutes to help us by filling out our survey. This is the link you can use we've read every response. If you had any technical issues you'd like to make us aware of if you have any questions that you have about our, how to access our materials or anything like that ideas. We really do take all the feedback seriously. With that we'll close it. I hope everyone has a great rest of your Thursday, and we will see you back tomorrow at one o'clock Eastern for reducing emissions by reducing food waste. Thanks so much.


section and I'm very excited to be here today. So this presentation is showing my the preliminary findings for my PhD research which I'm doing through the Australian Catholic University in Australia. My research team includes my three wonderful supervisors, Shala Media, Sarah Bays and Valerie Wilson and I really thank them for all the support they've given me through this. Okay next slide. Thank you and I'm sharing this with you today from Naurah in New South Wales Australia and I'm on the lands of the durable Aboriginal people of the UN nation and I acknowledge that that is where I'm sharing from and of the people who have been on this land and birthing babies for a very long time. I also want to acknowledge that not all of the women who are in this so not all birthing people identify as women or mothers and this study presents finding for those who do call themselves women. Thank you. So this was the problem separating mothers from their baby at Caesarean section birth without medical need and this is what I was saying within my clinical workers electation consultant in my local health district women coming back to see me for the next baby because of breastfeeding problems but also describing the trauma that they had experienced being separated from their baby at birth. Thank you. So what do we already know? So we know women do not want to be separated from their baby at Caesarean section birth and they really want to see and to hold and to feed their baby as they start to become a mother and get to know their baby and skin to skin contact between a well woman and her baby at Caesarean section helps keep the mother and baby together so it's like the vehicle for keeping them in the one room attached to each other and it means that both mother and baby get their wants and their needs met and it's very simple it's safe and it protects their future physical and emotional well-being and skin to skin is it helps ensure a positive birth experience and a sense of control which impacts birth experience and you can read more about that in the paper that I released my literature of you which was released in 2021. Linda you should have control to progress to the next slide by yourself. Yeah beautiful thank you. So if we think women are going to remember and be impacted by their birth experience for the rest of their lives and for those of you who have had children I know this will resonate really strongly with you so you remember what has happened who was there with you what they said to you and how you were feeling and skin to skin at Caesarean section isn't anything new so it was first described in 2008 by Smith et al. Just calling it a natural Caesarean that we've been doing skin to skin at the vaginal births for a long time and we know there's so much evidence that shows how good this is. So just from this first description here that was 15 years which I think fits really well with VRDM because it's the same time that they've been around as well but we're still missing this link and it's not happening consistently with mothers and babies and keeping them together. So this is the study design and analysis so it was a feminist phenomenological framework and feminist because the phenomenology so that human experience is very much not a gender neutral experience and women are having babies. Participants were sought through social media in Australia and there was an overwhelming response. So this was put out into a consumer advocacy group and within 24 hours there was a huge number of responses that got shared widely and these women that chose to wanted to be involved they were doing it for altruistic reasons. It was very purpose of sampling as well because we wanted women who had experienced separation from their baby non-medically so there wasn't no mothers were sick, no babies were sick. So 15 women who had experienced this separation from their baby were included and then interviewed so anywhere between five months and 10 years previously the interviews took one to two hours and were very emotional interviews. Data was analysed using a modified van cam approached and that is when you group the data, reduce it, theme it, validate it and then describe it and it was viewed through two feminist birthing experience theories one by Fay and Parrot which is birth territory and the other by Rachel Reed, childbirth as a rite of passage. So the participants aged in range between 23 and 38 for the birth of separation they were all married or in a relationship and well educated. The Caesarean section with separation had happened between that five months and 10 years prior to being interviewed. 14 out of 15 were primates at the time of their first separation and two experienced a repeated birth with a separation so there were 17 total birth experiences. 