Bartow Elmore speaks about how the solution to the current plastic waste problem lies in the history of one of the biggest enterprises in the world: the Coca-Cola industry. Bart Elmore studies the past in order to understand how we can live more sustainably on this planet. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Bart is assistant professor of environmental history and a member of the Sustainability Institute at Ohio State University. He is the author of Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W. W. Norton, 2015), a global ecological history of the world’s biggest soft drink brand. From 2016 to 2018 he was a Carnegie Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, and he currently serves as the the editor of the Histories of Capitalism and the Environment book series at West Virginia University Press. He is writing two new books: Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and the Future of Food (W. W. Norton, forthcoming) and The Land Where the Sun Never Sets: The American South and Global Ecological Change (UNC Press, forthcoming).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx