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INSIDE MAN

The United State of Trash

Aired February 26, 2015 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MORGAN SPURLOCK, MORGAN SPURLOCK INSIDE MAN HOST: Lunch time. How are those chips tasty, right? Have you ever think about what they come in? No. It's called a bag. You're going to throw that right away, right? Have you ever think about where it goes? Me neither.

It's estimated that every American throws out about seven pounds of garbage a day and an average of 102 tons over the course of the lifetime and not that's just us. So where did it go? When we throw something away, where is away? This week I'm going to find out.

These are great, I just don't wear them that much, so things are going to go. Bye, bye.

Junky, do olives go bad? Spring cleaning. Time to clean the apartment and get rid of the stuff that I don't need, don't want or can't it.

Strawberries were just like starting to get really moldy.

Although most of us had some idea where our stuff comes from, we have no real idea where it goes once we decide to part with it. In order to find out, I'm going to follow three types of waste in my life. My household garbage, my recycling and my old electronics, all the way to their final resting place, wherever that maybe.

This is usually the last time I think about my trash. You know, once I put it on the curb. But tomorrow, I'm going to follow the trail and I'm starting off at the New York City Department of Sanitation where I, I'm going to become your garbage collector.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lux (ph).

LUX (PH): Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tim (ph).

TIM (PH): Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nelson.

NELSON (PH): Here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ordero (ph).

SPURLOCK: It's 6 a.m. and I'm at Brooklyn VI with the sanitation crew that picks up the garbage in my neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Adriano (ph).

SPURLOCK: Good morning fellas. How are you? Good morning. I'm Morgan.

JUNO(PH): Juno (ph).

SPURLOCK: Juno, nice to meet you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning Mr. Spurlock.

SPURLOCK: How are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome to Brooklyn VI.

SPURLOCK: Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here is you vest, your hat. Just be careful of the truck out there.

SPURLOCK: OK. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. It is traffic the biggest hazard you guys face?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, one of them.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then you got the toxic fumes, you know, needles in garbage bags, you even lift them so you have to get your partner to help you pick up whatever you got to pick up.

SPURLOCK: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Tom (ph).

SPURLOCK: Is that partner.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

SPURLOCK: Nice meet you Tom. Nice to meet you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You too. Are you ready?

SPURLOCK: I'm ready.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to be.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (inaudible), Spurlock.

SPURLOCK: It's time for report for duty and start my shift.

Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're welcome.

SPURLOCK: I got my timecard, my route, and my partners, Juno (ph) and Tommy (ph) and we are ready to roll.

First thing is first, Tommy (ph) runs me through the rules of trash gang.

TOMMY (PH): If this thing is moving...

SPURLOCK: Yes.

TOMMY (PH): ... stay away from it.

SPURLOCK: OK.

TOMMY (PH): It's going to (inaudible) to you, all right?

SPURLOCK: OK.

TOMMY (PH): Stop, down. So look, you can stop them at anytime if they hit them both (inaudible) position. Down, flip this side up, the N01, you know what I'm saying? Here you touch them, this is a neutral.

SPURLOCK: OK.

TOMMY (PH): Push them up. So the water is (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

TOMMY (PH): Rule number one, keep your mouth closed.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

TOMMY (PH): We don't want that going in you.

SPURLOCK: Good.

It looks like it's time to get down and dirty.

With a wrapping 8.4 million residents, New York is by far the largest city in the country and that means one thing, a lot of garbage.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you smell that?

SPURLOCK: It stinks. This one smells so bad. It just smells like somebody just like took and dumped in a bag for like a week straight and put it outside. Think about that next time you throw out your trash.

All stinking is aside, a few houses in and I'm amazed of what people throw out.

Here's a barbecue. How often do you get that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot. SPURLOCK: Now, this is one block coming out the street. Look at how much trash we picked up and this is one side of one city block. We didn't take that side, just this side.

It's a look of work. I can see why these guys are so well compensated. A senior sand man can make upwards of 90 grand a year. Not bad.

Finally, after hours of collection and tons literally of trash, we've arrived at my block.

Here's my bag of garbage that I put in yellow bags, so we would be able to track it, chase it and see where it goes. And there she goes.

What a day? I worked an entire shift, clear the garbage from my neighborhood and it's only lunch time.

Home again. Home again.

But for my garbage that was just the beginning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Spurlock?