12 of those were emergency procedures and in pregnancy all of these women planned and engaged with healthcare providers they look for people who are going to help them achieve their goals. So they chose people who they felt aligned with their own ideas. So two of them had planned home births. One was going through a birthing centre. Seven chose private obstetricians and this is because they thought that they would get continuity of care which they may not get in the public health system and two of them had dollars. All of these women birthed in Australia. So looking at the findings and what the people were saying, where's my baby was a common theme and which is why it's the title. So women were saying that they wanted to know where their baby was. The overarching sort of themes that were coming out of this like the first thing they were unable to hold their baby so they didn't get to see their baby or hold their baby. They were separated from their baby. There wasn't skin to skin but it was more than just the separation of the mother and baby. So it was very hard to just to pull that tiny little piece out of their entire birth experience. So covering their pregnancy right through to postpartum and birthday briefing afterwards as well. There was you know that really the physical hormonal response to having a baby and many of these women had been laboring prior to the birth by caesarean section. That whole experience and each one impacting the other. There was general disregard for women which is where that feminist notion really comes into it and there was obstetric violence and neglect and that was very obvious in the stories that the women were told and we don't think of that often in my country in Australia that there is violence involved with this. Now I'd like to share with you some of the stories from the women. So some really lovely quotes that they had to say. Well they're not always lovely about each of these themes. So really wanting but unable to hold their baby and the women were asking to hold their baby.  They were saying they wanted to hold their baby but they were not supported to do so. Participant one said I want to see my baby. I want him brought to me now but that didn't happen. And participant 12 said I was just like please please let me see my baby. And these women are physically unable to hold their baby to do it themselves. They're very vulnerable so we give them a spinal anesthetic so they can't get up. We then put blood pressure cuffs. We put IV cannulas. We put clothing like gowns. We tuck them in with blankets so we make it really hard. They can't do it themselves. Participant 12 said my hands were down so because they had cannulas in so I couldn't actually touch her but my husband held her to my cheek and I was able to cuddle into her for a little bit which was beautiful.  Participant 10 said that she wanted to do something so that I could hold him a bit more like there was a lot in the way. The participants all talked as well about their babies being rubbed and wiped and cleaned and weighed. Cords were cut and wrapped. They're often unable to see their baby and unsure if they're even well or alive. Just when you think about the design of if you think about the design of the room sorry that was my thing. If you think about just the design of this the theatre rooms and often the trolleys for that we resuscitate babies or take babies to even when they don't need resuscitating on the other side of the room. Participant 15 said the whole time that I was that the caesarean was occurring I thought he was dead and that woman had been coerced into having a caesarean section by being told that her baby was going to die if she didn't have it and he didn't cry when he was first born. He was well had apgas of nine and 10 but he didn't cry so she still thought he was dead and she couldn't see him. Participant 11 said they were crowding her a lot so I couldn't really see her that much and participant 2 said they're cleaning every sign of me from her and then the women were unsure whether they were allowed to ask for their baby and I know all the midwives that are listening to this will all be cringing at that word allowed because it's a word that we tend to not like very much isn't it. But this is what women are expecting that they will somebody let me do something will they allow me to do something and participant 10 said I was sort of hoping he would come to me but we really didn't voice that very clearly in the theatre and I think it's sad that women feel that they need to advocate themselves when they're in a position of such vulnerability. So no skin to skin there were two participants who were given very brief skin to skin while they were in the operating theatre but it didn't continue out into recovery. So thinking about skin to skin what the recommendations are what we're assessed for when you think of baby friendly health initiative so it's at least one hour of uninterrupted immediate skin to skin. In theatre you know they class this once they get out to recoveries you know when we're having a BFHI assessment but this wasn't happening for these women. One participant one said my midwife kind of grabbed him off the page and kind of got him to me and open my gown and tried to rip the blankets off him and get him onto my chest. So there was a lot happening for this woman but she still had a midwife who was trying to do the best that she could but that healthcare provider advocacy was quite rare didn't happen very often. Participant four said she literally went against everything that had been organised so no delay called clamping or skin to skin and participant six said I was told I was not allowed to do that because of infection control and then healthcare provider and I'm not just talking about midwives here this is all of the people that are involved with the birth of these babies obstruction was also unfortunately quite common. Participant 13 said they didn't talk about skin to skin or anything like that so it was just slice cut over to the table do all the things weigh wrap her up and then bring it to me or wrapped up. The women's choices were completely disregarded and the focus was really on the staff not on the women and this participant four said you know having mum and bub together and in skin to skin contact costs the hospital nothing and I think we know this and you know there might be arguments about the time that midwives may have to spend doing skin to skin but there's already midwives there there are very few births at least within Australia where there isn't a midwife there with the mother while she's having her baby and then the period of actual separation so just as a general thing women didn't understand why they were separated from their baby they understood that if one of them was sick that that would happen but these were well mothers well babies. Participant six said she was just confused as to why I