Season 3/Episode 5: Cash Daniels: The Conservation Kid
Cash Daniels
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Cash Daniels is a 13-year-old from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who has been cleaning up rivers since he was just seven years old and cofounded the kid-run nonprofit, The Clean Up Kids. He and John talk about plastic waste in waterways and what can be done about it, how it affects human and wildlife health, and his upcoming documentary, The Conservation Kid.
Show Notes
Cash discusses how much plastic is single use. According to the National Resources Defense Council, half of the plastic produced is single-use.
Cash shares that microplastics are less than 5 millimeters in size. Read more microplastics facts from NOAA.
John references Audacious Water Episode 4 with Nancy Rabalais, who talked about the integrated ecosystem of land, river and coast.
Cash discussed the overuse of plastic bags. There are varying estimates of plastic bag use, but Plastic Oceans International reports that “annually, approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide.”
Cash says, “when you drink a plastic bottle, you're actually drinking plastic.” According to this paper, “93% of bottled water showed some sign of microplastic contamination.”
Cash says that plastics have been found in newborn babies. This study reported microplastics in human placenta.
Cash mentions a new disease called Plasticcitis. He was likely referencing “Plasticosis,” a new disease in seabirds.
Cash discusses companies trying to come up with better solutions. He gives Mananalu water and Lego as examples.
Cash shares that Rivers Are Life created a documentary about him called The Conservation Kid. Watch it here.
Transcript
START (CASH DANIELS INTERVIEW)
[MUSIC]
JOHN: Welcome to Audacious Water, the podcast about how to create a world of water abundance for everyone. I'm John Sabo, director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University. On today's show, the Conservation Kid, my guest is Cash Daniels, a 13-year-old from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who has been cleaning up rivers since he was just 7 years-old. His river cleanups led him to co-found a kid-run non-profit called the "Cleanup Kids," and he continues to help reduce plastic waste in the Tennessee River through cleanups and helping fishers discard their used lines and lures. Coming up I talk with Cash about what plastics are and where they come from, including the problem of microplastics, how plastics end up as pollutants in our waterways, and what some of the solutions for combatting plastic waste might be.
JOHN: Cash, welcome to the show.
CASH: Thank you for having me.
JOHN: Yeah, this is going to be fun. Hey, I want to start with a question that I usually ask guests who are decades older than you, and I'm going to try to flip the question. Usually what I ask folks, and I asked Nancy Rabalais this last week--who's a scientist at Louisiana State University, who works on the Dead Zone of the Mississippi--and I asked her, "When you were a little girl did you imagine that you would be doing what you're doing right now?" Because I often think about this in the context of when I was your age I had no idea the challenges that we were going to face at my age. And so to reverse that, where do you think you'll be in your career in ten or twenty years? Like, what do you want to accomplish?
CASH: I guess just making people aware of the plastic in the environment, and just all the pollution. And in twenty years I hope that people will be more aware and we'll have a better society that actually cares about the oceans and rivers, and take care of the rivers. Because right now we don't really do that. People aren't aware of what's happening. I mean...
JOHN: So that's a good point, yeah. Like, I think awareness is the first part of the puzzle. We certainly deal with that on issues. And I'll come back to impact, because I think you're also - at a very early age also having impact. And I think awareness is the first part of having impact. But impact is what we're after at the end of the day, right?
CASH: Yeah, I mean, impacting lives, impacting the environment, and not in a bad way; in a good way. If you go camping always leave it better than you found it. Make an impact on that place.
JOHN: All right, great. We'll come back to that. So let's start - let's just jump right in. When you think about plastic what are you thinking about? Tell us about what that means?
CASH: Most all plastic is single-use. So, I mean, you can't use it more than once. And it's really annoying, because you buy something and you can't use that again other than the thing you buy it for. A plastic bag maybe is a bottle that you used before maybe. And although some plastic we need, like, for surgery and life-saving, like, medical stuff, but most all plastic is completely useless. Like a plastic bag--just carry it if you have less than a couple of things that you need. Or a plastic bottle--you don't need that; use a reusable one.
