1
00:00:17,338 --> 00:00:20,427
If you used a plastic bottle
in the last week,

2
00:00:20,578 --> 00:00:22,372
and you didn't recycle it,

3
00:00:22,456 --> 00:00:26,551
there's a good chance
that 450 years from now

4
00:00:26,697 --> 00:00:29,764
that plastic bottle might
still be here on this planet.

5
00:00:30,326 --> 00:00:34,416
And that's because NOAA researchers
have recently discovered

6
00:00:34,508 --> 00:00:38,468
that it takes about 450 freaking years

7
00:00:38,468 --> 00:00:42,818
for a PET, polyethylene
terephthalate bottle,

8
00:00:42,818 --> 00:00:46,758
PET bottle, to fully decompose.

9
00:00:46,758 --> 00:00:50,907
So I can imagine the scene
450 years from now

10
00:00:50,907 --> 00:00:55,059
when some poor soul
picks up your bottle from the ground

11
00:00:55,499 --> 00:00:57,770
and turns to his friend
for a conversation.

12
00:00:57,770 --> 00:00:59,920
It might go something like this:

13
00:01:01,610 --> 00:01:06,391
"Hey bro," - they'll still be saying bro,
by the way, in 450 -

14
00:01:06,391 --> 00:01:08,632
"Can you believe this?!
I mean, wait a minute,

15
00:01:08,632 --> 00:01:11,822
they took a finite natural resource,

16
00:01:11,942 --> 00:01:13,252
fossil fuels,

17
00:01:13,252 --> 00:01:16,184
and tell me this -
they turned it into a container

18
00:01:16,184 --> 00:01:18,371
that they used one time?

19
00:01:18,849 --> 00:01:21,379
And then, after they were 
done with that container,

20
00:01:22,221 --> 00:01:24,400
they threw it away?!

21
00:01:24,819 --> 00:01:26,340
I mean, that's crazy!

22
00:01:26,340 --> 00:01:29,852
What sort of advanced
civilization does that?"

23
00:01:30,769 --> 00:01:33,420
I think they're going
to be looking for an explanation.

24
00:01:33,710 --> 00:01:37,839
And if I was going to try
and offer an explanation to them today,

25
00:01:38,239 --> 00:01:40,291
I would turn to this logo. 


26
00:01:41,118 --> 00:01:44,730
A logo that we've been surrounded by
since we were in elementary school,

27
00:01:44,730 --> 00:01:47,348
something we see every day.

28
00:01:47,348 --> 00:01:51,550
It's the recycling logo, of course,
and it was created in 1970

29
00:01:51,550 --> 00:01:54,300
by a graduate student named Gary Anderson,

30
00:01:54,300 --> 00:01:57,030
who was at the University
of Southern California.

31
00:01:57,030 --> 00:01:59,379
Recycling was just
coming online at the time,

32
00:01:59,379 --> 00:02:02,930
and he wanted to figure out a way
to describe this system

33
00:02:02,930 --> 00:02:05,139
that would be this kind of closed loop.

34
00:02:05,139 --> 00:02:07,380
You know, a system
in which everything within it

35
00:02:07,380 --> 00:02:09,871
would be used over and over again.

36
00:02:09,871 --> 00:02:12,539
We would just have
this world without waste.

37
00:02:12,729 --> 00:02:16,683
It looks great, and it makes us
feel pretty darn good, I think,

38
00:02:16,683 --> 00:02:20,690
when we go to the recycling bin
and we put our stuff in that bin.

39
00:02:21,240 --> 00:02:26,270
But the problem with this image,
is that it's a lie.

40
00:02:27,260 --> 00:02:31,677
Because today, only about 30%,

41
00:02:31,949 --> 00:02:38,909
30% of PET plastic bottles
used in this country are recycled.

42
00:02:39,569 --> 00:02:43,959
That means that 70%, 70% of these bottles

43
00:02:43,959 --> 00:02:49,148
end up in landfills, in our rivers,
and ultimately in our oceans.

44
00:02:49,605 --> 00:02:54,419
And this of course is contributing
to a problem of epic proportions.

45
00:02:54,419 --> 00:02:59,376
Scientists have recently said
and predicted that by the year 2050,

46
00:02:59,376 --> 00:03:04,038
there might be more plastic
in our oceans than fish by volume,

47
00:03:04,262 --> 00:03:05,930
which is absolutely crazy.