couldn't have my baby. Participant nine said I kept on asking and asking and they just didn't. Participant 13 said it felt like forever and 14 said they took him I didn't hold him for two hours she was crying as she explained this I didn't know what had happened to him and then participant two said she was taken I don't see her face they take her away these were really emotional responses when women were talking about this there was lots of crying. They also didn't think that the staff understood the the importance of this they just thought it as very much being a clinical medical procedure not a birth. Participant nine said I just didn't feel like they really understood the urgency of it how important it was to me. I was sent to recovery for five hours she was deliberately keeping me there to keep me separated from my baby that was participant four and participant three said but I guess they didn't see it as being important and I think as we're listening to this we do see the value in this and this probably grates on many of you as you're listening to these stories. There was a lot of emotional turmoil and as I said lots of people crying there was people very angry when they were recounting their birth stories you know there were feelings of fear and trauma during that actual period of birth and that separation made way to those that they were angry they were sad they were guilty because they couldn't fix things and those feelings were still very strong in the present at the time that they were sharing them as well. Relationships were impacted particularly with their partners and participant one said the damage that it does first hand on you know not just with breastfeeding relationships but entire family units can suffer because of this so this is relationships with you know their families and it's ongoing it doesn't just stop it when the baby's been born. Participant two said I was a very sexual person we had a very healthy nice sexual life before and I cannot even have effing sex with my husband now he was the only person who could have said stop but he was silent and calm it was one way of siding with the hospital and then the connection with babies as well and this is why we really really want mothers and babies to stay together at birth is so that we they look after and love and care and feed and their babies form from birth onwards. Participant 15 said to be honest I didn't feel very connected to him I didn't feel that bond with him for a good couple of months. Participant 12 said at first I was jealous because he loved everyone but me and participant two said I have a good relationship with her but a lot of it it's out of duty I know how I have to behave but it's not this natural overjoyed burst of emotion and that mum's child was heading up to two years old and then participant five said I didn't feel connected to her but I think it was just it still felt theoretical you know there was something that was just off and it just took time. This is just looking at you know some of the words and the frequency of the words that were used and you know the immediate responses were often numbness weirdness it felt very clinical they felt like they didn't have any control in that early period but then looking back at the birth is this retrospective feeling so you know anger frustration these people were unhappy they were confused they were powerless these people these were really strong emotions that they still had many years after the birth for some of them. So looking at with this study looking at the perspective through a feminist theory just explaining what the two theories were so birth territory by Fay and Parrott so it's really understanding that maternal experience of birth by the environment that the woman is birthing in and who has power and control within that space so the terrain and the jurisdiction and if you think about the terrain of a caesarean section it's very clinical monitored unfamiliar it's termed the surveillance room and it's got that potential for emotional distressed and reduced physical functioning and in a vaginal birth this means women don't birth you know they don't continue to contract and things like that but for a mother birthing in a caesarean section this means that she also has lots of emotional responses that continue on beyond the birth but we can challenge that the people that are in the room if you have shared goals you're maintaining safety for the woman and respectful protection of the woman and giving her the sense of choice and control so letting her have a say in what is happening to her can really change her experience and midwives we're the people in that room that can make a difference so we're there to we can advocate for keeping mothers and babies together and in skin to skin contact and the birth territory describes this as midwifery guardianship and it's a form of integrative power so returning power to the woman the opposite of that is midwifery domination and that's disintegrative power and it's more often seen in that place that women are birthing with caesarean sections so that patriarchal medical system so women are expected to behave if they don't behave if they decline treatment refuse care you just imagine the documentation I know all of you are thinking about things that you've seen in patients notes you know that people refusing to do what they've been told because they're expected to be good they're disciplined for non-compliance and there's often very subtle and coercive reactions to that as well and then childbirth is a rite of passage this is Rachel Reed's work and it's understanding the phases of birth and that's from pregnancy right through to the postpartum period that her whole journey takes with a non and it includes a non- physiological or surgical environment and it talks about both the rights of passage for the woman and also rights of protection which are more important when a woman is having a birth such as a caesarean section and again the midwife is really central to both of those the birth phases that were talked about in in this theory is preparation and that's you