JOHN: Right - right - right. Let's talk about in the environment, because you see it first-hand. And let's talk about it along these lines. There's big stuff. You know, you think about giant football fields or larger worth of plastic floating in the ocean. Then there's the stuff that you can't see. Talk to me about that.
CASH: So the stuff you can't see is usually microplastics, which are five millimeters in size. And I've hardly found any, but, I mean, they're literally impossible to find. And that's the plastic that's going to be here for hundreds of years without finding it. Because you can go out and clean up plastic bottles, but you can't go out and find those microplastics, because you can't see them mostly. And then 70% of all plastic actually sinks, so what you're seeing on the surface isn't all of it. And it's - I haven't been to the bottom of the Tennessee River, or any river in particular, but I bet I could find a lot of plastic if I went to the bottom instead of just cleaning up the shore.
Q That's interesting. As an interesting side note, I have two daughters, one who's 18 and one who's 14, and five years ago we lived in the Galapagos Islands for five months and spent a lot of time on the beach. The beaches were pristine on the surface, but if you looked really closely you could see lots of little pithy microplastics, like you're describing, of all different colors. And my daughter's an artist so she started collecting it and making bracelets out of it, which were pretty cool. But like you said, it's almost impossible to clean up that kind of pollution, right, because it's integrated within the sand there.
CASH: Yeah.
JOHN: Okay, good. Let's talk about sourcing. Where do plastics come from? When the listeners see pictures in the New York Times or another newspaper of giant areas of floating plastic out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean, where does that stuff come from?
CASH: Mainly landfills, because people throw their things in the trash and they don't know where it goes after. They just hop it gets to the landfill or the recycling plant. And most places don't have covers over garbage trucks, so that plastic is going to fly out of the garbage truck and then end up in the river. Or when it rains or floods all the plastic in the landfill is going to be brought out into the rivers, the oceans, streams, and that's where most of the plastic comes from, and careless people that just throw their trash out the window of their car, or on a walk, they can see a trashcan but don't want to hold their trash. They just throw it on the ground. Most people don't care really about where it goes. And most people don't know where plastic comes from. Because you have to mine fossil fuels for them. And that places CO2 into the air, and all together it's just a really bad process.
JOHN: So this is interesting and we could come back if we have time to the fossil fuel part of that. I'm teaching climate change today at Tulane. Let's go back to the source, and I think you made a good point that kind of resonates with the interview I had with Nancy Rabalais, who we mentioned earlier. She talks about the Mississippi--and Tennessee is part of the Mississippi--she talks about it as an integrated ecosystem of land, river, and coast. And I think you just hit on a pretty neat topic for people to think about, which is that ultimately the plastic comes from land, but the delivery mechanism is rivers to the ocean. So let's talk about that a little bit--what's the source of plastic to the ocean, and how do we deal with the problem? Do we do it as a cleanup, or do we try to prevent delivery in the first place?
CASH: How to prevent plastic from getting in the ocean is a really complicated subject. One one hand, you could just clean up the rivers and ocean. And on the other hand, you would have to educate people and make them not buy single-use plastics. And if you picked just to clean up the oceans and rivers all the people keep throwing their trash out and keep polluting it. And if you just educated people then you might have a better chance. Because those people might go out and clean up with you, and then not throw out plastic. So educating people and doing cleanups is the best option.
JOHN: So the solution is on the land part of that integrated ecosystem?