48
00:03:06,075 --> 00:03:08,680
And if we think about
all that plastic churning around,

49
00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:13,431
one of the issues is that particles
are ending up in our water supply.

50
00:03:13,431 --> 00:03:14,943
Microplastics.

51
00:03:15,188 --> 00:03:16,981
A study that was recently conducted

52
00:03:16,981 --> 00:03:21,741
showed that 94% of tap water
tested in this country

53
00:03:21,741 --> 00:03:23,951
had microplastics within it.

54
00:03:23,951 --> 00:03:25,411
You're drinking it.

55
00:03:25,939 --> 00:03:30,549
This is not something, in other words,
that's just out there in our oceans.

56
00:03:30,549 --> 00:03:32,958
This is something
that's right here inside of us.

57
00:03:32,959 --> 00:03:35,381
And it's something
that we have to figure out.

58
00:03:35,381 --> 00:03:40,747
How do we end this plastic pollution
plague that we're confronting?

59
00:03:42,109 --> 00:03:46,626
Well, to answer that, I want to suggest
that we don't some new technology

60
00:03:46,626 --> 00:03:49,798
or even a new gadget
to solve this problem.

61
00:03:49,798 --> 00:03:53,945
What we need is a better
understanding of our past,

62
00:03:53,945 --> 00:03:56,888
a better understanding of history.

63
00:03:57,358 --> 00:03:59,958
And I can think of,
when I think of plastic containers,

64
00:03:59,958 --> 00:04:05,727
no better history to turn to
than the history of this company:

65
00:04:05,950 --> 00:04:07,479
The Coca-Cola Company.

66
00:04:07,664 --> 00:04:11,598
A company I spent 10 years or so
traveling around the world,

67
00:04:11,598 --> 00:04:13,848
to Peru, India, and beyond,

68
00:04:13,885 --> 00:04:19,316
to understand the ecological footprint
of this firm that started in my hometown.

69
00:04:19,316 --> 00:04:20,641
And I get it.

70
00:04:21,261 --> 00:04:23,251
This is an unusual place to start

71
00:04:23,251 --> 00:04:25,995
when thinking about a solution
to the plastic problem.

72
00:04:25,995 --> 00:04:29,588
Because I think when we think about Coke,
we think of the corporate villain.

73
00:04:29,588 --> 00:04:32,068
This plastic, these bottles
that they're putting out.

74
00:04:32,068 --> 00:04:33,741
Greenpeace, for example,

75
00:04:33,741 --> 00:04:40,736
said that Coca-Cola put out about
100 billion plastic bottles in a year.

76
00:04:40,736 --> 00:04:45,491
That's about 1/5 of all the plastic
bottles that are produced on the planet!

77
00:04:45,923 --> 00:04:48,087
So they're part of the problem.

78
00:04:48,896 --> 00:04:51,158
But if we turn to their past,

79
00:04:51,497 --> 00:04:54,966
if we turn to Coke's history,
buried in the archives,

80
00:04:54,966 --> 00:04:58,170
I think there are solutions
for the future.

81
00:04:59,347 --> 00:05:02,347
So, let's go back to the past,

82
00:05:02,467 --> 00:05:05,097
and let's visit with this guy,
John Pemberton,

83
00:05:05,097 --> 00:05:07,857
who was the creator
of the Coca-Cola formula.

84
00:05:08,318 --> 00:05:10,387
John Pemberton was a pharmacist.

85
00:05:10,387 --> 00:05:13,518
He came to Atlanta in the 1870s

86
00:05:13,518 --> 00:05:16,828
trying to strike it rich
in this patent medicine market.

87
00:05:17,156 --> 00:05:23,297
But unfortunately, his business
burned down not once, but twice!

88
00:05:23,297 --> 00:05:26,622
And he went bankrupt
by the end of the 1870s.

89
00:05:26,622 --> 00:05:28,008
It doesn't sound like the guy

90
00:05:28,008 --> 00:05:30,959
who's going to be the best-selling brand
in the world, right?

91
00:05:30,959 --> 00:05:33,438
It sounds like somebody
who's never going to make it.

92
00:05:33,438 --> 00:05:38,246
So what do you do when you're out of luck
and you want to make a buck?

93
00:05:38,688 --> 00:05:40,657
Well, you look at the world, and you say,

94
00:05:40,657 --> 00:05:44,210
okay, what's a drink
that's really doing awesome right now,

95
00:05:44,458 --> 00:05:46,598
and I'll try and imitate it.

96
00:05:46,937 --> 00:05:50,577
And that's exactly
what John Pemberton did.

97
00:05:50,688 --> 00:05:56,437
He saw this drink, Vin Mariani,
coming out of France.

98
00:05:56,437 --> 00:05:59,367
It was named after a guy
named Angelo Mariani.

99
00:05:59,367 --> 00:06:01,009
And it was selling like wildfire.

100
00:06:01,009 --> 00:06:05,168
Here's why, it was
a Bordeaux wine, a red wine,

101
00:06:05,168 --> 00:06:08,086
mixed with the coca leaf
from South America

102
00:06:08,086 --> 00:06:12,314
that would've infused it
with small tinctures of cocaine.

103
00:06:12,529 --> 00:06:16,825
So we're talking about, folks,
cocaine-infused wine.

104
00:06:16,825 --> 00:06:17,825
(Laughter)

105
00:06:17,825 --> 00:06:19,588
It was stimulating,

106
00:06:19,588 --> 00:06:20,782
(Laughter)

107
00:06:20,782 --> 00:06:22,607
and quite exhilarating.

108
00:06:22,607 --> 00:06:26,231
Our president Ulysses S. Grant
drank this stuff.

109
00:06:26,231 --> 00:06:28,167
"Mmm, makes me feel good."

110
00:06:28,167 --> 00:06:31,849
Of course it does, Ulysses S. Grant,
it's got cocaine in it.

111
00:06:31,849 --> 00:06:32,849
(Laughter)

112
00:06:32,849 --> 00:06:34,748
And the other thing is,

113
00:06:34,748 --> 00:06:36,960
he's sitting there saying
this is good stuff.

114
00:06:36,960 --> 00:06:40,938
It was like the Four Loko, really,
of the 19th century if you think about it.

115
00:06:40,938 --> 00:06:43,492
Even the Pope drank this stuff, okay?

116
00:06:43,492 --> 00:06:46,485
So if you're not Catholic
out there, imagine this.

117
00:06:46,485 --> 00:06:48,804
If communion had Vin Mariani,

118
00:06:48,804 --> 00:06:52,643
I think we'd all be signing up
to be Catholic today.

119
00:06:53,134 --> 00:06:55,212
So John Pemberton's out of luck

120
00:06:55,212 --> 00:06:57,275
trying to figure out
how to make some money,

121
00:06:57,275 --> 00:06:59,413
sees this and says,
alright, let's go do this.

122
00:06:59,413 --> 00:07:03,173
And folks, this is the precursor
to what becomes Coca-Cola.

123
00:07:03,173 --> 00:07:05,759
This is the first advertisement
for it in the 1880s.

124
00:07:05,759 --> 00:07:08,256
It was called
Pemberton's Wine of Coca.

125
00:07:08,256 --> 00:07:12,325
Not very original, completely
copying that drink, Vin Mariani.

126
00:07:12,325 --> 00:07:15,222
And it was a red wine
mixed with the coca leaf.

127
00:07:15,222 --> 00:07:17,293
Yes, it would have had wine in it.

128
00:07:17,293 --> 00:07:20,538
And it would have had
small quantities of cocaine.

129
00:07:21,479 --> 00:07:22,522
He made it!

130
00:07:22,526 --> 00:07:27,207
Yes, this great drink is selling!
But, there was a problem.

131
00:07:27,207 --> 00:07:29,009
And the problem was not the cocaine.

132
00:07:29,009 --> 00:07:30,919
The problem was the alcohol

133
00:07:30,919 --> 00:07:35,962
because the city of Atlanta moved
to ban the sale of alcohol in 1885.

134
00:07:35,962 --> 00:07:39,708
Oh my gosh, he's got this great drink,
now he's got to give it up!

135
00:07:39,708 --> 00:07:40,928
What's he going do?

136
00:07:40,928 --> 00:07:43,486
You know what he's going to do -
he creates Coca-Cola.

137
00:07:43,486 --> 00:07:46,032
It is a non-alcoholic version,

138
00:07:46,032 --> 00:07:51,521
a temperance version
of that earlier wine-based drink.

139
00:07:52,347 --> 00:07:54,909
And it became this great thing

140
00:07:55,739 --> 00:07:57,289
years later.

141
00:07:57,289 --> 00:07:59,510
Now, Pemberton did not put it in bottles.

142
00:07:59,510 --> 00:08:01,732
It was sold just at soda fountains

143
00:08:01,732 --> 00:08:04,668
in little cups like
the cute cup you see here.