know the woman where she gets to develop trust in herself this is her birth and she writes birth plan she anticipates the baby coming you don't want her to be feeling anxious in this time but she does feel a bit anxious because it's unpredictable and many women including the participants had planned for unexpected they knew that caesarean section may happen in their future but let them meet the team you know so and support them as they're making those birth plans the separation period is a time when they're getting ready for birth and this for a caesarean section the women coming into the hospital meeting the staff as they come in because today is the day their baby has come introducing them to people who are in the room is really important minimizing distractions let them know what's going on and what you say and do at that point is really important for their birth experience liminality is also a phrase that's called the betwixt in between which is probably more obvious that vaginal births so women really head into another place as they prepare to push their babies out but there are still a lot of endorphins and you know altered states of consciousness in that time they're often very open to suggestion from authority figures and a lot of the women in these stories were already laboring before the caesarean section so being told that their baby was going to die was an incentive to go and have a caesarean section even if it wasn't realistic so for us remaining with women advocating supporting and then with emergence this is the birth we often you know call this emergency rather than emergence as well when someone's having a caesarean but thinking about the woman's preferences still providing respect for care for her does she want the drapes lowered does she want somebody in particular to announce the sex of the baby or to see that themselves and then integration which is really the focus of this study which is when the mother and baby are first meeting so not separating them skin to skin this is all about also about the time where women talk their birth stories get debriefed about their birth and thinking about birth debrief is not just a clinical trying to stop somebody getting sued but you know which is often what was happening you know there's a lot of women's experiences were just completely disregarded in the clinical debriefs complaint processes that were done read says a positive and empowering birth is more strongly related to how a woman is treated by care providers than how she gives birth and i think that's really important so those rights of protection are what we need to be supporting as midwives and giving the woman back the power and there was so much more than just that separation so yes taking babies from their mothers not giving them skin to skin not letting them hold and feed their babies straight away is all really important but it's a part of a bigger picture and that overall birth experience was really negatively associated with separation but how she felt in that time you know there's a lot of expected physical and hormonal responses to labor and stress i think you better all those catecholamines like adrenaline noradrenaline and cortisol and they cause physical responses in women shaking memory loss change to memories things like that and that further impacted the women in these this study of the moments of meeting their babies and what they remembered and some women didn't remember things one participant seven said it took about five minutes for them to do all of their checks and whatever they're doing they brought him back but i had really bad shaking and then participant twelve said they kept saying you can't go up until you stop shaking that was she wanted to go back to her baby and i'm like i can't stop shaking and some memories of the time as well so i'm being aware of what the time is there's often not a clock that women can look at either and you know time can be very warped some women were able to track time because of things that were happening so they knew that the time that their husband left or when i was taken to the ward but some people use time stamps on their phone and participant seven said that she said i'm not sure who had my phone somebody was taking photos so i can actually track the time of like how long did it take to do stuff but participant nine who didn't have photos said they checked him then he was on me but it wasn't for very long and participant eight when asked how long had she been separated for she said i have zero memory of it my memory is of zero time participant fourteen said we're not the priority at all we're just a cog in the hospital machine just getting churned out like a sausage and participant fifteen really described the cold hostility from her doctor because she didn't agree to his timing of the caesarean section she said i feel like the system fails women and i feel if men give birth the system would really really support them but i think the birthing system is not supportive of women because it's women that give birth like and i have never known such inequality as i do now and i think this is really looking at that patriarchal medical system that midwives were in that system we can make changes so we are the key and that art and science midwifery really shows that we are best placed to create a protective and supportive environment and improve that birthing experience we can return that power and control back to the woman by letting her choose what happens to her body and her baby and that helps we can help that by keeping mothers and babies together and birthing women shouldn't be expected to advocate for themselves and nor should their partners we can prime up the partners to be doing this but i think it was very evident with these women as well that the partners were often very vulnerable as well so again it comes back to midwives we really do hold the key in this and this is yes definitely watch this space this is my twitter handle at linda day so as new papers come out over this year you'll see some more come through and you'll see more of these findings coming out so hopefully you'll look out for those and there my references there thank you thank you so much linda i'm just having a look at the chat um uh lisa says i think as midwives we have to be prepared to rock the boat janine just says thank you great job there's no other questions so um thank you so much linda for participating in the virtual international day the midwife