CASH: I mean, all land is important and all ocean is important. And most all humans live on land. Most people don't live on a boat or on an island. And most of the U.S. and most of the world is landlocked. So rivers are the main source of plastic. Eighty percent of all ocean trash actually comes from rivers. So if we can get people to not throw trash in their pack - because they don't know that that might end up in the ocean. And a plastic bottle that is thrown down in Asia - in the middle of Asia might be in the ocean next week. Because you never know how the weather's going to be, how the climate's going to be, who the river flow is going to be, and how quickly that that might get there. And it's just really important for people to know just whatever you do it makes an impact, good or bad.
JOHN: Yeah, I like what you said about "rivers are the ultimate source," and I think it's important. Because for some people is far away, and seeing pictures of the trash heaps in the ocean that are even further away doesn't resonate with your daily activity. But when you have a river that's right next door and you see trash floating in it, it's a reminder that everything that you do on land has an ultimate impact on rivers, and plastic is one of those impacts. So I think that's super important. Let's talk about plastic bags. I mean, you mentioned a couple of different types of plastic--what can we do about plastic bags? Why are they so bad? What can we do about them?
CASH: Plastic bags are definitely one of the worst forms of plastic, because they're one of the main sources of microplastics. Almost half of microplastic comes from plastic bags, because they're so easy to rip apart. Because their chemical makeup is degraded from a plastic bottle. Because when you recycle it's actually downcycling instead of recycling, like it is with aluminum. And downcycling means that you downcycle the chemical makeup. Because when you recycle the atoms split apart sort of, and make it easier so you can rip the bag apart. Because you can't rip a plastic bottle, but you can rip a plastic bag because the chemical makeup is degraded. Because I know people in my own life that will buy, like, two things from the grocery store and get a bag, when they could just carry it out. And especially at restaurants, if you get a box--which those are bad on their own--they get a bag to put a box in instead of carrying it. Plastic bags are just completely useless. Just get a buggy or a reusable one.
JOHN: So reusables. Let's talk about that a little bit. What are some solutions there? I mean, you mentioned the two items in one bag, and I certainly have been to the store before and forgot my canvas bag, and before I can even stop the checker from finishing the transaction it's already in a bag. What do you think we can do there?
CASH: Stop the use of plastic bags. And although there are some stores like Publix that will take plastic bags if you bring them in from Walmart or Aldi, but then again those bags will last one or two uses before they break. Or if you just have reusable bags at checkout. I know Aldi has them for, like, a dollar. But still, we shouldn't be charging people money so they can help save the environment. And it's just really easy to forget about the use, or the impact of the bag and then just take it. But you have to think all the time about what that impact will be. Because you never know what impact that bag is going to have--it might kill one animal or hundreds.
JOHN: All right, we'll come back to the animal piece. Last question on bags, do you think they should be banned in the United States?
CASH: Yes. I mean, we use I think it's over a billion plastic bags - like, a million or a billion. But we use over that in a year. That's just ridiculous. Why can't we just use reusable bags instead of plastic bags? And they're one of the worst pollutants on the planet. It's just really disappointing.
JOHN: It is. Let's think about across the U.S. There are some states that at least charge you for them, or some I think municipalities that banned them so that you have to bring in your own bag in order to take your groceries out. Tell me about that.
CASH: I know California did that. They're really good with their environment and keeping it clean. I mean, they got the Redwoods out there; they've got some beautiful national parks out there. I haven't been to them but I want to be.
JOHN: Okay, so do you think it's a government role to eliminate plastic bags from this part of the equation, or do you think you can incentivize people to do it on their own? Which is more effective?
CASH: Because people are still going to use them either way. It's the government's job sort of to make this country a better place for all to live. And if we just keep using plastic bags the world as a whole is just going to keep getting worse and worse. Without fresh water and fresh air to breathe life on earth as we know it cannot exist.
JOHN: All right, good. So plastic bags, big problem. Let's transition to bottles, cups, water bottles. Tell me about those and why they're a problem, and what we can do about it.