144
00:08:05,062 --> 00:08:08,588
And he would never actually see
this drink become bottled

145
00:08:08,588 --> 00:08:12,116
or go global because he dies.

146
00:08:12,116 --> 00:08:13,188
It's a sad story.

147
00:08:13,188 --> 00:08:15,398
He finally makes it, and he dies.

148
00:08:15,618 --> 00:08:19,999
And so the person that follows after him
is Asa Candler, his successor.

149
00:08:19,999 --> 00:08:22,359
And that's the real success of Coke.

150
00:08:22,438 --> 00:08:25,638
Asa Candler's a pharmacist
who incorporates Coca-Cola in 1892.

151
00:08:25,638 --> 00:08:28,429
And he's going to create this great brand.

152
00:08:28,588 --> 00:08:29,948
Asa Candler, by the way,

153
00:08:29,948 --> 00:08:34,820
was a kind of workaholic, puritanical
Sunday-school-teacher kind of guy.

154
00:08:34,820 --> 00:08:36,086
I scoured the archives

155
00:08:36,086 --> 00:08:38,920
for the happiest picture
I could find of Asa Candler.

156
00:08:38,920 --> 00:08:40,923
This is Asa Candler on a good day.

157
00:08:40,998 --> 00:08:43,198
This is Asa Candler smiling.

158
00:08:43,388 --> 00:08:45,149
And the important point here

159
00:08:45,149 --> 00:08:48,349
is that like Pemberton, these guys
were in the Reconstruction South.

160
00:08:48,349 --> 00:08:50,092
They did not have a lot of money.

161
00:08:50,092 --> 00:08:51,635
They didn't have a lot of money,

162
00:08:51,635 --> 00:08:54,779
so they knew the only way
they could spread this drink far and wide

163
00:08:54,779 --> 00:08:56,390
is if they partnered with people.

164
00:08:56,390 --> 00:09:00,048
And Asa Candler's brilliant idea
was to bottle Coke.

165
00:09:00,048 --> 00:09:02,808
In 1899, he makes the decision
to bottle Coca-Cola.

166
00:09:02,808 --> 00:09:06,677
And that would change not only Coca-Cola,
it would change the world,

167
00:09:06,677 --> 00:09:08,958
creating one of the biggest
distribution networks

168
00:09:08,958 --> 00:09:10,116
the world has ever seen,

169
00:09:10,116 --> 00:09:13,749
stretching from Alabama
all the way to Zimbabwe.

170
00:09:13,749 --> 00:09:15,672
It was an incredible system.

171
00:09:15,732 --> 00:09:18,499
But the only way that it worked

172
00:09:18,499 --> 00:09:24,151
was if small businessmen
in little towns across the country

173
00:09:24,151 --> 00:09:27,977
and then ultimately the globe
put forward a little bit of money

174
00:09:27,977 --> 00:09:30,817
to build these bottling plants
in basements,

175
00:09:30,817 --> 00:09:33,848
in little small buildings
across the country.

176
00:09:33,848 --> 00:09:37,158
And these were folks, again,
with not a lot of money.

177
00:09:37,158 --> 00:09:38,958
They cared about everything,

178
00:09:38,958 --> 00:09:43,108
all the costs, the bottles,
the laborers, the trucks.

179
00:09:43,108 --> 00:09:44,907
They had to think about all that.

180
00:09:44,907 --> 00:09:46,156
When it came to packaging,

181
00:09:46,156 --> 00:09:48,508
they couldn't afford to waste
their packaging.

182
00:09:48,528 --> 00:09:51,829
They had to reuse it
over and over again to save on cost.

183
00:09:51,829 --> 00:09:54,174
So they used returnable glass bottles,

184
00:09:54,430 --> 00:09:57,456
returnable glass bottles
in the early 20th century

185
00:09:57,456 --> 00:09:59,637
so that they would save on cost.

186
00:09:59,637 --> 00:10:02,588
But here's the key.
How did that returnable system work?

187
00:10:02,697 --> 00:10:06,229
Well, they put a deposit
on those containers.

188
00:10:06,408 --> 00:10:09,009
A deposit of one to two cents.

189
00:10:09,897 --> 00:10:11,228
And if you, as a consumer,

190
00:10:11,228 --> 00:10:15,199
brought your bottle
back to your distributor,

191
00:10:15,209 --> 00:10:16,660
you got one to two cents back.

192
00:10:16,660 --> 00:10:18,310
You got paid!