Felly, os i ddweud y ffordd o'r gwirionedd ac mae'r ffordd ar gyfer y tro ffodol yn ysgawdd yma, mae'n cymdeithasol o'r ffordd gyda ystod o'r ysgawdd hwnnw. Mae'r ffordd iddyn nhw'n gwneud o'r ffordd o'r ffordd. A'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ysgawdd yma o'r ysgawdd yw'n gweld, a'u rhoi'r gweithio'r ymddangos i'r cyfnodau a'r ysgawdd yn y brans, is that we spend a huge amount of time thinking about the way we portray ourselves to the outside world, but we don't really get ourselves quite inside first. From the experience that you've had dealing with individuals about that, what advice would you give to business people and to brands about how they can start the process of getting right inside first? See, the fundamental flaw in this entire process is, without enhancing yourself, you're trying to enhance your activity. It's like... you're from UK, eh? Scotland. Scotland. You take a junk wax hall and try to drive it on the F1 track. It's bound to fall apart.  Whether you win or race or not simply depends on how good or bad other people are. When we do something, are we functioning from the highest possibility within us or from the lowest possibility or somewhere in between is a big question. And the biggest question in human life is, you do not know what is your highest possibility. For every other creature on this planet, nature has drawn two lines. Within that, they live and go. For the human being, there's only bottom line, there's no top line. So it doesn't matter what you become, you still don't know whether you've hit the peak or not. Only those people who are only interested in winning races with other crippled people, they have hit the peak. But any genuine human being who is exploring his own nature, you never know if you hit your peak because there is still room no matter what you have done. So enhancing the machine, this human mechanism is most important. Whether you win the race or not, whether you did this or not is not important. If you have this enhanced, everything that you do will be enhanced. People around you think you're superhuman simply because everything that you do seems to be of a different nature, of a different quality that they can't imagine. Not because you're intending to do things better than other people, simply because you have spent time to enhance this one. So this is a fundamental flaw in the attitude with which people are entering the world. Instead of building a great mechanism, which will whatever it does will be of a great possibility, people are trying to do great things, which is going to kill them. That's why successful people are miserable. Somehow they've managed to do something and it's taking such a big toll on them. How might we unwind some of that? So what I find great about the way that you express some of this is you have a great confidence, which clearly comes through from the way that you... No confidence. Maybe I should re-express that. You clearly talk from the heart. This is somebody who's... So that's the thing. The only quality is clarity. People think confidence is a substitute for clarity. That's the biggest disaster. The great disaster on the planet is people who have no clarity have confidence. So that's why all the loud advertising because there is no clarity but there is confidence. See, you are who you are only because of whatever you might have perceived. What you have not perceived is not you, isn't it? See, whether you're consciously aware of this or not, how people experience you right now is whatever you have perceived in whichever way it's finding expression, that is what people's experience of you are. And that is what your experience of yourself is, whatever you have perceived, that's all. Instead of enhancing perception, we are trying to enhance again expression. You are in the social media stuff. Everybody wants to express anything and everything. No matter whether they know something or don't know something, everybody wants to express. This is the age of expression without perception. It's a disaster. People are becoming who they are because of what they express, not because of what they have perceived. If you are who you are because essentially in life, the nature of life is such, only what you have perceived is you. But right now, because you pick bits and pieces all over the world, you can express all kinds of things that you don't know. See, today a twelve-year-old child looks bored. Never before it was so, it's only in this generation because he's seen the cosmos through his phone screen. He knows everything. There's nothing he does not know. They're not facts. They are not facts. You call them facts. All right, you can call them facts if you want to. But I'm saying, me knowing how many million light years away is a particular galaxy which we call a Z127 is not knowledge. Whether it's ten million light years or hundred million light years makes no difference because in my perception, there is no way to experience a light year first of all. It's all conceptual. It is not experiential. Unless your perception is experiential, it doesn't enhance you. It is just accumulation. Like people accumulate wealth, money, useless things all over trinkets, people are accumulating knowledge or information, trinkets which will make them look smart in a tea party. Only in comparison to somebody else who does not know where galaxy Z127 is. So based on that concept of... It's not a concept. The idea of the experience versus the perception, I want to look a little bit more about that. And what you were talking about, the accumulation of... Information. Which is a big problem for our industry. We are obsessing about things like big data. We're obsessing about all the gadgets that we collect and we're