Okay, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for this program in observance of Earth Week slash Earth Day. We're going to just take it one more minute while folks are still joining the meeting but just very quickly. My name is Dan I am the director of development and programming for the bed for Playhouse. I want to thank everybody for taking a few minutes. Tonight for what I'm sure is going to be a really great program. And before I introduce our moderator to you for this evening. Just want to remind everybody how to ask a question. I'm sure everybody is quite accustomed to using zoom at this point. But for those of you who aren't, there is a button at the bottom of your screen that says q amp a. We ask you to please use that feature. You can ask a question at any time during the course of the discussion and there will be time towards the end dedicated to answering your questions as best as many as we can in the time that we've been allotted. Please try to not use the chat feature. It just gets a little bit confusing but certainly if you do, we will do our best to address your questions there. I should just mention that we all both the bed for playoffs and bed for 2030 rely on the support of the community. So if you have a few moments. If you enjoy the program. Please visit our websites and consider making contributions to help us with our respective missions. This is the second night of bed for playoffs, earthly programming. We got off to a great start last night. I'm sure this is going to be just as informative and enlightening. And we are recording tonight so this recording will be up on our YouTube channel in the next couple of days and we will share the link with everyone who may want to either revisit it, or share it with anyone else who might be interested. With all that being said, I want to introduce our moderator, Sarah Douglas Sarah. Hey, she's going to tell you a little bit about herself and then introduce our panel and Sarah the floor is yours. Thank you so much Dan and thank you to the bed for playoffs for your resilience through this pandemic.  And thank you for promoting Earth Week. It is one of my favorite weeks of the year I devote my life to protecting the planet. And I'm thrilled that the bed for playhouse has created this amazing week of programming so that the community can can learn about protecting the planet. Thank you very much for having me and I'm thrilled to be here on behalf of bed for 2030. For those of you that do not know that for 2030 it is a local small but mighty grassroots organization that is working on the urgent issue of climate change here by reducing our greenhouse gases in our town. This is an incredible organization where we meet you where you are. So if you're interested in the environment, and you don't know much about it. Please go to our website. It's an incredible site. It's brand new it's got tons of resources for your home for your yard for our community. I'd love for you to join us. But for 2030 was founded back in 2009 by three amazing women leaders here in this community, Olivia far Ellen comrade and Mary Beth Cass. They dreamt up this dream to create a the very first climate action plan in the state of New York. And it was just the three of them. And they grew a very engaged board and now we have the leadership of Ninja area are amazing executive director and our incredible president Karen Sabbath. And they set out in 2009 with a very ambitious goal to reduce the greenhouse gases in the town of Bedford by 20%. Well, we hit the cover off the ball, and we were able to reduce the greenhouse gases in the town of Bedford by 44% early on time to 2019. So now we had to sit as a group and say what are we going to do the next 10 years. So we're thrilled in January to be able to launch our next 10 years of climate action now here in the town of Bedford. And you will join us in that mission. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about our climate action plan for the next 10 years. We learned a lot in our 2017 greenhouse gas inventory, and we are focusing on six different areas in the climate action plan. And that would be 100% green energy, high performance buildings, transportation, sustainable food practices, water and land and waste and recycling. So those are all very important issues, you'll be very surprised to learn that the town of Bedford's greenhouse gases, 48% of them actually come from transportation and high performance buildings. And we are hoping to inspire you as we launch our programming and the world emerges from this crazy pandemic. We are hoping to inspire you to join us we're going to be having a make your next car and EV program. We are going to be having also a waste and recycling which is a wildly successful community compost program we also have a pilot and curbside compost as well. And we're absolutely thrilled that we have very ambitious goals for the next 10 years to reduce our greenhouse gases in the town of Bedford by 80%. So what do we need to do that we need you, and we need this next generation of climate leaders, and we need everybody to come together to help us on this mission. It is the greatest existential crisis of our time. I get a little choked up saying that it's true. And today we have four amazing young women, girl power to be able to talk about what they've been able to do on climate action now, whether it's in their homes in their communities in their schools, all through our program. But for 2030 launched six years ago called the green light awards. And it is a program for high school students all over Westchester and beyond, to be able to compete in a challenge. We get like a shark tank. It's a almost a nine month cycle that these kids are committed to which is incredible these are busy kids with sports and all kinds of schedules and they are committed to creating green innovations advocacy campaigns. And that for 2030 is there to support them. We bring them experts to learn from we bring them tools and resources we even offer funding for their projects. So they come with an idea, and we help them execute it. Last weekend was our green light awards for this year our sixth year and it was so inspiring we had teams from 19 or 20 different high schools. And one of our panelists actually competed in it on Saturday. And tomorrow, the winners will be announced on Instagram live and Facebook live. So we'd love for you to learn a little bit about the green light award. And so let's roll the video. The green light award is a competition that challenges local high school students to use leadership and innovation in order to bring about environmental change in their homes, schools and communities. Hi, my name is Leah and I'm a sophomore. Hi, my name is Chris. Hi, my name is Jordan. My name is Aaron. I'm Julia. And I'm Gabby. For our green light project. My green light project. My green light project. Our green light project is called the confronting climate challenge. Our goal is to educate people about human impact on climate change. We're designing an app to encourage users to build constructive habits around the carbon footprint. This program inspires and empowers students to come up with big green ideas to solve the climate crisis and other sustainability issues affecting our community. Reducing singlet plastics, changing shopping habits and reducing fossil fuels. It's an app that will help raise awareness about and encourage fuel efficient driving in our community. We have been collecting clothes from our community to put them up on a website. This will prevent the overproduction of clothes. By allowing users to track their plastic consumption, people will begin reducing their plastic consumption. We can save so many tons of carbon emissions every year. This will save natural resources to reduce pollution, habitat loss and climate change. Our overall goal is to encourage users to incorporate green behaviors into their daily life. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. That was a little video from our green light participants. And I did forget two exciting things that Bedford 2030 is doing this year. Around buildings. So we're inspiring homeowners and businesses to reduce their greenhouse gases to become more energy efficient so that you can do this in your homes and in your businesses. So we will give you tools to help reduce your greenhouse gases. So please log on to our website and learn how to do that, whether it's heating and cooling pumps, whether it's solar energy efficiency, or even geothermal. And a very exciting initiative that we're launching this summer that's brand new from two of our board members, Carolyn McGill and Karen Simons. They have brought to us an incredible soil secretation project and we're calling it carbon drawdown. We're actually led leveraging Mother Earth to help us sequester carbon. And they have a very detailed map Bedford where we're learning where all of the soils are and how we work with them. And as we learn we will teach you and have you join us so that you can do this in your yard and on your property as well. Back to the green light. The green light is my most inspiring part of Bedford 2030 seeing these kids come up with ideas. There's ideas from, you know, apps to all kinds of inventions to community advocacy programs. And tonight we're going to learn from this next generation of climate leaders. We are living in a time when the youth voice is what is making a difference. We have handed them a mess. And it's our responsibility to lift their voices up. They're using their voices, they're using their minds to come up with innovations, and they're making impact. So please help me welcome our panelists tonight. We have an alumni who has moved on to university now as she was actually