Borderless Executive Live: The Podcast
Candid conversations with business leaders on a borderless life. Hosted by Andrew Kris, Founding Partner of Borderless.
Borderless Executive Live: The Podcast
Plastics Truth: Dispelling Environmental Myths
Chris DeArmitt joins us to share his evidence-based perspective on plastics, revealing how widespread misinformation distorts environmental priorities and leads well-intentioned consumers to make harmful choices. With five years of unpaid research analyzing over 5,000 scientific studies, Chris exposes the disconnect between alarming media narratives and the scientific consensus regarding plastic's environmental impact.
• Debunking sensationalist claims about microplastics in human brains using scientifically invalid methods
• Exposing media bias - 93% of articles claim plastics are harmful while scientific consensus shows no evidence of threat
• Dismantling the "plastic island" myth - no Texas-sized garbage patch exists in our oceans
• Revealing that 85% of ocean plastic is fishing gear while consumer items (bottles, straws, bags) make up just 0.03%
• Comparing environmental impacts across materials - glass, paper and metal typically create more waste and emissions than plastic
• Explaining why weight correlates with environmental impact - heavier alternatives generally have larger carbon footprints
• Advocating for informed consumer choices based on scientific evidence rather than industry propaganda
Visit phantomplastics.com or plasticsresearchcouncil.com for free access to peer-reviewed research on plastics and their environmental impact.
Hello everyone and welcome to Baldur's Executive Live. My special guest today is Chris Armit. Chris is an internationally recognized scientist, is an author, thought leader in material science and known for his relentless commitment to uncovering and communicating the truth about plastics. He's got a career spanning decades and he's grounded as a good scientist in peer-reviewed research. He stands out at the forefront of dispelling some of the myths and correcting a lot of the misinformation that's pervasive in today's environmental discourse, even as we speak in the US right now. Was it Washington post you said, chris?
Speaker 2:yes, they've got a new article that's full of nonsense, so I'm trying to uh communicate with the reporter and tell her she should have checked her facts before scaring everyone so what is and what is this particular thing about?
Speaker 1:about?
Speaker 2:over a year ago there was a a publication. It wasn't officially released a year ago, but it leaked out because it was so sensational, claiming we have a spoonful of microplastics in our brains. Even then, even before it was officially released, I put up a webpage. So if you search for that on phantom plastics, you'll see a whole page about the science of that. I mean, the study is just absolutely nuts. It's just wrong. They used a technique which is proven to not work. Literally. Other scientists said you cannot use this method. It does not work and that's the method that they used.
Speaker 2:And unfortunately, because this claim is so sensational, it goes around the world and you hear echoes of it again and again. So even though it's been dispelled by me and groups of other scientists all around the world over and over, it still keeps coming back like a bad penny. So even today it was in the washington post. I've called out the washington before for publishing this nonsense. They said that microplastics is linked to Alzheimer's in mice and it's all. The stuff that she talks about is just nonsense. These reporters don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand science and they don't check it with people who do.
Speaker 1:So the intention of these articles is essentially to sell more papers right?
Speaker 2:Yes, if it bleeds, it leads. So scare the bejesus out of people and sell more articles, unfortunately, I mean, I imagine people go to journalist school, you know, with these ideas of breaking a big story and being a crusader for truth, but it seems like 95% of them have just sold out and they'll just publish anything if it's scary enough.
Speaker 1:Well, it is a bit, because there are a few really outstanding journalists around who do report factually on science.
Speaker 2:The other thing is, I don't expect everyone to believe what I say automatically, but they should at least check the facts. They should check to see was this study credible? What other scientists are, you know what? What does the other side have to say about this? Is it even credible? But they're not even doing that. If, if it sounds scary enough, they just publish it without a blink.
Speaker 1:Well, of course, for that you need to understand how these things should be published. You need to understand how scientific publications work and what's relevant and what isn't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what frustrates me is that every day somebody tells me I'm wrong and I'm like, well, really, how many studies have you read? I've read 5,000, so far unpaid, to find the truth, all because my daughters were lied to at school. And I've not only that. People think I'm here to sell a book. Right, here's my latest book. But this one and the first one, the Plastics Paradox, they're both for free and you can download them in multiple languages for free. So I've read 5,000 studies unpaid. It took me five years, and not only that. I then went and had the conclusions checked by university professors all around the world. And imagine I was wrong, right, imagine I was a charlatan. The last thing I would do is send my findings to top professors around the world and ask them to check it, because I'd be a laughingstock. So these professors have also endorsed the findings and it's absolutely solid. It's the most comprehensive independent review.
Speaker 1:You know we last talked on this subject, you and I together, about two years ago, and I was really keen to understand from your perspective?