missing that experience bit that you talk about. So we've amassed however many millions of bites of data that the gentleman just now on stage was just talking about, but we're not using them to understand. How would you advise... When you bite so much, you'll bloat and get unhealthy. See, in this question there's a fundamental flaw. In the sense, because you belong to a generation which is goal-oriented. Goal-oriented means you are interested in the mango, the sweetness of the mango, but you are not interested in the tree because slowly you're living in a generation where mango comes from a supermarket not from a tree. It may so happen in a laboratory they will make a mango, all right? But if you want mangoes in your garden, you don't have to think mangoes. You don't have to meditate upon mangoes. You have to think soil, filth, manure, water, sunlight. No mangoes in your mind. You have only manure, soil, water, sunlight in your mind. Mangoes will happen. Or in other words, you are too interested in the consequence but not in the process which causes the consequence. This is goal-orientedness. In yoga, we say, if you have one eye on the goal, you have only one eye to find your way, it's inefficient. If you use both your eyes to find your way, according to your capability, you will go as far as you can go. That means you're not concerned how far somebody is going. You want to go as far as you can go. That's what you're interested in. But right now, this goal-orientedness means you're only interested in going one step further than your neighbour.  I think that's a sick mind. I agree with you absolutely. I'm going to keep pressing you on that question. How do we help people to see past that mentality which is pulling us back? What can we suggest to our peers in marketing to change them away from this goal? From digital to demand. Where do we find the demand? Because I love the fact that you're talking about we cannot be goal-oriented, but at the same time many businesses face the imposition of goals from others who determine our abilities to survive, which I kind of know you're going to say is flawed and I would agree with it, but nonetheless we need to help people to see the alternative to what is flawed. See, tell me, tell me one thing. You can look at Mr Bolt, you know? You can look at Mr Bolt for the inspiration, all right? But if you try to run like him, you will break your legs, that's all that will happen. For inspiration, you can look at Mr Bolt perfectly fine. You can look at Mr Sachin Tendulkar for inspiration.  Most people know cricket only on television so they think it's a nice game.  Projectiles are coming at you at tremendous speed, giving you a fraction of a second to react and hit the ball. Because they see it only on television, they think it's a nice beautiful game. No, it's among all the games that are popular today in the world, it is the most dangerous game. Nowhere else any hard ball is coming at you at that speed.  No, no, I'm saying because somebody mastered that with... he was talking to you about the level of dedication right from his childhood, how he's involved. So, Tendulkar is Tendulkar, all right? You can use him as an inspiration but you don't try to do what he is doing today afternoon because you'll be dead. Yes. So, you can use a high level of whatever somebody has set a goal as an inspiration. Somebody is running 100 metres in eight seconds, you can use it as an inspiration, don't try to do it. It's like a wax hall trying to be a Ferrari. That's the biggest mistake because who knows maybe you can hit the ball better than Tendulkar. Right now, why do you want to limit yourself to Tendulkar standards? There was a time nobody believed that you will reach 100 in a cricket game only after 35 to 40 overs. I remember this change that happened first time Sanat Jaesoria hit the ball within the first 20 overs 100. Now people are hitting it within eight, nine overs, okay? Because they're not thinking about what somebody did. You hit the ball according to your capability, who knows maybe you'll hit it better than Tendulkar? We don't know. The possibility is there. In reality there may be a distance, that's different, but the possibility is there. So, if you become goal oriented, your goals are always determined by other people's capabilities. You will never do what you could have done. Maybe you can't hit a ball, maybe you could do something else, way better than anybody else, but you will never do that because you go on trying to hit the ball that you can't hit. So, this concept of the memoryless intelligence that you talked about, how can a marketer access that? Because we are probably some of the most insecure people in the world. Market people cannot access it. Human beings can. Markets cannot. Few times when I was at the economic forum, the world economic forum, people keep on referring to India's emerging market. I said, don't refer to this market. We are not a marketplace. Once you think somebody is market, how are you going to approach them?   If I do what I... what you need, if I manufacture what you need, I don't have to market it. Market man will go out. Manufacturing is all that's needed. But right now you're doing something that people don't need and you have to convince them that they need it. It's very clear, even a kindergarten child knows that this body doesn't need carbon dioxide, it needs oxygen. But somebody is putting carbon dioxide in the bottle and calling it the real thing. So they need marketing. Marketing department is bigger than the manufacturing because you're trying to convince somebody carbon dioxide is good for you. Well, you may. You may convince a generation. A whole generation was convinced smoking tobacco is the best thing you could do. If you're a man you must smoke, otherwise you're not a man. Yes or no?  