our 2018 winner, Rachel Joseph. And we have our red out of pound rich we have Riley Hester, and Riley has created a project last year in the green light awards that is also lives on in the community of pound rich, and we'll learn all about it. She inspired that she took her climate action and her inspiration to the town board of pound rich who listened and helped her. And now she has a program recycle right with Riley here in the town of pound rich. And she'll actually be on this Saturday and Riley I'll let you tell a little bit more about it but this Saturday, there is going to be a low waste exhibit in the town of pound rich, where the conservation board and the town come together to teach people all about living a low waste lifestyle and Riley is going to be a part of that. And then we have from John Jay, a very big job. Sarah Kala her, who is contestant this Saturday and last year I think she was also a finalist in green light, and Sarah runs the sustainability club at john Jay, and is doing incredible projects there as well. Jasmine Cizer, who lives a very green lifestyle she was contestant last year in in the pandemic unfortunately her green light project was challenged and obstacles by by co bit but was still amazing but her commitment to the planet and her daily lifestyle living to live in a way that is conducive to preserving natural resources is really inspiring. So I'm absolutely thrilled to have these four incredible ladies here. And we're going to talk a little bit about their experience in the green light award. And then we're also going to talk about the environment in general, and some of the issues that they care deeply about and why. And it is my hope tonight that as a takeaway. You, the viewers will think of one thing that you can do to protect the planet, it could be small. It could be big like learning how to compost. It could be turning off the lights when you go out of a room, whatever it is. Pick one takeaway, whether it's from these inspiring next 10 leaders, whether it's from the bed for 2030 website, or whether it's from something that you're reading all through climate week. Please help us and join us in climate action now. So now I'd like to introduce our panelists and Rachel I'd like to start with you as our alum. Rachel is well I'll let you explain tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection to green light. Thank you Sarah. My name is Rachel Joseph, I'm from Katona. And I did green light in 2018 for my project on rainwater harvesting where I installed rain water harvesting system at our local elementary school. Currently, I'm a second year chemical engineering student at Northeastern University. Wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about your, your green light project and how you conceived of it. So what really inspired this interest in rainwater harvesting was taking a trip to India a few years back. In India it's really common to harvest rainwater because of the heavy monsoon season. So when we were visiting family, I noticed that almost every house we went to had it. So we really appreciated this concept of turning rain, which is something that we usually don't pay much attention to into something that's so vital for watering the garden and for using it for outside uses. So that's really what inspired that. And it was also because I wanted to foster the growth of our community garden at the elementary school. Teachers were finding it really hard to take time to garden and to water it and it was the burden was really falling on the teachers so I wanted to find a way to make it easier on the teachers because the community garden was something I grew up with and I wanted that tradition to stay. That is wonderful and I remember being inspired by the fact that you took a, an innovation from the country where your roots are born and then brought it here to our community so that we could learn from it so thank you for doing more Rachel. And now, tell us a little bit about what you're studying and what your, what your hopes and dreams going forward are just so we have context for the conversation. Sure. So I started out studying environmental engineering here, but I switched over into chemical engineering. And really what I'm interested in is the intersection between engineering and policy within the energy sector. So I'm not exactly sure what I see myself doing, but I know that I want to be somewhere in between engineering and policy specifically regarding energy in the US. Excellent. And Jasmine tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection to green light. I'm a junior at Fox Lane High School, and I participated in the green light award last year, as you said, and my project was me and my two friends we advocated for compacting trash cans at our high school in order to decrease the volume of the total waste and also decrease the amount of garbage truck runs back and forth from the school to the waste and then overall decrease the carbon emissions from that. Awesome. And tell us a little bit about your journey in climate action like where did it start from. Well, my journey also, well, I always grew up loving the environment because my father is an environmentalist. And so I always understood the beauties of the earth. And then two years ago I went scuba diving and believes for the first time ever, and only once scuba diving I was wrapped into this whole new world of the ocean and many of my friends, they speak about the ocean and how they fear it because it's like the ocean and whatever whatever but when I was in the world of the unknown I came to like to love it and I saw how beautiful it really is. And it just inspired me and I was just so captivated by it and ever since I just always look back on that moment as to why I'm doing what I want to do now and for the future. Thank you for carrying the ocean. The oceans need you to they need all of us. And Sarah, tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection to green light. Um, so I'm a senior at John Jay, and I'm the head of the sustainability club at John Jay, and we've competed in the green light competition for the past two years so last year we actually placed second with our sustainability week project that we hosted right before we went into quarantine last March, and then the finals for this year actually took place last weekend, and we don't have their results back but we competed with our bimonthly action campaigns that we have been working on this year, like half remote and half in school for green light. And tell us a little bit about what inspired your climate action. This is a good, a good one. Yeah, so at John Jay they offer humanities research which is a two year honors research course, and you can basically study anything but your first year in sophomore year, you work as a class to like read books and do research on general themes so we research like wealth and equity and racial justice, and also climate change. And so this kind of really made me passionate about social justice it really kind of got me going and got me really excited about it and as I started to learn about all this social injustice in America I realized that we're not really we're very limited in what we're doing to combat all of these issues and also all of them are really intertwined. So it made me feel like I really had to do something and I really had to like get out there and like help combat it in any way that I could, even though like I'm just a high school student I can't make that much of an impact. And so I heard that the Sustainability Club was starting back up again, and I immediately got involved and I wanted to help out as much as I could. Amazing Sarah and you are correct social justice and environmental justice are absolutely interconnected. And I'm so glad that you've taken up this, this fight, and we're all we're all benefiting and your whole school is benefiting from your passion and enthusiasm for sure. And now Riley Hester, tell us a little bit about you and your connection to green light. So I'm a sophomore at Fox Lane High School. And I was a green light finalist last year for my project Recycle Right With Riley which I've continued on with. And it focuses on increasing recycling in Pound Ridge and also giving people the resources that they need in order to make it easier for them to recycle in Pound Ridge and in general. Excellent. And what made you how did you start your climate action journey with this idea. How was all right with Riley born. So initially inspired me to start my journey was about two years ago I watched the documentary a plastic ocean, which shows the extremes amount of pollution and plastics in the ocean. And as someone who loves the ocean this was very upsetting. And I knew that I had to do something about this. So I started researching different recycling programs and ways to recycle different items. And then I became connected with the Pound Ridge Conservation Board. And then they inspired me to start my green light project and do something about the recycling in my town. Wonderful. I want to talk a little bit about the green light award because we are inspiring kids all over to apply for this very innovative program where we will help to support these ideas become, you know, the reality. And so I was hoping that each of you could could talk a little bit about the green light award and what kinds of support you got, or how the, you know, what you've learned from the experience because there's a lot that goes into it it's it's public speaking, it's campaign planning, it's innovation, and all of those things wrapped up in one and you've got to consult experts in the community and you've got to create a project so we want to learn about your experience. So Rachel, what did