193
00:10:18,900 --> 00:10:20,668
And it was an incredible system!

194
00:10:20,668 --> 00:10:21,678
It worked!

195
00:10:21,678 --> 00:10:24,067
I went through the archives
to look at this system.

196
00:10:24,067 --> 00:10:26,958
We're talking about
80% of Coca-Cola bottlers

197
00:10:26,958 --> 00:10:30,772
were using a deposit system in 1929.

198
00:10:31,127 --> 00:10:34,880
The trade journals of the time said
the only sane and logical,

199
00:10:34,880 --> 00:10:39,018
literally "sane and logical" thing to do
is to put a price on packaging

200
00:10:39,018 --> 00:10:41,581
if you want it to be returned. Right?

201
00:10:41,581 --> 00:10:42,931
And you've got to understand

202
00:10:42,931 --> 00:10:45,658
this is at a time when
the drink's selling for five cents.

203
00:10:45,658 --> 00:10:49,209
So you're talking about a two-cent deposit
on a five-cent drink.

204
00:10:49,209 --> 00:10:52,320
Heck yeah, I'm bringing that thing back!
I want my two cents back!

205
00:10:52,320 --> 00:10:55,146
Forty percent markup. Incredible.

206
00:10:55,146 --> 00:11:00,978
I have evidence in 1960s
that shows bottles doing 40, 50 trips

207
00:11:00,978 --> 00:11:05,017
back and forth between their bottler
and their consumer.

208
00:11:05,140 --> 00:11:09,531
Folks, it worked.
It worked really, really well.

209
00:11:11,488 --> 00:11:13,029
So what happened?

210
00:11:14,259 --> 00:11:17,338
Well, in the 1960s and 1970s,

211
00:11:18,135 --> 00:11:21,288
Coca-Colas began switching
to throw-away single-use containers

212
00:11:21,288 --> 00:11:22,321
that we see today.

213
00:11:22,321 --> 00:11:25,209
First steel cans, then aluminum cans,

214
00:11:25,619 --> 00:11:28,949
and then finally
plastic bottles by the 1970s.

215
00:11:29,268 --> 00:11:31,109
And when they switched to that system,

216
00:11:31,109 --> 00:11:33,418
they said, look,
this is a new automobile age.

217
00:11:33,418 --> 00:11:35,829
People are on the move.
People want convenience.

218
00:11:35,829 --> 00:11:39,838
They want to be able to put the packaging
wherever they want. Right?

219
00:11:40,259 --> 00:11:42,913
We don't need a deposit system
or a returnable system.

220
00:11:42,913 --> 00:11:44,937
We got rid of those deposits.

221
00:11:45,228 --> 00:11:48,179
And as you might predict,
trash started piling up everywhere,

222
00:11:48,179 --> 00:11:49,956
national parks, rivers, oceans.

223
00:11:50,578 --> 00:11:53,139
And people said this is a problem.

224
00:11:53,408 --> 00:11:56,859
But Coke, one of the biggest movers
and shakers in the beverage industry,

225
00:11:56,859 --> 00:11:58,699
said, don't worry,

226
00:11:59,030 --> 00:12:01,500
because there's this new thing
called recycling,

227
00:12:01,500 --> 00:12:03,642
that was just emerging in the 1970s.

228
00:12:04,319 --> 00:12:06,708
And this is what's going
to reclaim all this waste.

229
00:12:06,708 --> 00:12:08,442
We don't need a deposit system.

230
00:12:08,442 --> 00:12:11,078
That recycling technology
can reclaim it all.

231
00:12:11,618 --> 00:12:15,821
It was a huge bet. It was a big gamble.

232
00:12:15,821 --> 00:12:17,963
And they thought it would pay off.

233
00:12:19,498 --> 00:12:24,418
But the thing is we now as historians
can look back at over four decades of data

234
00:12:24,418 --> 00:12:26,356
to see whether that gamble paid off.

235
00:12:26,966 --> 00:12:28,627
And looking at the late 1990s

236
00:12:28,627 --> 00:12:31,758
when curbside recycling
was really in full steam here

237
00:12:31,758 --> 00:12:35,116
in the United States,
coming up to today,

238
00:12:35,437 --> 00:12:37,559
this is the reality of what happened.

239
00:12:37,759 --> 00:12:40,626
Not only did recycling rates not skyrocket

240
00:12:40,768 --> 00:12:43,844
when we started really imposing
these curbside recycling systems,

241
00:12:43,844 --> 00:12:45,399
for many years it declined.