But now suddenly it's becoming all good. So this is what the marketing men will do. They're trying to sell something that people may not need. Instead of looking at someone as market, if you look at them in human beings with some concern, you would know what they need. If you manufacture that, you don't have to market it. They will stand in a queue. So I'm going to use somebody else's words in response to that because this is something that I have hopefully believed for a long time as well. A friend of mine said that as marketers we've got to stop trying to make people want things and we've got to try and make the things that people want. It's fundamentally obvious to me and yet as you... I'm saying largely market men will get eliminated. Manufacturing and people in between little marketing. Both you and me are manufacturing something that he wants. But now I'm trying to tell him what I'm manufacturing is really what you want, not what this guy is doing. Actually that's the truth. You talked a lot about all the gadgets that we have access to, all this amazing technology and yet we fail to use the best of the gadgets that we have which is our own brain. Not that we are not using it, we are using it in a very skewed way. Right. We're not able to listen correctly. We're not able to understand what it is that those people want. Even though we have access to all these amazing things, I use a lot of social media which in theory allows me to listen to the conversations with millions of people at any different time. Gossip gone global. There's an awful lot of gossip on this. We talked a lot yesterday about the food photos. It's this fascinating thing that 200 million people have taken photos of food and uploaded them to Instagram and the question is why are we doing this. Because food looks prettier than the people who eat them. No, no. If people are taking pictures of the food they eat and putting it on, obviously they think it looks prettier than them. See all this is happening. I mean leave the jokes apart. This is because people are trying, because now they found a means, a technological means to find expression. Expression more than perception means marketing department is bigger than manufacturing. That's all that's happening. What would then the perception look like? See, what would perception look like? See there are only five instruments of perception right now for you. Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. So what you perceive through these five senses a certain process, an amalgamated process of these five senses right now you're sitting here. You're seeing, you're hearing, I hope you're not smelling anything but actually it's all happening. Smelling, sensations, heat, cold, all these things are happening. You may not be conscious of it unless it becomes acute. Otherwise, if you walk from there to there, there are 25 different kinds of smells, minimum I'm saying. But most of the time you're not conscious of it unless something becomes very pleasant or very unpleasant. So every moment all the five senses are recording phenomenal amount of information. Now the process, the processing of this information is happening from a certain prejudice. When I say prejudice, the identity causes prejudice. If you're functioning from an identity, whatever, you are English, I'm Indian, somebody's man, somebody's woman, these are all prejudice. People think they're broad-minded, well it's a broad prejudice. Yes, the moment you're identified with something, there is a certain prejudice attached to it, you can't help it. That's a way the intellect works because intellect cannot function without identity. If you take away identity, your thoughts will become still. That's all it is. That's what is called meditation. If you can sit here without being identified with the physiological or psychological or the worldly process that's going on, you will become meditative because you're not identified with anything, your intellect becomes quiet. As long as you're identified, do what you want, you cannot stop it.  It'll anyway happen. So now you're identified with something that you are not. See, you belonging to a certain nation, you belonging to this or that is something that we made up, all right? What we make up, we must manage.  You identified to such a point, you really think it's easy, you're willing to live and die for it. So because of that identity, what you call as my mind or intellect has become prejudiced in a certain way. From that prejudice is working, it's okay for survival process. This prejudice is good for survival process. But if you're wanting to look for clarity, you want to see things the way they are, you want to perceive life just the way it is, not the way, not as an Englishman, not as an Indian, not as a man, not as a woman, but you want to experience life just the way it is, then you must have the ability to distance yourself from identity and just look at it. It's not that you're not at all doing it. Every human being is becoming released from their identity at some point of involvement with something, okay? But it's not a conscious process, it's not by choice. Once in a way it's happening, those moments they produce something significant, rest of the time they're just a mess. I'm talking about if you have a machine, every time you touch it, it must fire, all right? Intimately it fires once in a way, that's not a great machine. The same goes for the human being. If you have a spark of genius, you must be able to make it happen spark all the time, twenty-four hours. Otherwise, it fires once in a way accidentally, then you become astrological, you're looking for the right position of the planet for you to fire. That's inefficiency. That inefficiency is coming because perception is blocked. Is there a way to manage that? Oh yes, there's an entire science. As there is a science and technology to create external situations the way we want it, there is a whole science and technology to create in a situation the way we want it. This is what we're calling as inner engineering, to engineer your interiority the way you want. Looking at that in a bit more detail, the bit you were talking there about stepping away from the identity, which I think is really interesting because brands are all about creating their identity and yet I love the way that you're saying it's not until we get out of our identity that we can