you learn. Yeah, I had a really rewarding experience through green light. I really appreciated the incubator workshops that we had throughout. It really helped me like solidify an idea. But I think that the main thing I took away was my appreciation for collaborating with a diverse range of people. I would be working so closely with custodians and school administrators and teachers. So that was a really fun experience to interact with people I normally wouldn't on this exciting project. And I also think something that I also took away was the challenges of bringing an idea that we just came up with an ideation incubator workshop and actually making that a reality. So that's something I'm still learning as an engineer now but that's something I had to navigate through green light. It's a lifelong learning Rachel, all of the challenges and obstacles that come in our way, but we're so inspired by your work. Thank you. Sarah how about you. What did you learn from the green light award and and working with the school as we know at Bedford 2030 trying to get this program into schools. And Gail record has been really instrumental this year. The green light awards was invented by our amazing group and sponsored by Curtis instruments here in town in Mount Kisco. And Alan Calves, who is now a town board member but she really carry green light on her back and learned the hard way of all of the obstacles and challenges that come with working with schools and administrators. And Gail record has taken upon herself this year as our green light bleed, and boy oh boy we learn a lot about about schools this way so Sarah do you want to tell us a little bit about your experience with green light and working with students and administrators and maybe some of the obstacles and challenges you came up against. Definitely I think, in terms of green light I definitely learned a few important skills, especially last year being the first year. I definitely learned about organization and also like being a leader and how to kind of organize and put together really a smooth running project with like little to no issues but also a group and leading a group of people who maybe aren't friends or maybe don't know each other and getting the same goal that you all have accomplished. I think that green light really helped me with that because they definitely have offer a lot of connections and I learned a lot about connection making from green light so like in December for the first initial presentation for the competition. I think it was presenting to Lauren Royce from Sustainable Westchester she was one of our judges that we were kind of making our pitch to I guess you could say about our project idea, and then she like immediately gave us her email and then we really used her as a mentor and a resource throughout the year on our project and she was really really like really helpful and helping us kind of knowing what steps to make and and how to accomplish our goal and she even helped us alongside Bedford 2030 to host a webinar last week about reducing fossil fuel emission in the homes and like it was kind of unbelievable that we got to do that as part of our fossil fuel energy action campaign for the month of March, but it was really because of kind of the leadership skills and the connection making skills that green light kind of helped me gain. That is excellent to know and Lauren Royce is a special advisor to our board of Bedford 2030 and we feel like she is an absolute treasure as well so I'm glad that she was helpful for for you and your project. Riley, I know the pandemic has certainly thrown a little bit of a wrench in in the continuation of your project. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how that work with the municipality making change. Yeah, so I think I learned a lot about working with different people and businesses to put in recycling boxes and in certain storefronts and to have tabling events, like at the market at pound Ridge. And I think I also learned a lot about communicating and negotiating with people with these recycling boxes and about how the cost of recycling comes into play. And then with these businesses that helped me a lot with learning about how to market my project and using all the resources that the businesses and green light we're giving me to fully execute my project. And also, all of these experiences with the businesses and green light. Help me realize how important it is for us, especially as young people to address these climate issues and the lack of recycling and to encourage change is because there's so many people who just have no idea about recycling or their carbon footprints or anything like that so it's awesome Riley and you're absolutely right it is about changing behavior, especially around recycling and you know I'm at all of these environmental conferences and events and things and when I speak up and say how many of you are confused at the bin and you would be so surprised to see so many grown up because recycling is confusing and it's hard to understand what's recycled and what's not. And what Riley's done is she has created very hard to recycle items collection points around pound Ridge to collect corks and razor blades at the barber and mascara wants to clean animals that have been an oil spill so it's it's a very inventive way to help inspire that behavior change around waste. And Jasmine I know that the pandemic also kind of thwarted your your project as well, but I'd love for you because you on this panel are really representing green lifestyle and green home and I just have to tell like one side story so there was someone at at bed for 2030 nose Jasmine and she said that when she eats lunch with her son her son is like mom I can't have ziplocks I'm eating with Jasmine today. We're really proud of Jasmine for being that advocate in her daily life. So do you want to talk about some of the challenges and obstacles just about inspiring others to care about the planet in your daily life. Um, yeah, in my daily life. It definitely is hard to get people to agree with you or see where you're coming from because I definitely am very passionate for the environment and people don't really understand why and it's hard to express it to them, but from green light and from my personal experiences I have learned from all of this that kind of like what Riley said that when you really want something or want to do something or make a change. You can always do it you just have to really implement that idea and show the facts and just really express your love for and your passions and people, it will come off, it will rub off on other people and also through green light, something that I have learned kind of like what Sarah said is that I am this year taking science research and in science research we do a lot of presentations and green light was probably one of the first experiences that really offered a public speaking opportunity to me. It really allowed me to practice that and present to judges and it was a really good experience for me in the future with school and for the future to come as well. Excellent. Let's talk about the facts, and we do have a few slides of facts we're not trying to get all gloom and doom on you but I did ask these esteemed panelists. What kinds of climate issues are really heavy on our heart. I use different language I said you know what really makes you mad so. You want to show a little bit of the slides. I, I would like to start with with with mine, which is food waste. So food waste is something that is a real consumer issue. If food waste was a country. It would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases.  And when food is actually composted and I listen I moved from Brooklyn to pound Ridge and I really tried to be that ego mom that composted in my backyard. And let me tell you, it is a science to get that black gold of like the perfect mix of organic with the brown, and I had like maggots and it just really wasn't working out so well. And goodness there's community compost so that for 2030 created a community compost program of which the town of pound Ridge has adopted. And now you can bring your compost so I literally today I filled my compost bag. It feels like a small child it's like 20 pounds of compost, and it's so wonderful to know that is not going into a landfill. There's a curbside compost that you can do, which is a service and a company that comes to do it. There's a pilot of ever 2030 pilot for curbside compost as well. So if anybody is willing to take a big leap and make the one thing that they change their behavior about for composting please reach out to us because we're ready to meet you where you are to learn. So really since you're focused on and very heated about recycling as a consumer issue. Do you want to tell us a little bit about recycling as an issue. And so, there's so much plastic that is produced that is not recycled and a lot of plastic that they kind of confuse you because they have the little triangle on the containers and on the bags but a lot of it doesn't end up getting recycled. And it can end up getting burned in the ocean and landfills and just in our environment in general, which is really upsetting because you think you're putting in the recycle bin and it's going to just end up back into the ocean. And also, there's a lot of small changes that we can do that to prevent this from happening. So this is kind of a little plug here but you can check out my website for recycle right it's www dot recycle right with Riley calm. And that gives you just some more information on what items can be recycled where and what items you can't recycle just so we can help prevent the ocean and the environment from getting more plastic which is very