242
00:12:45,499 --> 00:12:48,618
And in recent years
we're seeing this kind of stagnation

243
00:12:48,857 --> 00:12:51,062
with this rate around 30%.

244
00:12:51,062 --> 00:12:53,818
This is a system in absolute crisis.

245
00:12:53,818 --> 00:12:56,768
You see that circle? It's not a circle.

246
00:12:57,959 --> 00:12:59,437
So how do we fix it?

247
00:13:00,147 --> 00:13:03,148
Well, we know the answers, right?

248
00:13:03,544 --> 00:13:06,628
We know from history
that when you put a price on packaging,

249
00:13:06,628 --> 00:13:09,601
when you value that packaging,
it will be reclaimed.

250
00:13:09,601 --> 00:13:13,036
And we don't have to guess
whether that system will work today.

251
00:13:13,356 --> 00:13:15,017
We can see it in action.

252
00:13:15,179 --> 00:13:17,659
I'm mentioning Michigan
at Ohio State thing, I know.

253
00:13:17,659 --> 00:13:20,359
But this is Michigan
doing a great thing here, okay?

254
00:13:20,369 --> 00:13:23,609
They have got a system
that has deposits in place.

255
00:13:23,609 --> 00:13:26,684
The citizens of that state and in Maine

256
00:13:26,684 --> 00:13:30,437
have enforced their own deposits via law

257
00:13:30,437 --> 00:13:33,528
to say that you have to
put a price on a container.

258
00:13:33,528 --> 00:13:36,109
In those states if you go
and deliver those containers,

259
00:13:36,109 --> 00:13:37,287
you get some money back.

260
00:13:37,287 --> 00:13:40,372
And I just wanted to show you,
the rates are through the roof -

261
00:13:40,372 --> 00:13:42,870
80, 90% recycling rates.

262
00:13:42,870 --> 00:13:44,615
And if we go to Denmark or Germany -

263
00:13:44,615 --> 00:13:47,545
I could list a lot of different countries,

264
00:13:47,545 --> 00:13:52,199
whose nations have taken it
upon themselves to do this system -

265
00:13:52,199 --> 00:13:54,260
we see the recycling rates
through the roof.

266
00:13:54,260 --> 00:13:55,529
It works.

267
00:13:55,549 --> 00:13:58,739
And we can make it work here
across this nation.

268
00:14:01,029 --> 00:14:04,431
So Coca-Cola said that by the year 2030,

269
00:14:04,730 --> 00:14:07,759
they're going to reclaim and recycle
every single container

270
00:14:07,759 --> 00:14:09,618
that they put out into the environment.

271
00:14:09,618 --> 00:14:11,619
This is the pledge
they have recently made.

272
00:14:11,619 --> 00:14:13,950
They're going to reclaim
every single container.

273
00:14:13,950 --> 00:14:17,030
There will be a world
without waste, they say.

274
00:14:17,030 --> 00:14:18,379
And I applaud them for this.

275
00:14:18,379 --> 00:14:20,858
There's a lot of well-meaning
people in the companies

276
00:14:20,858 --> 00:14:22,779
thinking about these big strategies.

277
00:14:23,718 --> 00:14:27,549
But the problem is, in 2016,
as recently as 2016,

278
00:14:27,549 --> 00:14:29,326
in a leaked corporate document,

279
00:14:29,326 --> 00:14:31,599
Coca-Cola said that it was going to,

280
00:14:31,599 --> 00:14:35,997
"fight back against deposit systems
in the European Union."

281
00:14:37,687 --> 00:14:40,439
Folks, we don't have to wait
for Coke to get woke.

282
00:14:40,597 --> 00:14:42,148
(Laughter)

283
00:14:42,569 --> 00:14:47,542
We, the citizens of this country,
can make the conscious choice

284
00:14:47,788 --> 00:14:52,379
to end the unconscionable practice
of not putting a price on packaging,

285
00:14:52,379 --> 00:14:55,338
especially finite resources like plastics.

286
00:14:55,567 --> 00:14:58,406
If we do that,
if we learn from our history,

287
00:14:58,919 --> 00:15:00,654
then I think we'll make history.

288
00:15:01,089 --> 00:15:06,097
And it will be a history
that our descendants can be proud of

289
00:15:06,097 --> 00:15:08,330
450 years from now.

290
00:15:08,730 --> 00:15:09,750
Thank you.

291
00:15:09,750 --> 00:15:12,408
(Applause) (Cheers)