SPURLOCK: How did I do?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Excellent.

SPURLOCK: Yeah, so now I would pick up all the trash, where is it going from here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For me it's actually going to be transported through transfer station.

SPURLOCK: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From the transfer station, it will be exported out of state.

SPURLOCK: So that's where I'm heading next is to the transfer station.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They go for you (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: I'll come back and do it again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No problem. Any time.

SPURLOCK: Thank you guys. Thank you, thank you guys. God bless you. Have a great day.

I can honestly say I'll never take those guys for granted again. For me and my garbage there is one last stop in Brooklyn before heading to the landfill, the transfer station. So we've just hold on to a scale and we're about to tip this truck at the transfer station. This is where the garbage that was collected during the day is dumped. What happens now is the Department of Sanitation kind of hands over the responsibility of the garbage to a private company. And this one is actually owned by one of the biggest companies in the waste management business, Waste Management.

All told the city pays an average of $95 of ton to get rid of our trash and multiple that by the 11,000 tons we New Yorkers generate a day and that's a lot of cash. Who knew our garbage was such a gold mine.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull this up, push this one down.

SPURLOCK: Now, it's time to dump my garbage from the truck onto the tipping floor.

Let's see what we can find that people have thrown away. There's a lots of stuff that could been recycled, bags of clothes, right here at the start the smell are really special. This is like special time over here. It's like a pottery. It looks like a giant bag of vomit. Just to give you a sense of the scale, here I am standing and, oh yeah, this is just another morning in Brooklyn.

Next stop, moving all these trash on to a truck to trailer.

There's my bag right there.

So it can head to the landfill in Pennsylvania where I will be waiting breath (ph).

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: This week. I'm following my garbage, recycling an old electronics to find out where they end up when I toss them out. Right now I'm heading to Bucks County Pennsylvania to help bury my household trash to the landfill.

Ever since New York closed their local landfill trash scales about 10 years ago, they have exported their garbage out of state to places like Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and in this case Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the largest importer of garbage in United States and this facility that I'm headed to which is owned by Waste Management is the largest in Pennsylvania.

But you had never known it by driving through this (inaudible) town, that's because the garbage here is hiding in plain site buried inside these rolling green hills.

Morgan Spurlock.

BOB BALLUCHI (PH): Bob Balluchi (ph). Nice to meet you.

SPURLOCK: Nice to meet you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Berry (ph) (inaudible). SPURLOCK: Hey, how are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome.

SPURLOCK: So I'm in a home stretch of chasing my garbage right here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are. I understand the truck is here. It has arrived.

SPURLOCK: Fantastic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to be heading out to the landfill and we'll be able to tip the truck that you've been following your waste then.

SPURLOCK: Great, thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fantastic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just turned off the (inaudible), we're now driving on compacted finished wastes.

SPURLOCK: That's crazy. There's a lot of trash. How do you guys control the smell?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well as you can see along here, this is part of our odor control program. These are all (inaudible) that actually knock the odor out of the air.

SPURLOCK: Like a giant for breeze?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is where we're going to be operating today.

SPURLOCK: Right.

Man, we throw away a lot of stuff. It's massive. It's mind blowing how big it is. You don't think of anything of the scope and scale.

So I'm standing on about 55 feet of trash. And just to give you a sense of how height it's going to go. It's going to go up about another 190 feet. It will match the ridge that goes all the way around me.

And although it looks like just a pile of trash, if left unchecked old garbage can (inaudible) on the environment. Decomposing wastes and its methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas, meanwhile something called leachate, a toxic stew of liquid wastes can pollute surrounding ground water.

To prevent this from happening, modern landfills are engineering with the complex layering system. They all start with the thick plastic liner, pilled on top of that are many alternating layers of filters, soil and our compacted waste sandwich in between and leachate and methane collecting pipes are buried along the way.

Once the landfill reaching capacity it is kept with another layer plastic lining and ready for a layer of grass and vegetation and like magic we have a rolling hill or a park, or a neighborhood. And from old school landfill we've got an airports, ballparks, and lower Manhattan.

So this is my truck. It's backing in. We saw the bag get loaded in Brooklyn at the transfer station and so I'm going to tip it into the landfill. You know to kind of see from beginning in Brooklyn to kind of here where your trash ends up, it does make you think about whether you choose to recycle and they forces you, I think to look at the choices you make.