unnecessary. And I think that something that is very important is everyone should just try to make small changes in their lives for about with the recycling habits. And during my green light project I actually asked people to pledge to recycle a little bit more. Because I think that those small behavior changes are what in the long run will create big change and if everyone decides to make just one small change in the recycling habits in the long run. It's going to really add up. Thank you, Riley. And I'm glad that you gave the plug for recycle right with for Riley I definitely use that as a resource for sure. Do you want to give a little bit of plug of what time you'll be in the village of pound Ridge on Saturday doing recycle right with with Riley so that any of our viewers could come by and learn from you. Yeah so at the market in pound Ridge from, I think it's 10 to three on this Saturday. There's a whole low waste exhibit and you can go and learn about how to reduce your waste. There's, I'm going to be there with my recycle right with Riley resources. And there's lots of other people who will be there there's information on composting on the repair cafe on the take it or leave it shed and just all these great resources to help you reduce your waste. That's amazing and reducing our waste is really the best thing that you can do only 9% of what we put in our recycling bin is actually recycled. So it's called in our industry people we call it wish cycling like you wish that it was recycled. It's not recyclable. It's going into recycling and it's contaminating that bag and that bag will then need to go to a landfill or get incinerated. So it's unable to actually get recycled, just and as Riley so well pointed out just because it has a little triangle with arrows does not mean that it's recyclable in our towns. So if you understand what is recyclable and what is not and definitely check out Riley's math and the low waste. If you live in bed for we'll talk about a little bit about this at the end but there is a healthy yards birthday festival this weekend, or my second. And they will also have composting and learning about recycling and a plant swap and all kinds of great things too. Let's talk about Jasmine because we just learned about how much ocean there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish in 2050. So let's talk a little bit about that with Jasmine. So as I mentioned before, I am studying I'm in science research and in science research I'm studying coral bleaching and coral bleaching is becoming more and more prevalent due to human action and as you can see, in the slide 75% of the coral reefs are at risk, and about a quarter of them have already been damaged beyond repair. I know that 50% of corals have been damaged and I think in the next 30 years a predicted 40% more is about to become damaged so that's a lot of coral and corals are very necessary to us and the earth for example, they hold the homes to many marine organisms and without corals, then many of these marine organisms will also go with them and corals are also very important to us because they act as a barrier between the waves and the shore so not only to the marine organisms, they are important to us. And I just have been thinking that I just this makes me inspired to do more because we can start in our own homes to help save even something so far as corals, which are in a huge amount of threat right now. Thank you for caring about the corals. When we when we live so far away from coral reefs that sometimes out of our mind and it's really, really important. Ocean health is paramount. We need the ocean for oxygen and we need it clean. So thank you for caring about that. Sarah, tell us about what makes you really mad. So I think single use plastic water bottles are definitely a big thing for me that kind of get me going. I think most people in general just don't really have a good understanding on how negative of an impact these bottles can have on the environment and people just kind of buy big packages and then the grocery store, and they don't really realize what impact they're on. And so as as the slides as like, I just think, like, people don't understand they don't really ever go away, or if they do it takes literal centuries for them to do that. And they just kind of break down into smaller and smaller pieces which are called micro plastics, and as they do break breakdown so they release greenhouse gases which obviously contributes to global warming. So overall, like these bottles, they, they're just kind of terrible for the environment because they not only pile up and pollute the environment, because they're being wasted, but they also emit these gases that break down and are just kind of so harmful and I don't think they don't really understand how dangerous they are they just kind of think, Oh, you know I'm going to get this water because it tastes better or something, they could do easy, easy changes if they don't like they're at home water like they could just buy a filter for like $20 at Target or something and it's kind of simple to have a pretty big impact on our environment. So please bring a refillable water bottle and bring a refillable water bottle, wherever I can go and much to my kids dismay when we go to like a food truck Friday or something like that I'm always carrying around these reusable water bottles because I really try our best to not buy the single use plastic bottles. I think around waste, you know we've talked a lot about waste, it's rethinking it, you know, do you really need that plastic bag for your vegetables when you're at the market.   So you're going to peel that off so it's okay if that actually goes on the conveyor belt. That's one less thin film plastic bag that you have used. Same thing goes for water bottles it's really easy for moms to drive around with a big case of water from Costco in the back of their, their car and pass it out to kids who take two or three sips of it and then it just ends up on a sidewalk, where might end up in a recycling can. But it's still we have way too many plastic water bottles as you learn from Sarah so please do your best and reduce your consumption. And Rachel's interest and Rachel's really taken her green light experience and her passion for the environment into her chemical engineering major. And we do have a question for the audience about you know what is next, and it sounds like there's an issue that you really are interested in tackling. Yeah. Um, so I'm really passionate about energy justice. So on the slide it says 770 million people still lack access to electricity worldwide. And that's just one component of energy and justice. So what energy justice really is it's this concept and this goal that we're working towards not only clean energy future, but also that it's equitable in terms of social and economic participation of people in the energy sector. So, last semester I did this semester long group project where we mapped energy burden throughout the state of Massachusetts. And essentially energy burden is the percentage of a family's income that goes towards paying for energy bills. And what our team found was that in areas and communities of low income minority communities, they were paying much higher percentages of their income towards electricity bills. And so that's something that I'm really passionate about addressing because I think so often when we think of renewable energy and a clean energy future, we think of how we can be the most energy efficient and innovative. But I think it's still really important that we consider the voices that are being left out and ensure that there's equal access to renewable energy as well as energy in general. So that's something I'm really looking forward to pursuing in the future. Thank you for being an advocate for that Rachel and for speaking for those that whose voices aren't heard on this because it is a justice issue. I mean at bed for 2030 we're lucky to be able to migrate, you know, in the next 10 years we want to migrate to 100% green energy. We can do any home energy audits on our house, we can put in energy efficient windows we can put in solar and geothermal we're really fortunate and really privileged and it's very important that what that cause that you believe in so deeply Rachel thank you. And so we do have some questions. Oh perfect my chat just came up we do have some questions from the audience. So feel free to weigh in audience if you have other questions. Oh, this is a great one. Can you share four or five actions we can all take in bed for during Earth Week. Well, I will, I will start with coming to our Earth Day event on May 2. It's from noon to four at the Bedford Hills train station. It's family friendly and totally free. There's going to be all kinds of activities and crafts for the kids. Our partner sister organization healthy yards puts on the most incredible event, and they've brought together so many different community groups like Westmoreland Sanctuary and Audubon and host of others, all coming together to promote this Earth Day celebration so there will be a plant swap a pollinator pop up composting native plants it's going to be awesome. So that's one thing that you can, you can do. And how about if each of our panelists picks one thing that we could do. How about Rachel. Um, I think on the topic of food waste. One thing that I know I do here on campus and something we do back home is. It's to make bread like last longer I think usually a loaf of bread that's fresh lasts about five days without getting moldy in a pantry. But what we do at home and what we do here is to be put it in the freezer. It lasts so much longer and you're cutting back on that much food waste and you're saving a lot more