CASH: I mean, they're the poster child for plastic pollution. That and plastic straws are the two most famous plastic pollutants. I mean, plastic bottles are one of the most - I found 700 on one cleanup before, in one day. I mean, there's three pieces of plastic in one--you've got the cap, the wrapper, and then the bottle itself. And you buy a 12-pack and that's even more. And the little short water bottles, those are even worse. I know people that will just buy those and that equals more plastic, because you have to buy them in more quantity because they run out quicker.
JOHN: So what can we do about bottles? Is there a solution in terms of recycling for them?
CASH: Recycling - you could recycle them, but it would just make its way back into different forms of plastic that will hurt the environment. I guess one of the only ways you can really eliminate it is I'd say not using them and using a reusable water bottle instead. We don't buy plastic bottles anymore; we just use our reusable ones.
JOHN: Excellent. So let's talk about infinitely recyclable and that concept in the context of plastics, especially plastic bottles. And we talked about recycling bags. Why is plastic not as recyclable as other things?
CASH: Because the chemical makeup isn't as good. Because as metal you can melt it down and recycle it as many times as you need because it's metal, and the atoms are strong together. But plastic they're fossil fuels, which isn't sustainable to mine anyway. And they're very bad for the environment.
JOHN: What happens to, like, really good plastic as you recycle it?
CASH: The chemical makeup is downgraded. Like, you can have, like, the plastic that you make computers, and laptops, and PlayStations, and stuff like that out of, gaming consuls. And even plastic surgery plastic, it'll eventually downgrade - no matter what type of plastic it is, it will run out of its chemical makeup. And, I mean, plastic takes hundred of years to break down. Not even the first plastic bottle ever in existence has fully broken down because it's not been... I mean, it was just the 1950s, '60s that plastic started to come out. I mean, there were tires before that, which tires is a whole other problem. I mean, the older generation that grew up with plastics didn't know that those plastics would have the impact that they have had on the environment. They didn't know that. And I feel when people blame the older generation it's an unnecessary blame, because they didn't know that this was going to happen.
JOHN: That's good. I'll give you some bonus points for saying that, a member of the older generation. I want to go back to the recycling point; I think there's a really important point to make here. And it's, if I'm drinking my single-use soda or water bottle and I'm really good at recycling those, like, 99 out of 100 times I put it in the recycling bin, and I feel good about it, feel like I’m doing my part, tell me what's wrong with that.
CASH: That you're not - there's nothing wrong with it necessarily, because you (couldn't) really do other than throw it away or recycle it. I mean, that's the best thing you can do other than not using it.
JOHN: Well, let me ask you the question a different way: am I doing my part? Could I do more than just recycle?
CASH: I mean, you could always do more than just recycle. I mean, go out and do a cleanup and tell people about it. Not just tell people about it, go practice what you preach, and go out there and clean up the rivers, oceans, wherever you live. I mean, you can do your part in any way. You can go out there, be a public speaker, talk about it, go out there, do the manual labor for it, and then sell reusable bags, reusable water bottles. You can always find something to do.
JOHN: Yeah, that makes sense. I think what I was getting at--and you've said it in a couple of different ways but I think it's an important point--like, when you recycle it doesn't mean that you're going to get a bottle back after it; you're going to get something of a lower-quality plastic. And that continues to happen again and again as you recycle. And eventually that plastic ends up in the environment anyway even though you recycle it, right? So the best thing to do is not use it in the first place and use a reusable bottle, which I think you said quite nicely. Cash, tell me about some science that you're doing. You're doing some experiments with plastics; tell me about those.
CASH: So my experiment that I'm doing now is to try and get balloons banned - or balloon-releases banned. Because they say they're biodegradable, but of course we all know that's not true. And I put them in dirt with water, and then dirt. And then my friend Ella is doing the same thing but with ocean water and sand.
JOHN: That's cool. And where does Ella live?
CASH: She lives in Florida right now.
JOHN: Okay, so you have a pretty sophisticated two-location experiment going with different treatments. And I'm being really scientific and nerdy about this right now, but it's kind of interesting. What have you found?