To feel that I'm going to be that guy that says to you then you throw that (inaudible) of garbage like, "And why? Can't you put it in you recycling bin? What's wrong with you?" So get ready. I'm going to be watching.

And there it is. All the way from Brooklyn to this town. And this will be its final resting place. When you said I'm going to throw something away, this is what away looks like. This is where the majority of trash in America is going to end up. Bye yellow bag. See when I see you.

There is something very sad about the landfill. Seeing how the stuff that fills our lives one day simply discarded and forgotten about the next. Buried inside the earth, perhaps never to fully decomposed. And just imagine, this process is happens all day, everyday at the nearly 2,000 landfills we have across the United States. I can't help but think this is just a band aid on a greater problem. We're just creating too much garbage and there is no place for it to go. Is out of sight, out of mind, really the best we can do?

So now I have a pretty good idea where my trash is buried but now the big question is what happens to my e-waste, all my electronics. In the United States, this is the largest growing piece of the waste stream that we have. We generate more than three million tons of e- waste every single year. What happens to all the old devices when you're done with them? You know there is drop off centers, there is collection sites but where are do those pieces actually go?

To find out, I'm donating my old electronic to science. I'm headed to MIT to participate in the Trash Track Program, a project that combines what MIT does best, technology with our wasteful habits. Their goal, to make the typically and visible path of our garbage visible.

In their pilot study, 3,000 pieces of trash were tagged with GPS trackers and trace to their final destinations. Their initial findings have been eye opening, revealing a complex waste trajectory expanding thousands of miles. The Trash Track team believes that raising awareness about our waste will help encourage more sustainable practices.

DAVID LEE: We're going to head into the workshop here.

SPURLOCK: OK.

Team David is going to help me stock my e-waste. So with the big monitor?

LEE: Yeah. Let's just start that up on the table here.

SPURLOCK: OK.

LEE: And we'll start operating. And there you go. This is the dangerous part, it's the glass and inside it's coated with lead.

SPURLOCK: So right on the backside, this is lead.

LEE: Yeah.

SPURLOCK: OK.

LEE: Yeah. And it's backing (ph) so you also don't want to crack it, because then everything just kind to flashes out and you got cloud of toxic dust.

See how the size fits there.

SPURLOCK: And that's one of the ties?

LEE: Yes.

SPURLOCK: What is this made out of?

LEE: So it's a circuit board. It's got battery, an antenna kind of written into the board itself...

SPURLOCK: OK.

LEE: ... and microcontroller and a cellphone modem.

SPURLOCK: Smarter.

We have to attach the tag securely and stealthily, so that I can stow away secretly with my waste and start tracking into journey for us.

It's like we're on a spy lab.

LEE: The checker is on and once we drop it off we should be able to see it as it moves around the country.

SPURLOCK: We'll be on. Bunch of the e-waste that is collected for recycling is believed to make the long journey overseas, shipped to places like China, Africa, and Vietnam, sometimes illegally. And it's not just America exporting their e-wastes.

In 2013, Interpol reported that one in three shipping containers leaving the E.U. contained illegal e-wastes. To manufacturers, the metal is extracted from old electronics are valuable commodities but there are toxic byproducts as well.

With little oversight and published workers abroad and their surrounding environment are being exposed to hazardous toxics. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you?

SPURLOCK: Morgan. How are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning.

SPURLOCK: Good to see you.

It's an issue that the Trash Track team is trying to shed light on.

And what is the reason is to why it sent to foreign countries?

LEE: It's largely economic and in some cases these things can actually be repurposed, recycled. It can be cheaper to do it outside of the U.S. because here we had some strict controls on the process of doing that.

SPURLOCK: So there's less regulation.

LEE: Exactly. The regulation is meant to protect both communities and the people working with the waste.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But let me say, you know, and also, you know, what do we here, we're not really expert in waste or in e-waste, but what we are doing here, we're trying to see how technology itself...

SPURLOCK: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... can help us reveal some of these problems and improve the system.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

Mission accomplished. I have dropped off my e-waste, now we have to see where it goes.

The Trash Track team will monitor the movements of my e-waste in the weeks to come.