money because it can last much, much longer like up to a few months, if you put it in the freezer, as opposed to the pantry. Thank you Rachel that's a good tip. That's awesome. How about you Riley what's one good thing that some that our audience can do on Earth, Earth Week. One thing I think is really important is, I've noticed recently that there's a lot of plastic that ends up on the side of our roads. And I think sometimes me and my family we like to go around and pick up all that plastic, just to get it off of our roads and hopefully recycle it if it's recyclable. Just to help get rid of all that unnecessary plastic that's on the side of our roads and clean up the environment. Excellent one. How about you Jasmine. Um, well, one big thing for me is that a lot of people don't really understand how much energy goes into eating meat, and I'm been a pescetarian for over a year. So I think maybe something easy that you can do is just cut back on the meat maybe have Meatless Mondays because you maybe don't even realize that we might eat meat every day or maybe for two or three meals a day to and that it's a it's a lot of energy so Meatless Mondays can help cut back a lot. Excellent. And a couple of years ago that for 2030 did do a program called Meatless Mondays in partnership with with Johns Hopkins University and it was wildly successful and totally spacing on how many families we had that actually signed up to do it. But we it was really impactful and I think that families truly learn that a plant based diet can help the planet. And we're not saying, don't eat meat, we're just saying eat less of it right. Awesome. Sarah, how about you I mean that's what you've been doing in your sustainability club I'm sure this week has been crazy for you doing this so what what have you been teaching the kids at John Jay to do. I think staying on the theme of food, a really simple thing you could just try out is buying a plant based milk alternative. I think that people think it's oh like kind of like hippie kind of vegan to do that but and there's kind of a whole stigma around that really a lot of them taste very similar and they're much better for the environment specifically coconut milk and oat milk are much better for the environment and it doesn't cost very much if you just pick it up and you give it a try and then you like your kids might like it even more than regular milk or you might like it more than regular milk and you can use it in your recipes and it's a really kind of easy switch and you might end up really enjoying it and it's much better for the environment if your family would continue to use that and regular milk. Absolutely I made the switch and my kids didn't even notice so give it a whirl out there parents just don't show them via the bottle. Did I get everybody's one thing that they can do. Yes, I did. Awesome. And so let's take some more questions from the audience. So these are some of them really deep and interesting. Oh, so what are some of the most exciting green careers to think about for the future so that you can translate your passion from your teenage years into your career years. Does anybody wanted to I don't want to put you guys all in the spot for that but does anybody want to take that one. Yeah I can take on. So I think for me, being really interested in energy and policy, something that's really exciting is the work that's being done in the current administration in the Department of Energy. There was actually a professor at Northeastern who recently joined the Biden administration as the director of energy justice as a part of the Department of Energy. So that's to me really inspiring that now we're giving more importance to energy justice and we're investing more in renewable energy. So I see there are a lot of engineers that joined the Department of Energy but I think that's like a really exciting link between engineering and data science as well as in in terms of policy. That is excellent thank you Rachel. And for all of our panelists one final question is really, you know, look into the camera and what advice do you have for other youth voices that want their voice to be heard. To bring climate action now whether it's like Jasmine into her home and her daily life, whether it's like Riley who's working with the town and community, whether it's Sarah that is working with her school and campus, or whether it's Rachel who's ready to bring that kind of energy justice to to underserved countries and communities. So what advice do you have for the youth out there. Something that I would say is kind of cliche but really use the resources that you have available to you you might not even realize how many resources you have to spread the word about your project or your idea. Especially like I think something I learned through my various projects with sustainability club is social media is such a big thing and I think it's the best way to get out and like spread the word about your project and your ideas and get followers and get people understanding what you're trying to accomplish and and trying to help you out and so I think like everybody has Instagram and you can also use like your school email or your, or parents emails in the district for in my case because it was a school thing but you can use email and text and stuff like that but not everybody always checks their inbox especially if they're younger and part of like our, our age group. So definitely Instagram everybody's always checking their feed and refreshing and so I think really using using social media is it definitely a big way to get people to support you and also just reaching out to teachers is also just like other adults in your community it kind of sounds like scary and like social anxiety and all that stuff but really it's it's not that intimidating and a lot of people will be willing to help you out if you just put yourself out there and just like go up to them or write an email to them explaining your idea and a lot of people will be willing to support you so just really trying to use whatever resources you have available to you there's a lot more potential than you might think there is for your project to be successful. And it's really great advice here and I'm sure as the director of your sustainability committee for your school you come up against dealing with your peers that may or may not be as invested in in these issues or care as much so those are some really good opportunities to help them to understand that and to help help them to join you but for 2030 is all about behavior change and so you guys are all creating behavior change, whether it was in your green highlight projects or in your life. And I'm just so proud and honored to know you and to see you grow through through the years. And Jasmine, do you have any tactics to help inspire the next generation of youth leaders or to help your peers understand the importance of some of these issues when they're not so into it as we are. I would say for the next generation out there watching this. Definitely just step out of your comfort zone don't see what inspires you and allow it to take you wherever you want it to. And if you want, like I kind of said this before but if you really want something you have to push for it because it's. Most things don't really come that easily but if you really push for it and are passionate about it people will see how much you care. And it all starts with you because many people are always like I don't want to do this it's not going to make that much of a difference, but if everyone has that mentality mentality I don't know if that's the right word. Nothing's going to change but it all starts with you from within and you just have to make the change yourself. And with that you'll inspire others and it'll all grow from there so just keep being strong yourself because you can do it yourself. Absolutely that is real it's true you have to know yourself before you can you know you have to heal yourself before you can heal the planet right. That is awesome. And Riley for it for the, the, the closer on you know what do you say that the next generation of environmental stewards or for peers that don't understand the importance of recycling right with Riley. I think it's really important to kind of going back to what Sarah said is using your resources because there's so many if you want to get involved and make climate action happen. There's so many resources like different internships and green light to get involved with the environment. And if you're trying to execute a project. As a young person who might not have as much as much experience it can be very helpful to turn to someone who has more experience, like for example I turned to the town board to get approvals and advice on how to work with different businesses and communities for my project so I think that definitely helped me a lot.  So way to go and thank you so much for being participants in the green light award for being environmental stewards for this planet and for being part of tonight. So I hope everybody out there that's watching will pick one climate action that they learned tonight or that you learn from our website. And definitely check out the low waste exhibit imponerage this weekend, the Earth Day Festival may second. That's happening with the healthy yards project and then for 2030 and a host of other organizations. We are all here to meet you where you are to inspire climate action now. Thank you so much and have a great night. Thank you Sarah for for doing a great job with the moderating. Super thanks for having us Dan. No problem our pleasure everybody look for the recording in the next couple of days we'll send that link around. Thank you. And check out the website. Have a good night.