see the bigger opportunities and how to become what we want. How can we help people to understand how to unravel that identity? How do we step away from all the things that we spend time creating? See this question is coming from a fundamental that you believe that everything can be fixed intellectually. Yes. Now it cannot be. As I said when I was speaking in the morning, the other dimension of intelligence within you, if you, I think today people are beginning to talk about emotional what, emotional intelligence, not just IQ, EQ and whatever. This is just rudimentary steps taking at least one small step but a rudimentary step. This is essentially a very deep rooted western malice which has gotten into everybody today across because all of us are going through western education. We may be living in India but our education is completely unfortunately English because intellect is supreme. This is a European idea. In India we have not given much significance to intellect because you intellect always functions from a limited data that you have gathered. Your thought process happens only from the limited data that you have. If you function from your thought process nothing new will ever happen in your life because you're just recycling the old all the time. Maybe you can produce permutations and combinations of that. Here our focus has always been how to enhance your perception. Don't worry about your thought whether it looks smart or dumb it, that's not the issue. How to enhance the perception. If your ability to perceive life is enhanced naturally your ability to act in the world is naturally enhanced without any effort. There's a very simple way that people could start to experience because you know how people are. People like to experience it once and once they see it they believe it and then they do it. What's the smallest catalyst that we can encourage our peers and our friends? We can give you a simple a 12-minute simple process of meditation. It's available on the web. We can give you a CD. It's freely available. Millions of people have practiced this very simple form. If they do that and if it works they can do something more serious. It's called Isha Cria.  There's a phone app. You can put it on your phone. Yoga is a technology for well-being. Actually our tagline is in engineering technology is for well-being. You don't need to believe it. Why I'm insisting is a technology is it doesn't matter who you are, whether what gods you believe in or you disbelieve in which part of the geography you come from. If you learn to use it it works. That's the beauty of technology. Here if you learn to use it it works and that's the nature of yoga. If you learn to use it it'll work for you. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you believe or disbelieve. So these are technologies for well-being. Making use of external technologies to disseminate the same is a natural outcome. It's a very natural thing to do. So for the first time in the history of humanity our ability to reach human beings on this planet is like never before. The speed and the scope of it is unimaginable just 25 years ago or even 10 years ago if you ask me. But people tell me, I don't know if this is factually correct, but people tell me 60% of the inner internet space is covered by pornographic material. I don't know if I'm right on the figure, but people tell me so. I think that's a crime. So I'm making an effort. Technologies for inner well-being of the human being must dominate the space so that human beings learn how to be well, that the tools for well-being must be in the hands of every human being. The tools for well-being must be in the hands of individual human beings, not in the hands of organisations, gurus, popes, no matter what. I'm saying the tools for your well-being must be in your hands, not in my hands. Unfortunately you left it in my hands, I'm trying to see put it into your hands. So please give us the digital support to make that happen. I did want to just go back to one of the things that it touches something that I've been frustrated about for a while and I know you say I'm into frustration, so I'm going to level this one with you and ask for some advice. This idea that the western way of doing things is in conflict with a sense of individual, I don't know what you want to call it, enlightenment feels a little bit of a loaded word, but this idea that the western way of looking at things of education of success and all this kind of stuff is, it feels like you were saying that there's a competition to it, there's a conflict to it. How do we help people that have been indoctrinated and I grew up in that culture and I find it very difficult to unravel all of the things that I've learned and I've been taught and all this kind of stuff. How do we help people to get past the fear that is involved in seeing an alternative way of the entire life because that's what everything until now has been built on? It's overcoming that fear. How do we help people to get past that? See, the basic issue is do you want to look good or feel good or be good within yourself? It's about looking good. Looking good is more important than what's happening within you.  This has to be taken away from an early childhood. Looking good is not important. What is your experience of life? Is your experience of life great or not? This is what is important. This value change must happen. It's not something that you can change overnight in the world. But those who suffer immensely will change. I see that suffering coming because suffering is getting younger and younger. There was a time only old people used to be worried. Now you see a twelve-year-old boy is seriously worried. So when that kind of suffering comes, looking good is not important and suffering becomes unbearable. People will understand looking good is not important. How I experience my life is important. You hear this talk all over, isn't it these days? Still the necessary corrections have not been made, but people are beginning to talk. So this is the time. Technologies for inner well-being are transmitted. The time is right.