Now, only time will tell how far and how quickly it will travel. As for me I'm headed back to Brooklyn to catch up with the final part of my household trash, my recycling.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: So I'm back in Brooklyn to catch up with another part of my wastes, my recycling. Now, this is the one thing that I actually think I do well. I separate my metal, my glass, my plastics and I hope it's being recycled but I have no idea because once I put it on the curb, I don't know what happens to it. But today, I'm going to find out.

My recyclables have made their way to the Sims Municipal Recycling Facility here in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Hey, Tom. THOMAS OUTERBRIDGE, GENERAL MANAGER OF SIMS MUNICIPAL RECYCLING FACILITY: Hello. How are you?

SPURLOCK: Tom Outerbridge is the general manager here. And he is going to give me a tour of the state of the art Material Recovery Facility also known as the MRF. He is also going to put me to work sorting some of the recyclables.

How many days worth of recycling is this?

OUTBRIDGE: This is maybe like a days of delivering from Brooklyn, but not all of Brooklyn.

SPURLOCK: Look how much we're throwing in New York.

Once there are 500 plus tons of daily recycling gets to the facility it's removed from the plastic bags.

That's a lot of plastic bag right there.

OUTBRIDGE: Lots of plastic bag.

SPURLOCK: And then it's ready to enter the sorting system. Most of the sorting is done by machine but after the initial sort a recyclables go through the manual quality control. And that's where I come in.

I look very safe now. I kind of feel more like a construction worker and a village people.

My job is to pull out anything that's not plastic and/or bigger than 12 inches. Easy enough, right?

Something is smelly. (inaudible), oh my god. See how big giant chunk of metal that make through (inaudible) This is the most (inaudible) I ever have to be on the job in my life. They got stereo, look at that.

After the men and women much more coordinated than me finished with the sorting process, the separate materials are compacted and prepared for shipment to the market. Then they are reprocessed into a new product, but not all materials can be recycled equally.

Glass will go on to make many things as its 100 percent recyclable. It can be reprocessed forever. Your humble soda can may live on some surprising places or even just as other can, in which case it could be back on the store shelves in 60 days ready for a lifetime recycling.

Paper only has an average of five to seven lives. But while its alive, man is it personal. And then there is plastic. If it's recyclable at all, it really only has one other useful life and then more often they're not it gets down recycled to another plastic product that will ultimately end up in the landfill.

So what's left here?

OUTBRIDGE: So this is mostly plastic bags.

SPURLOCK: Can any of this being recycled?

OUTBRIDGE: This is not currently recycled.

SPURLOCK: That's because it's exceedingly difficult to recycle plastic bags because there are very few facilities in the United States that have a capability to recycle them or even get them clean enough for reprocessing and those that do make the cut tend to clog recycling machinery with their filmy residue.

What they have here at Sims is an impressive operation. I have to say though, seeing all that plastics that can't be recycled is very disturbing. Where does it go? Where can it go?

After hunting down all the garbage I could use some rest and relaxation, so I've come to Bermuda.

Bermuda is awesome.

A beautiful get away for you, and me, and our plastic. Yes, it's another waste stream that contributes the contamination of the oceans. It's estimated that seven percent of plastics entering the municipal waste stream is recycled and another 80 percent is landfill. But that's just what's collected. The larger amount disappears into the environment and sooner or later washes out into the oceans. There, it could stock in a gyre which is a large system of rotating currents.

There are five big gyres around the world. Today, I'm here in Bermuda to see one of them, the North Atlantic gyre.

Morgan.

J.P. SKINNER, EDUCATION OFFICER AT BERMUDA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE: J.P., nice to meet you.

SPURLOCK: Hi, good to see you.

(Crosstalk)

SPURLOCK: Nice to meet you. How you're doing?

Dr. Marcus Eriksen is the executive director and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute and he, along with marine ecologist J.P. Skinner have spent their careers studying the ecological effects of plastic marine pollution.

So what are we going to be doing today?

MARCUS ERIKSEN, CO-FOUNDER OF THE 5 GYRES: We're going to go and look for a plastic in the middle of the Sargasso Sea.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

ERIKSEN: We got the boats ready and ready to ship out.

SPURLOCK: Let's get to work.

ERIKSEN: OK.

SPURLOCK: All right.

ERIKSEN: Let's go.

SPURLOCK: The 5 Gyres Institute is trying to create a comprehensive global estimate of plastic in our waters and the only way to do that is to sail through them.

As we made our way to the gyre I noticed the sea was deceptively clean and clear.