Hello everyone, my name is Jane Katten and I'm the CEO at Agewell. I'd like to welcome you to our show today called Aging Matters. I'd also like to thank MVP Healthcare for their sponsorship of our program every month. As you may know, Agewell is the largest area agency on aging in the state of Vermont and we serve clients who are over the age of 60 or under the age of 60 with a disability on long-term care Medicaid. Our mission is to make sure we wrap around services to our clients so that they can remain living healthy and independent lives in the setting of their choice. We also serve our clients in four counties across the state. That's Franklin, Grand Isle, Chittenden and Addison. Every month on Aging Matters we like to find topics that are really important and help us all to understand how to age well, because after all we're all aging. This month we have a very interesting topic that we're going to explore with a special guest, Derek Souza, who is a specialized Care and Service Coordinator case manager at Agewell. Derek is also the co-chair of the hoarding resource and support team in Chittenden County. So he has some really special expertise around this topic of hoarding disorder, which we're going to explore in more detail right now. Welcome, Derek. It's so nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me today. I am very excited to talk about this topic, so thank you. Well, we're lucky to have you. Derek, before we dive into our questions, maybe you could tell our viewers a little bit about what a specialized case manager does at Agewell and a little bit about your background. Sure, sure. So I have been a specialized case manager with Agewell for the past four years. We mainly focus on some more complex issues with aging, so mainly focus on older adults in states of self-neglect or experiencing hoarding, squalor, or those that are unhoused. I first got started with Agewell back in 2009 as an AmeriCorps, and I loved the work I was doing, and so yeah, now I'm a full case manager and just very happy to be here and happy to the work I do every day. Well, we're so lucky to have you as one of our specialized case managers because I know the work is incredibly complicated. It's very hard every day, so thank you for doing what you do. Derek, before we get into all of my questions, maybe we could set the stage just with this first one, and that is, can you help to define what a hoarding disorder is? So I thought maybe we could start with the technical definition. So this is out of the DSM-5 or what we call the manual of mental disorders. So hoarding is the persistent difficulty, discarding or parting with possessions regardless of their actual value. So I think the most important thing that we're going to talk about today with hoarding is that it's very difficult to discard of those items, and the actual process of discarding can be very traumatic. And even though a lot of us can think that it's very easy just to throw out items, get rid of items, empty our houses, those that are experiencing hoarding disorder, that piece is very complicated and can be very problematic and traumatic if it's done very quickly. So I hope that gives a good overview of what we're talking about today. A great definition, so that really helps to frame our conversation because I have done a little bit of research on this. So I was actually shocked when I read some of the literature and some studies that have been done on hoarding disorder, and it says it's estimated that hoarding disorders affect as much as 6% of the American population, and that is almost 19 million Americans. And many of the researchers note that these figures are underestimated, and a vast majority of hoarding remains unrecognized and untreated. So Derek, with those pretty compelling statistics, why do you think there's so much underrepresentation from individuals who are impacted by hoarding disorder? So there are a lot of different reasons, but I think first, hoarding, there's a lot of stigma around hoarding, and I think that's a good time to talk about the term hoarder. We really try to not use that word. It's very negative and can be very negative when you're talking about someone. So there's a big stigma around hoarding, and people can feel very ashamed of what their houses look like, and so the more people collect and they will isolate more and more, and a lot of times people that are hoarding will tend to close the blinds and things like that and just isolate themselves more and more, but another reason that people tend to not report is that people want to hold on to their items too, right? They're afraid of people coming in and doing deep cleans and removing all their items, so it's very different than a lot of other maybe mental health disorders where people are seeking treatment hoarding. Those are their things. They love their items. They love their belongings, and so there can be a real trust issue with outsiders or family members that want to come in and get rid of those items, so you see a lot of isolation that way as well. Oh, wow, and we also know from one of our other shows that social isolation affects older adults for a lot of reasons, and now it sounds like the hoarding disorder issue contributes to that as well, so that's really unfortunate. Derek, can you talk about how hoarding is different than collecting clutter or disorganization? And I'll just take a little sidebar here. You and I talked about this the other day a little bit, but for example, you could walk into my garage and you would find a tremendous amount of clutter, and if you spoke to my husband, he might say, oh, I really want to keep those things, and so, you know, there's a line, I guess, a progression of, as you were saying, from these different means of collecting, creating clutter than disorganization to hoarding disorder, so can you define a little bit about each of those? Yeah, I think, you know, as a case manager, I think a lot of people, you know, we're not in the business to like just say, oh, you can't have possessions, you have to have an empty space, you know, people are allowed to first off have collections, people are allowed to be messy, you know, we don't have to have extremely tidy houses, but where hoarding really steps in is that first off, you know, the relationship that one might have with something that we consider that doesn't have any value, for example, like paper cups or towel rolls, they might have a very deep connection, and it might be very easy for us to write off, ah, it's just a paper cup, throw it out, or, you know, plastic bins, items like that that we would find disposable or useless, there is a whole story of connections, you know, with that person. You know, other things, other types of like collectibles and things like that, they're okay to have, but I think it's that real like, you know, if I were to come to your house and say, maybe we have to get rid of these items, you know, it would be, you would be okay of saying, okay, let's go through them, but, you know, it's that I can't get rid of this because that item is actually part of myself, and you're kind of worried about where that item is going. And then the other thing, you know, the main thing that we're always worried about is the fact that is your collection overtaking other parts of your house, or is that clutter overtaking other parts of your house, and so, you know, do you have so many things in your home that you are not able to cook anymore because you have your stove top cluttered? Are you starting to store things in your bathtub, and so you're not able to shower anymore? You know, those types of uses of items in your home can be detrimental to one's health, and so, like, you know, are your things getting in the way of your life? Can you no longer invite your family members?  And then, you know, the other thing, are there fall risks and fire hazards? There's a lot of things that we think about when we're thinking about hoarding and the difference between hoarding and collecting, so... Okay, so... Yes, that helps me to understand. So, yeah, I know a lot of people are worried, and a lot of people say, oh, you know, I'm a hoarder, I have a collection of trophies, or I have a collection of, you know, stamps or coins, but it's okay to have collections just as long as they're not taking over other parts of your life, right? And creating safety hazards, like you said. That's the thing we're worried about most, safety, fire, being able to do activities of daily living, which is where those things start to change, I imagine. Yes. It's very interesting. There's another term out there that we didn't talk about just now. So, the difference then between hoarding disorder or hoarding and squalor. Perfect. So, as a case manager from Agewell, as the specialized case managers, we go into homes, maybe it's the first time we've seen a home, and it's tough to differentiate if it's something that's hoarding or squalor. Just real quick, squalor is when there's... Imagine you stop washing your dishes, and kind of you just didn't want to wash them anymore, and what would that look like after a week, two weeks, three weeks a month? And every time you ate, things just kind of fell on the floor and things like that. It looks very messy, but that person doesn't have a real connection with those things. If we wanted to come in and say, hey, let's get this cleaned up, the person will be okay with cleaning that up. Hoarding can look similar sometimes to squalor, sometimes it doesn't, but the emotional connection with those things, whatever it may be, newspapers on the floor, mail on the floor, maybe tissues, something like that, old newspapers, there is an emotional connection. And if I were to come in and say, all right, I'm bringing all these out to the garbage, there could be some kind of break with that person, or lack of trust or something. It could be very catastrophic. So hoarding doesn't always have to be something messy. It can be piles of boxes that are organized, but squalor is always that kind of very dirty, unsafe, unsanitary home. And I imagine with all your experience, you can go into these different settings and figure out pretty quickly which is which. Yeah, it takes a little bit of testing. We're person-centered, and so it's a lot of motivational interviewing and speaking to our clients and understanding what's happening, what's their relationship with their things. So we always want to listen first and then act second. Oh yeah, that's