CASH: That they don't really biodegrade at all. I've looked several times and I've not seen a difference other than there being moss growing in them.
JOHN: And so is this experiment still going on? Are you still taking measurements?
CASH: Yeah, it's still - God, I wonder if I can go get them.
JOHN: Well, that's okay. I think the question was actually more of a gesture of encouragement. Keep doing that experiment and see over a long time what happens. I think it could be pretty powerful.
[MUSIC]
JOHN: Up next I talk with Cash about the impacts of plastic pollution on both human and wildlife health, the types of efforts needed to undo the damage we've done, and his upcoming documentary the Conservation Kid.
JOHN: Let's turn this towards impacts on human health. What are some of the impacts on human health that people don't know about that they should know about?
CASH: That when you drink a plastic bottle you're actually drinking plastic. Because it's in a plastic bottle, and those microplastics will get into the water. And plastic has actually been found inside the human bloodstream and even in newborn babies. And we've actually discovered a new disease called "Plastics-itis," I'm pretty sure, that has everything to do with plastics in it from ingesting plastic.
JOHN: Let's talk about critters, animals and fish. I mean, I am a scientist because I grew up fishing on rivers and I loved it, and I wanted to find a career that would allow me to, like you, understand rivers and understand how to keep them clean and interactive spaces in nature. What are the effects of plastic on animals?
CASH: It sort of depends on the animal really. I mean, it's all basically the same. They ingest it and it sits in their stomach for a long time, and then makes them think they're full but they're not getting the protein that they need, the vitamins that they need from the food. And filter-feeders are the main...
JOHN: ...consumers of plastic.
CASH: Yeah. I mean...
JOHN: Unintended.
CASH: ...definitely. Because they can't really stop it, especially microplastics. Because it's sort of - they don't know what they're eating. I mean, they just eat plankton and stuff like that. And it's sad that most of the largest animals on the planet are filter-feeders. The blue whale's a filter-feeder, and they're endangered still. And birds, they can swoop in and catch plastic because it looks like a fish. And fish, they eat the plankton, which might make the microplastics look like plankton, so they eat that instead.
JOHN: Well, when I think of a filter-feeder, they don't even look at what they're eating; they just open their mouth, right? And so if there's microplastics floating in there it gets eaten, and it stays in their gut for a long time. And that's a big burden on a big animal like a whale or other filter-feeders, right?
CASH: Yeah. My favorite animal on the whole planet is a filter-feeder, the whale shark. I mean, they're beautiful animals. All sea life is beautiful. I don't know why anybody would want to harm them, like whaling or anything like that. I mean, these animals that we are harming, they're beautiful animals that have lives like us.
JOHN: So let's get back to solutions. Is it better to start (at) the source of plastic or try to catch up later and do the cleanup? Tell me about that.
CASH: So I'll put it, like - well, you do have to hit it at the source. Like, instead of waiting until your body starts to get sick you can start eating healthy, be active, eat what you're supposed to eat, and stay away from junk food. And then your body will be in great shape. But if you don't take care of your body it will get sick. And that analogy is just like the planet. If we keep feeding our planet this plastic, and the CO2, and the climate change, it will just keep getting worse. But if we give the planet what it's supposed to need, and don't give it that plastic, then our planet will be in great shape for the future generations.
JOHN: There's a really good analogy, a good connection to climate change, and I’m going to get to that in a sec. I saw a reel on Instagram recently of a cleanup effort in one of the big (inaudible) of plastic in the ocean. And it was a big trawler that would normally be catching shrimp, or fish, or something with a big trawling net, unloading the largest-ever collected single load of plastic. And it was almost a boat-load of it literally, of all different kinds. And so hitting at the source is definitely what we need to do, but how much effort do you think we need to spend in terms of undoing damage that we've already done?