If you hear about plastic in the ocean you imagine they're like giant patch of just garbage.

ERIKSEN: That's the big myth, it's a (inaudible), you know, this islands of trash that will dock your boat and (inaudible) on them.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

ERIKSEN: It's not at all. It's more like a very thin, thin suit of microplastic confetti. So one plastic bag might become like 5,000 little flex (ph), like fish (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: So what are we going to be dropping in?

ERIKSEN: This is the mega (inaudible). It's like (inaudible) basically.

SPURLOCK: OK.

ERIKSEN: The skin (inaudible) surface. It's kind of hard to spot microplastics but the idea is to drag this behind the boat for a little while, about an hour and this is (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: What is the majority of the stuff that we're finding?

ERIKSEN: These are just previous trolls (ph) from the kind of confetti you get, you know.

SKINNER: Inside of here, you will sometimes find little triangulate pieces that match the bite marks of some of plastic bottles that you'll find in the beaches, you know, out in the sea.

SPURLOCK: Almost like this a little bit.

SKINNER: Yes.

ERIKSEN: So like we'll break it down. We have a wave mechanics that will crash them and (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: Reducing, you know, big bottles to smaller pieces. What is the reason that they are chewing on it?

ERIKSEN: I think the plastic -- it looks like they are food source. One is a biofilm on it.

SPURLOCK: And once something hits the ocean, how far can it go?

ERIKSEN: I think almost anywhere. The plastic doesn't always cross the equator. There are few points where the currents are going to go North or South. (Inaudible) see it seems on hemisphere.

SPURLOCK: OK.

SKINNER: It's never going to go away so it could just keep going here the next thousand years.

SPURLOCK: Yeah. So this could be from New York City?

ERIKSEN: Usually.

SPURLOCK: I didn't know that. I didn't put that on the water. I was reminding the landfill like the rest of us.

After a half hour at sea, we take up our troll to see if we caught anything.

Is that plastic are there?

ERIKSEN: With fist bites.

SPURLOCK: Sure enough, we did.

You can see all the little bites. (inaudible) where there's little triangular bite, it's a fish bite.

And this tiny piece of plastic could have lasting effects. That's because during its long journey from land to gyre, chances are it will float to some very polluted waters encountering toxins like (inaudible), pesticides or sewage. And like a sponge, plastic will soak up those chemicals.

A long comes in an assuming fish and mistaking that plastic for its food, it will chomp on the floating waste. But what is that mean for us?

According to a statement from the International Coalition of Fisheries Associations or ICFA, there's no widespread public health concern associated with hazard garbage and seafood consumption. But Marcus isn't so sure.

What are the long-term effects of this continuous use of plastic that continuing get put in the ocean?

ERIKSEN: We're going to fill the seas full of plastic. I mean we are making more than a quarter billion tons of plastic trash annually. And the planet just can't absorb that.

SPURLOCK: Yes.

ERIKSEN: So something has to give. If we do not get a hold of this now, we are really going to destroy our ecosystem.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

ERIKSEN: And we're affecting ourselves. It's coming back to hunt us. It's own out dinner plate, all this junk. We're eating our own trash.

SPURLOCK: So do you still fish?

ERIKSEN: I don't.

SPURLOCK: No?

ERIKSEN: I don't.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: After being in Bermuda just seeing all of this garbage that's washing up on the beach, so much plastic. And most of it is just one-time used plastic.

How these start to change that paradigms where you start get people to say, you know, what? We can't just keep creating more of these stuff just to throw out into the trash, or into a landfill or into the ocean.

It turns out there's an effort underway here in California to do just that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Time maybe running out for plastic bags in California. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would make them illegal here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: SB-270 would require everyone to bring your own bag.

SPURLOCK: Nearly 200 communities in the U.S. have regulated the use of single-use plastic bags. The thin plastic bags you get at the supermarket or grocery store. But this would be the first ban on the state level.

A heat debate is brewing and supporters of the ban are in Sacramento today to make their voices heard. And the man leading the charge is Andy Keller also known as the Bag Monster.

ANDY KELLER, THE BAG MONSTER: How does it look?

SPURLOCK: That's good.

KELLER: What I'm wearing is a bag monster costume. This represents what the average American uses in one year, in single-use bags.