a wonderful approach. Derek, tell us, is hoarding more common among older individuals versus the general population or is it pretty equal across the board? Yeah, it's a tough one to say. I think we tend to see more older Vermonters having issues with hoarding, but I do want to break this idea that people are hoarding because there's this great depression mentality. We're past that already and people are still having issues with hoarding. And I think hoarding can happen to anybody, but what we see with our population, the older Vermonters, I think decluttering is a very difficult process. Boxes are very heavy, and sometimes they're just not the physical ability to lift boxes, take things out of their home. So sometimes they need an extra hand. Another big issue I think we see more with the older population is that it's very challenging, but when a loved one passes away, when their spouse passes away, a lot of times they'll stay, they want to keep those items and it can be really tough to let go of those items because you love that person, they've lived with you your whole life. And when children move out to you, your kids can leave all your items in your home and you want to keep them as well because they might come back at some point or you might be holding on to them, so we tend to see that more with the older population. Right, I tend to have some of that furniture from my children too. One of my rooms downstairs. But those again are just really important differentiations and I think I can relate to the stories you're telling certainly about people who may have been living in their homes for a long period of time and it's just kind of exhausting to think about how you have to declutter and do the job, right? So it is a lot of work, absolutely. Derek, can you talk a bit more? Earlier we were alluding to social isolation as it relates to hoarding disorder but the impact of social isolation on those individuals who are affected by hoarding disorder. What do you see? Yeah, well especially with the pandemic, there was a period of time where we weren't doing home visits and so there was a lot of my clients that we weren't able to see and some of the collections and the clutter built up and they loved their possessions but at the same time there's shame involved in all of that and so the bigger the collections and the clutter built the more they experience isolation and so those weekly visits from their grandkids may not be happening anymore because the house is not safe. They don't want them in there. They don't have places to sit anymore and so there's a terminology we use we call it a cockpit and you imagine like in a jet or a plane where you kind of just create this wall around maybe a recliner or sofa and you put everything kind of there and you kind of build these walls around you and so even in your own home you start to even sink in and isolate yourself within the home so and then it's just a lack of not wanting to go out and then a lot of embarrassment a lot of people like to call you like a pack rat or a slob or something like that and so people are very hesitant to have you come in the blinds are drawn and so and that's exactly the opposite of what I think a lot of people want they just need somebody to come in and not to shame them and not to say oh this place is filthy this place is a dump, you know that's the exact opposite we need when you're working with a family member or a friend that's experiencing hoarding I always say like what I said before first listen and then take action and understand what's happening So this is probably a great segue into my next question because you just alluded to sort of the world shrinking and things becoming more and more isolated and that hoarding behaviors don't just affect the individual but their loved ones too so I can imagine it's very challenging for the loved ones to understand how to help and so for example would it be harmful for that loved one to go in and I think you mentioned this demand that they get rid of their things and dispose of them without their permission just get it done because they care for their loved one Yeah, I know and it can be very frustrating for family members to come in you're worried about that person you don't want them to fall have a fire, there's so many risks or even if you need to call the EMTs to make sure there's enough space for fire and rescue to get in with a stretcher if need be so yes we my recommendation always is to start small when you go in and you want to just deep clean and get rid of everything it can be really overwhelming and traumatic a lot of times when we see these deep cleans people can tend to relapse and apartments or homes can be filled up in a matter of months again it really takes the individual to understand what's happening and for them to start it really takes them to take that small step forward so always small steps always small steps as our key in hoarding intervention hoarding intervention is very slow and it can be very monotonous and it can be a lot of repetition there's a program out there hoarders and people have seen it is TV and there's some action and drama to it all the time and so that process of these giant deep cleans can be very traumatic and so we really want people to take time and patience to work with the individual and have the individual do a lot of work themselves because it's about learning new things about how to manage their space and their life and I imagine it takes a lot of patience oh my goodness so Derek how does age well you've talked a little bit about your role as a specialized case manager but how does age well support families individuals and caregivers to address the needs of someone who is affected by hoarding disorder and clutter any of the spectrum so first we are as case managers we might be the first ones to be there to talk with that individual and we are there to create a relationship of trust and to connect our clients or these individuals with different types of assistance that may be out there so for example making referrals to the hoarding resource and support team of Chittenden County to get different strategies we have an example where women had a lot of items and we couldn't get to the furnace in the house and the furnace had broken and so working with ourselves from age well and CVOEO and other agencies like Champlain Housing Trust or Brilliant Housing Authority we were able to declutter the home get to the furnace have the furnace replaced and worked our goal always is to have seniors age in place and that's what we're there for is to make that bridge and make those connections for people and have some great community partners to work with that's how we glue it all together it sounds very challenging but rewarding at the same time I was going to say real quick there is we also do workshops called Buried in Treasures which is a self-help group it's a great book for people to get over there are issues with their belongings there's homework assignments and a lot of reading and material about it and we will facilitate those at age well from time to time and I've heard that when we have held those at age well it's like a sell out situation and the great thing is after the facilitator from age well is done those groups continue on their own so it's a great peer support oh that's fantastic so as we've talked about what age well can offer the similar resources available throughout Vermont yes we there are triple A's and are great triple A's but also we are trying to start more and more hoarding resource and support teams so there is a task force there are two bugs in hoarding in northeast kingdom and washington county is also starting a hoarding and resource and support team so we are hoping that more and more will pop up across the state so if anybody is looking to start any out there please please do because they really pull in great teams and great community partners together and it sounds like you're a great person for them to reach out to as well that's fantastic last questions for you we always like to think about these interventions and the resources and the supports do you have any success stories you'd like to tell us about right now with the housing crisis and everything I think anytime we can keep a senior in their home that's what I really work for every day and there are many times we have been successful and a lot of the clients I work with have done and started to do the work themselves there is a lot of help and we are there to help to intervene and do interventions and things like that but what really is successful for me is when people understand and they start doing those little things every day and a lot of times with my clients I say if you could do 10 minutes a day and get rid of that just one item that's all we, that's great and it's like running a marathon you can't just go out and run a marathon tomorrow you can't just deep clean your house in one day but if you start little by little it may look small but just removing that one item and then growing and growing and growing that's success for me that's awesome it's about the long haul and taking baby steps exactly baby steps baby steps are the most important Derek I want to thank you for your presentation, your information all the resources that you've offered us have been fantastic and I know that our viewers really appreciate what you do as well so to our viewers if you believe that hoarding has affected your life or someone that is close to you or a loved one please know that there are resources out there available to you community agencies Agewell is here to help as are many other services in Chittenden County and across all of our service areas so again I always like to end with just our helpline number because that is a number you can call if you do need to reach out for assistance and that number is 1-800-642-5119 anyone who needs help can just pick up the phone dial that number and get to our team at Agewell and we're here to help so thank you again for joining us on Aging Matters next time we'll have another really interesting topic to share with you all I look forward to it take care and thank you