CASH: Well, first we need to hit it at the source. We need to alert people of what's going on and tell them not to make plastics. And then we can start cleaning up trash. Because every part of this mission is really important. And I'll put it in another analogy. It's like a rocket ship maybe. We can start to clean up the environment, but we have to keep going, keep - like a rocket ship, keep going through the atmosphere. Because it can't pause halfway up; it has to keep going or it will fall down. And if we keep going with what humanity's doing now, waking people up to the environmental crisis and making people aware of it, we can fix this. We can maybe fix the planet before it's too late.
JOHN: As long as we're going full-bore on analogies let me give you another one. It's like a conveyer belt, the rivers of plastics, right? And if you're cleaning up is it going to go away when you've got that conveyer belt that just keeps going, and going, and going, right? And I think the connection I was going to make to climate change is a little bit like adaptation and mitigation, right? Like, cleanup is adaptation. It's fixing things that are results of the ultimate source. And mitigation is, "Let's do something different than plastic to begin with," right? And that's, like, let's do something different - besides fossil fuels. And there's a connection there, too, because plastics are part fossil fuel - or made from fossil fuel. So I think that's a pretty good analogy. All right, so talk about companies that are working in this space. I think you have some colleagues, Jason and whatnot, that are working in this space that are worth talking about here.
CASH: Well, several companies are waking up to this. Like (Mananalu) Water, they are aluminum water, their entire packaging is plastic-free. And I know several schools who are really into the conservation. Although most companies aren't really doing anything about it - like retail stores, they can't do anything about it because what they sell is packaged in plastic. But they can at least give you reusable bags instead of plastic bags. And I find it really encouraging that companies are waking up and trying to reduce their plastic use. I know LEGO recently - a couple years ago starting making their green pieces out of plants instead of plastic. So that's really cool.
JOHN: That is interesting. That's also good for awareness, right? Like, it's a baby step in terms of making the whole product sustainable, but at least it gets people thinking about it, right?
CASH: And LEGO is a toy that kids use. So if we can tell them about this then they might think about it more. And that is why I focus mainly on talking to kids, because they might go home from school and tell their parents - and ask their parents, like, "Hey, why don't we recycle?" and they might start recycling. And they can go on cleanups and do that.
JOHN: That's great. Tell me about what you're doing with Rivers are Life.
CASH: So Rivers are Life is a company that makes documentaries, and I was recently one of them; it's my very first documentary. And it was really fun making the doc- or I wouldn’t want to say "fun," but interesting making the documentary. It was two days, and it was cold so that didn't help.
JOHN: You're giving us the behind-the-scenes here.
CASH: But yeah, I mean, they make all these good documentaries for people doing good work on the rivers. And "Rivers are Life," that's their thing, because the rivers are the life of the planet. So if we don't focus on rivers then our planet will die. Because that's fresh water--everything needs fresh water to live.
JOHN: That's great. What's the title of your documentary?
CASH: "The Conservation Kid."
JOHN: Very, very suiting. Hey, that's the end of our interview. I had a great time talking to you and I can't wait to hear this out there, so thanks for being on the show.
CASH: Thank you for having me.
[MUSIC]
JOHN: This was a departure from my usual interviews and I hope you enjoyed it. Cash and kids like him are the next generation of conservationists, protecting our waterways, and I jumped at the chance to talk to him about the things that he's doing right now at the age of 13. Plastics are in many ways like other materials and nutrients that enter waterways through land, like nitrogen, which we've talked about in a previous Audacious Water episode with Nancy Rabalais. The work that Cash is doing is revolutionary. It'll change the way that we look at rivers from the standpoint of research, and also lead to solutions down the road.
JOHN: That's it for this episode of Audacious Water. If you like the show please rate or review us and tell your colleagues and friends. For more information about Audacious Water visit our website at AudaciousWater.org/podcast. Until next time I'm John Sabo.
[MUSIC]
END (CASH DANIELS INTERVIEW)