SPURLOCK: Andy is a socially-conscious entrepreneur who created a line of reusable shopping bags called ChicoBag.

KELLER: And it's a reusable bag that fits in your pocket at purse. SPURLOCK: He soon turned activist when his modest company was sued by three of the biggest plastic producers in environment country. He sealed the suit but wasn't silenced.

Like a Modern Day David, he continue to campaign and fights against the Goliath big plastic across the nation to this day.

KELLER: Bag monster, 97. I used to be a bag monster but now this is a size of our bag monster.

SPURLOCK: Andy and his bag monsters are rallying in favor of proposed bill SB-270 which would eliminate all single use plastic bags across the state of California.

KELLER: It's a law design to change the question at the registrar from paper or plastic to "do you need a bag" and that's a powerful question. Because 50 percent of the time, the answer is no, I don't need a bag so it's changing the culture. Well how about we go march this capitol and ask people to call their elected official and tell them to vote yes on SB-270. How is that sound?

SPURLOCK: Just in our short time rally and I feel real change is possible. California seems ready. So I have to wonder who is opposed to the bill.

Meet Paul Bauer, a lobbyist for the multibillion dollar plastic bag industry. His issue with the bill is that while it proposes to eliminate single-use bags, it would require certain stores to led (inaudible) on sticker multi-use bags.

PAUL BAUER: The bill authorizes that use of this sticker plastic bag.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

BAUER: Only in America would it say "Support the plastic bag ban" on a plastic bag which is like five times the size of the current plastic bag, OK?

SPURLOCK: But it wouldn't the idea be shifting public action, like you want people to say, you know, we're going to start getting real reusable bags.

BAUER: I argue that. If the plastic bag did not exist, we had hoped someone would invent it.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

BAUER: OK. So I think we need to be changing the conversation from eliminating this product...

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

BAUER: ... to how can we capture more of these bags in the recycling stream.

SPURLOCK: What percentage of the single-use plastic bags are actually recycled? It's less than 10 percent. They're gaining simple (inaudible) because the recyclers can't them and won't take them.

There's a percentage of waste that won't break down for centuries while percentage are (inaudible).

BAUER: Well landfills are kept.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

BAUER: And so nothing in a landfill is biodegrading.

SPURLOCK: So this stuff breaks down, are we just leaving behind...

BAUER: They do break down.

SPURLOCK: But you just told me things in a landfill will never break down because they're kept.

BAUER: Right. So they break down -- they break down just as mush as anything else in the landfill

SPURLOCK: Which means they don't break down at all?

BAUER: Because they're in the landfill but not because of plastic bag. If I just set a plastic bag in my backyard...

SPURLOCK: But that's been a bio...

BAUER: It's going to degrade overtime.

SPURLOCK: But this is my question, should we live in world where the legacy we're leading behind is -- well, everything else doesn't breakdown, so who cares. Shouldn't we be trying to do better? That's my point.

BAUER: Yeah. I don't disagree that we can do better.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

BAUER: I just disagree with the premise that banning plastic bags gets us where you are talking about.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

I may not have been able to convince the plastic bag lobbyist but I am more convinced that ever and ready to take some real action to sway the bill.

Bag monster. Yeah. You look like very smart, powerful, influential people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

SPURLOCK: No, not at all. How about this guy, you can't get around me sir, how are you?

Hey, where you are headed. Are you heading to the Capitol? Yeah me too, look at me I'm just littering the environment, just destroying the earth, right behind you.

These are multi-use bags. Would you like one? See, I couldn't even bribe him.

KELLER: Plastic bag lobbyist.

SPURLOCK: Plastic bag lobbyist.

KELLER: She's kind of plastic bag.

SPURLOCK: Plastic bag.

KELLER: We hate the environment. We hate the environment. We hate the, we hate the, we hate the environment.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, you guys. I'm not a bad guy, I'm not a bad guy.

SPURLOCK: Well that was a pretty fantastic day. You know, to go around and kind of show people how many plastic bags they use in a year, and meeting some of the people behind the bill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we can engage with the industry and really reduced the amount of plastic pollution that's in our environment, that's the win.

SENATOR KEVIN DE LEON: It's quite simple. And I think we can actually secure a victor.

SPURLOCK: Even if the ban doesn't go through the worst key scenario is at least, this is getting people thinking about choices they make.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are kind of live for millions of year without single-use plastic bags. I think we'll be just all right, you know, without them going forward.