What's going on everyone? Sam here with late sports cards doing a two box mixer for Dennis M We got one twenty-two pretty limited football and one twenty-three top Star Wars chrome hobby So start with these Star Wars chrome hobby Good luck here Dennis find my stuff I want to sub. I had like a pile of it that I was just adding to and then when I moved it all got thrown together I've got like I was putting mine in one of those follow cases, but I think I'm gonna take some out Oh Darth Sidious That's not smart Just because I think the other one's itself a speedy one true A bunch of Bowman chrome stuff. I want to get graded Grogu Well time for one more after this green Anakin Skywalker nice 14 of 99 that'll work. That's on that Dennis Silver K2SO 100 or so cards I picked making sure they trade welfare It's half the battle manga madness and Anakin refractor That's literally half the battle for making sure stuff is worth grading. We'll do that tomorrow C3 Pia I just don't know like what I have that will have a good chance of turning that's my issue. That's true Put over like a flashlight over it make sure there's no scratches or anything and then kind of got a eye If you don't have one little tool of things, I don't have one manga madness He's gonna have to make sure that you eyeball the centering how many submissions have you done Fourth sister like through group submitters probably like 10 Yours pretty good. Like early on I was doing really well I was like going like six for six on 10s or five or eight or not me five or six on 10s I Don't know scenario saw my last one was trash, dude But that's the risk yeah, it'll be worth the cost exactly Manga madness C3 Pio and R2 Yeah, very inconsistent.  I think I sent seven cards and I had like Five nines one eight and one ten. I was livid when I got it back. Is there any reason that you could see why? No idea dude, like I generally like picked out cards. I think these will do fairly well This is why I'm scared to save and run Why I'm scared to Throw cards to a submitter. Yeah, true There's Boba, but again, I mean it if he comes back Cad Bane refractive stuff comes back. Well, it's worth it. I mean Sadly really There's general Hux Omega refractor Yeah, no, it looks like an orange auto crosshair Supreme Leader Snoke. Oh, wow 16 of 25 Wow on the orange Dude, that's awesome Andy Circus Hell, yeah Supreme Leader Snoke to 25. That's awesome Very nice the name on the back. Oh, no There's record record in my cards and gets up the grade There's Poe Dameron on the refractor gonna do if you're brave or not That's not gonna do it. It's gonna do for Star Wars. We still have the limited 2022 What's wrong with having the name on the back? I'm confused.  They never had the last name. Yeah, okay. Nice. Aiden Hutchinson 11 of 49 three-colored RPA This guy out of here tired of this guy Sterling Shepard that's gonna be auto federian Mathis 51 of 99 rookie auto for the commanders Why does that exist? She gives them a quanko on the variation rookie juju and little Herbert Playboy and we'll see a one-on-one patch Mac Jones. Oh, that's nasty Derek Henry 38 of 49 three-colored patch nice King Henry Marita 125 for the Cardinals this guy needs to mix in the water I really think he does And base that's gonna do it for your break of their Dennis. Thanks again for your support buddy. We'll get him right out to you man


So the definition of full employment can get a little technical, but the stakes are really high. Basically, every percentage point we managed to push down the overall unemployment rate, we're talking about one and a half million workers who have jobs, and we're talking about tens of millions of workers who can get larger wage increases than they would have otherwise had, or can get full-time work, but they can only get part-time work before, or just get more hours on the job. So this really matters. When economists talk about full employment, they don't mean no unemployment exists at all. They do mean that no unemployment exists simply because there's not enough spending in the economy. There's lots of reasons why unemployment can happen. You could even have the case where there's enough jobs to soak up all available workers, but some friction is getting in the way between the jobs and the workers. Maybe the workers live in the center of the city, the jobs are in the suburbs, and transportation is lousy.  That kind of unemployment needs to be attacked with one set of tools. Full employment means, though, making sure no unemployment exists simply because there's not enough spending going on in the economy. That kind of unemployment is really damaging, but it's also really easy to solve. Part of the problem with defining full employment, because it's not 0% unemployment, I don't think that can ever be reached, is we don't know what it is before we actually reach it. The signal that you see in the data that says you're at full employment is that you start to see across the board wage growth. Basically, until you have enough spending in the economy to soak up idled workers, people who've been thrown off the job during a recession or during a downturn, workers just have no leverage to get wage increases out of employers. Basically, wage increases happen when workers are scarce relative to the jobs out there. Until you solve the problem of unemployment that exists because spending is too low, you're not going to create scarcity in the labor market. That's why wages can't grow, so when people say, when have we reached full employment? I can't tell you the exact number beforehand. I can only tell you we're at full employment when wages actually start to rise. Full employment really matters for most of the workforce. Really, I'd say the bottom 80% of the workforce needs to get to genuine full employment before it sees decent wage growth. But it does have particular importance and provides particular benefits to both low wage workers and workers of color. And this is because low wage workers and workers of color, they traditionally have very few other sources of leverage in the labor market besides those short periods of time when unemployment is really, really low. I mean, if you think about the institutions that we've actually created to give workers some bargaining power, unions, they've been under attack for decades. We have the federal minimum wage to protect low wage workers. Its purchasing power has just been battered for decades. Really, you look at this group of workers and they only have the prospect of really tight labor markets in order to give them economic leverage against employers. And you see it clear as day in the data. When you look at whose wages respond most robustly to declines in the unemployment rate, it's low wage workers and it's workers of color. Full employment can also help reduce labor market discrimination. And I think the dynamic is pretty easy to identify. Say you're an employer and say you have a job opening and you have 100 applicants for it. And say you're an employer who would prefer to discriminate.  That's pretty inexpensive to do when you've got 100 applicants to choose from. Instead, if you only have two applicants or even one applicant for every job opening, applicants who are qualified, you have to take those applicants who are qualified and it becomes much more expensive to engage in discriminatory hiring practices. And so full employment is essentially a way to make sure that employers are forced into hiring the best person available rather than the best person available who happens to look like them. And that can go a long way in reducing labor market discrimination. Today the economy is pretty much headed to full employment on its own momentum. And so the real pressing policy prescription is just don't stop that. If you think about the institution that could stop it, it's the Federal Reserve. And the Fed essentially balances two things. On the one hand, it wants to keep unemployment low so people have a chance of getting a job. On the other hand, it wants to keep inflation low and keep that from getting out of control. They think if spending starts rising too fast, that'll translate into excess inflation. And so the tool they use to restrain that is interest rate increases. When they raise interest rates, the cost of borrowing money to buy a home or buy a car or a washing machine increases, people do less spending. And so that's what the Fed is really trying to do, balance the benefits of low unemployment versus the benefits of keeping inflation firmly in check. For most of the past couple of decades though, they have radically overestimated the benefits of keeping inflation very low and really underestimated the benefits of keeping unemployment very low. And so they've been too cautious in terms of how low they're willing to tolerate unemployment getting. And that excess unemployment that we've had as a result has been a prime reason why wage growth for most workers has been so hard to get. You'd think everybody would be in favor of getting unemployment as low as possible, but that's not quite right. So the optimal rate of unemployment is actually a little different for workers versus employers. If you think about an employer, they don't want unemployment really high. They don't want to live in a recession. They want customers coming in the door. They want enough people with spending power to buy their goods. So they want unemployment low, but they don't want it too low because when unemployment gets too low, workers start to get a lot of leverage and they use that leverage to get wage increases and that can eat into profit margins. And so the optimal rate of unemployment for workers is really low to give them leverage against their employers and get them some wage increases. The optimal rate for employers is a little higher. So low enough to make sure customers keep coming in the door, but not so low that their workers are empowered to get really big wage increases out of them. So you've got that sort of conflict of interest between employers and workers. And then you've got the other angle that the financial sector really hates unexpected inflation. And it hates unexpected inflation mostly because unexpected inflation degrades the value of the assets that the financial sector holds. Given that finance is a very influential voice in the workings of the Federal Reserve, that means you've got this powerful voice that hates inflation making decisions all the time. The evidence is clear. We are not at full employment yet. And we know that because we have not seen the kind of healthy across-the-board wage growth that is supposed to be the clear data signal that we've actually gotten there. When we get this healthy across-the-board wage growth, then we can declare that mission is accomplished in achieving full employment, but not before.