SPURLOCK: It's already getting me thinking, what can I do to make a greater impact?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: We can try to recycle more useless plastics, to be more mindful of our electronics. But let's face it, there are still going to straight up garbage. But the question is, can we do something with it other than bury it in the ground? It turns out there are companies developing more sustainable solutions for our trash.

And experimental new method called plasma gasification can vaporize garbage with arcs of electricity.

Waste management, those guys that bury my garbage in Pennsylvania had figured out a way to turn the garbage into pellets that can be use for fuel and (inaudible) coal. They are also using methane gas from landfills to fuel their garbage trucks in a closed-loop system. And finally, there's the wheel wheelabrator, an innovative technology that turns our waste into renewable electric energy to extremely high heat incineration and collection.

These facility burns 1,500 tons of trash a day, creating enough energy to power 60,000 local homes. It sounds great, right?

The fact to the matter is about 69 percent of our waste just being landfill. And this little was 7 percent is being converted into renewable energy. So why don't we do more sustainable things with our garbage overall?

To find out, I'm talking to Waste Management CEO, David Steiner.

It was between the incinerator garbage and the landfill garbage.

DAVID STEINER, WASTE MANAGEMENT CEO: Not a thing.

SPURLOCK: So then why doesn't all of it just in there to burn to make...

STEINER: Well so here is the deal. That plan to build today would probably cost you about $45,500 million.

SPURLOCK: OK.

STEINER: So, in order to get a return on that that's acceptable, you need to charge people about $120 a ton to bring their waste in here.

SPURLOCK: OK.

STEINER: A landfill will charge probably about $50 a ton. And so, the economic of those plans don't work unless they are subsidized.

SPURLOCK: So ultimately until we start subsidizing things like that, we're just going to keep putting garbage in around?

STEINER: Yeah. The technology to take your waste and to turn into something different is out there. The problem is it's not out there on scale and it's not out there where it's economically viable, right?

So it will happen overtime. The question is, do we want it to happen faster? And if so, who's going to pay for it, right? I mean, it's going to be me? It's going to be the consumers? It's going to be the government?

SPURLOCK: Until sustainability becomes the rule and not the exception, I still feel there is more I can do stop this cycle of waste. And the answer might just be in my own home.

You know, after witnessing first hand how much waste do we create as a society, how much we throw away on a daily basis, it makes you start to realize that something has to change.

You know, I thought I was doing a pretty good job. You know, I'm recycling, you know, I'm throwing away my plastics, separating my glass, my paper. But you start to see that even things like that isn't enough. And even if you start to try to limit your waste but there's still a vast amount is being created. And I don't know what it's going to take the change that with someone like myself. But there is someone who's coming over here right now and is convinced that there is hope for me again.

Hey, how are you? I'm Morgan.

BEA JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF ZERO WASTE LIFESTYLE: Nice to meet you.

SPURLOCK: Nice to meet you. Come on in.

I'm meeting with Bea Johnson, an author and proponent of something known as the Zero Waste Lifestyle. The aim of the zero waste lifestyle was to reduce as much solid waste as possible and send little to no trash at the end of the day to landfill or incinerators.

Since 2008, Bea and her family have been living the philosophy by sticking to the five Rs. Refused, that's anything that they don't need. Reduced, the amount things they actually need. Reuse everything, that means zero disposable items. Recycle and finally, to root, as in composed.

Since adopting the five Rs, this is the amount of waste her family of four sends to a landfill in an entire year.

Bea and I are heading to my local grocery store in Brooklyn so that she can teach me to how shop for our lunch in the zero waste way. I'm a bit skeptical but I'll give it a try.

BEA JOHNSON: With your selected vision, you only see what's in package.

SPURLOCK: Rule number one, I can only buy things that don't any packaging.

When you walk through here, this is invisible to you.

JOHNSON: Exactly.

SPURLOCK: Anything in packaging?

JOHNSON: I just don't see it. Just put on the zero waste blinders.

SPURLOCK: I just put on my blinders, my zero waster blinders. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here. Nothing over here.

A little bit of this?

JOHNSON: Yeah.

SPURLOCK: And if you are buying package-less food, don't forget your handy dandy reusable bags.

Our one meat with no sticker. When you finally take a minute to look around, you too start to realize how everything is wrapped in something. Everything is package in something. The things like this are so few and far between where you can actually kind of self-serve and put in your own packaging. It makes a big difference. Yeah, what should we get?

OK. So now things are getting tricky. Time to buy some raw meat, the zero waste way.

JOHNSON: If they've never done this before, they are going to look at you as if you're crazy. So what you will do, don't look at them in the eyes.

SPURLOCK: What do you if you live in Middle America where you don't have a butcher? You had to buy it like that.

JOHNSON: You can go to a farm and get your own stuff. There is lot of different ways.

(Off-Mike)

SPURLOCK: Good. Can we get two of the bourbon chicken?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bourbon chicken?

SPURLOCK: Yeah, and (inaudible), please?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. But it's going to weigh too much.

JOHNSON: I know but you can tear it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know how to do that.

SPURLOCK: Does your manager know how to do it?

JOHNSON: I am willing to wait for your manager.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

SPURLOCK: Things were wrapped like this for convenience. So you can go through and be like, I want this big bloody meat thing. I want this jar of stuff and you throw in your baggie and you chop and you get out.

What starts to happen is everything slows down when you're, you know, doing this. You just have to prepare for that, just being kind of ready for this way of shopping and buying things. But we're getting there.

Have you ever had anybody come and want to buy meat in a jar?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I bet you're the first one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. It's good for the environment, we should be doing that.

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, maybe in the future.

SPURLOCK: This is the future, happening right here.

It's a little more work for the butcher. Looks like science experiment. But he is remarkably receipted for my request for a mason jar meat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. You guys all set.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

SPURLOCK: Thank you very much. Look at that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

SPURLOCK: I really feel like I'm getting the hang of this and Bea is showing me that a zero waste life is possible. Look at that boom.

Bea, how did we do?

JOHNSON: Pretty good.

SPURLOCK: Pretty good?

JOHNSON: And, you know, I'm really happy about this, because I feels that you've actually train them. So next time you come, they'll know what to do with you and you'll know what to do.

Now, interestingly enough that when you buy a package product...

SPURLOCK: Yeah.

JOHNSON: ... 15 percent of the price covers the cost of the packaging. So when you're buying box, you make an automatic 15 percent discount.

SPURLOCK: How much less money do you spend now than when you spend back then?

JOHNSON: Back in 2010, we found out we were making a 40 percent saving on an overall spending.

SPURLOCK: 40 percent.

JOHNSON: 40, Yeah.

SPURLOCK: That's almost half.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So your total is 60.49.

SPURLOCK: I have to say, in just a few hours with Bea, I feel a shift within me.

Bye-bye. Thanks a lot.

Even though I thought I was fairly responsible with my waste, I now see there's just so much more to do and so much less to consume.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SPURLOCK: Walking in Bea Johnson's zero waste shoes has been inspiring and humbling because man I have long way to go.

After spending a day with you and seeing how I am screwing everything up.

JOHNSON: I didn't come here to show you what you're doing wrong. I came here to show you what you can do right.

SPURLOCK: And what I could better.

JOHNSON: Exactly. It's a totally different way of thinking.

SPURLOCK: Is zero waste keeping possible in the world today?

JOHNSON: Right now, because of the manufacturing practices increase, it's not completely doable. People also used to buying so many things and so much packaging. They were afraid of basically changing their life, but you shouldn't be afraid of it. You don't have to do it all at once. You can just do a few things here and there, where it's all about consuming less, living simply, is that simple. That's where it stop.

SPURLOCK: Well cheers.

JOHNSON: (inaudible).

SPURLOCK: Great to see you. (inaudible). Thank you.

JOHNSON: It's too bad it's not (inaudible). I haven't found that yet.

It's been pretty enlightening to see where all of my garbage actually ends up. And what you start to see is -- and understand is that there is no away. Away is a landfill of Pennsylvania. It's recycling center all across the country. It's the ocean. It's our bodies.

My e-waste has gone, you know, 350 miles and it's still going.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You guys are all set.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

SPURLOCK: Well you also start to see what I come understand is that, you know, maybe we're not on a place where we can all live a zero waste lifestyle or convert all of our waste to clean energy.

Maybe in time that can happen but until that does, the most important thing that we could right now is to make sure we do everything possible to put less of this out into the world to begin with.

See, I got much less trash (inaudible). I got my composed, trash and a lot of recycling.