Speaker 2:what has changed in the way that this science is being reported? Yes, yes. One thing that's changed for me recently is that normally I read a journalist article it's nonsense. And then you have to write to them and tell them that it's nonsense and by then it's too late. Right that the horse has bolted and they don't want to admit that they were wrong. They don't want to look at evidence. They've moved on in the news cycle and now I'm on some sites where journalists look for experts before they've written the article. So now journalists are coming to me again and again. Um, so I've been in food and wine, I've been homes and gardens. I've been in med city health. I've been in lots of different publications. I've corrected people on c net and other major bbc2s. I recall, yeah, bbc2. I've been on sky news. I've been on cbs 60 minutes and I and I've even corrected the bbc when they they had one of these uh turtle with a bag around his neck.
Speaker 2:There's never been a picture of that in the history of the world. It was photoshopped and I said please remove your misleading image. In fact there was a study. They towed this little netter behind a boat for millions of miles. They've sailed over decades and they have to sail 100,000 miles to find one piece of plastic bag in the ocean. And yet the BBC and everyone else is telling us that the oceans are choking in plastic and it's killing the turtles.
Speaker 1:And it's just not true, so are choking plastic, because of the way people are disposing of these materials.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's one of the things. That's right. Scientists have studied that too. There is litter on beaches and they've studied that and it's dropped by the people on the beaches, surprisingly enough, and they can tell that, because you can look at the litter. Scientists literally examined the litter like forensic science and worked out where did it come from, and they could tell it was local. So some of it does come from the oceans. Let's give some perspective on that.
Speaker 2:So there, that's one of the biggest myths. There is no floating island the size of texas. That was made up. There's a whole phd thesis on how that myth came to be and how it's wrong. Even the guy who first reported this gyre, um, says you know, people are asking him to sail out there and take pictures and he said there's nothing to see, it's just open, clean ocean. You can swim right through these gyres and not even know that you're in them because there's so little plastic. So not to say that there should be any plastic there, but exaggerating something by a thousand times is not a great solution, and that's what people are doing now. They're exaggerating stuff, looking for funding, looking for a sensational headlines, looking for advertising dollars based on stuff that's just outright fiction.
Speaker 2:This floating island doesn't exist, and what is there in the gyres is about 85% fishing gear which does cause harm.
Speaker 2:Right, if you drop a fishing net and you just leave it, you abandon it. It does harm things and so that should be cleaned up. But unfortunately, the people discussing in Geneva and around the world are planning to completely ignore the fishing nets which are causing a problem and are 85%, and instead they're having meetings, flying in thousands of people to talk about the consumer items which are in the ocean. And if you look at those, if you add up bottles, straws and bags, it's 0.03% of the total and not proven to cause any harm. And again, I'm not saying it should be there, but why would you say, why would you fly 5 000 people to geneva, all around the world again and again and again and talk about the 0.03 percent which is not proven to cause a problem? It's not enough to harm anything and ignore the 90, the 85 percent which is a real problem. This is what frustrates me as a scientist. We have the facts, we have solutions that work and people are flying around talking about stuff that's not even true.
Speaker 1:So, Chris, what is it that? I'm a bit perplexed, trying to understand why this message is not being communicated adequately by plastics producers, packaging producers, retailers. They're doing a pretty poor job all around given the weight of evidence here. Why do you think that?
Speaker 2:is Part of it is nobody wants to be on the defensive. Part of it is it doesn't look good. Part of it is that all of these companies are paying trade associations to take care of this and they haven't done it. So many of these trade associations come to me and they want me who's worked for five years for free and they've meanwhile squandered millions of dollars. They want me to give them the answers for free. Shocking and incredible. And so some of the companies have had to take action. One company sent signed copies of the first book to every member of Congress. Another company sent signed copies of the first book, plastic Paradox, to the Canadian Parliament, and the BPF in the UK was asked to do the same for the UK Parliament and they refused. Members went to the British Plastics Federation and said please help us, not to defend plastics, but just to show the peer-reviewed science. And they said no, we don't want to offend anyone, they've let us down badly. The American trade associations are even worse. Yeah, where is the?
Speaker 1:money in all of this. I think that often drives the motivation here, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Here's an amazing one. Somebody told me in Ottawa that I think it was the ACC, I think it was the American Chemical Society. I'm not 100% sure, but I think they said that they had a million dollars to focus on microplastics and write a study. And this guy told them Chris has the answers. Why don't you just get them from Chris? And they said, no thanks, we're not interested. So they finally released a study last week saying that the facts aren't known. We don't have the facts on microplastics and it's all up in the air and it's not true. I've read there's a thousand studies over 50 years. We have all the answers. We know the exposure, we know what they are. We have all the answers. We know the exposure, we know what they are. We know that there's no health effects. We know literally, even down to whether dogs and cats are being affected by them, whether your pets are being exposed. We have the answer to every single question you could answer. Whether they're affecting the oceans is answered by scientists already Peer-reviewed science, and it's on my website for free.
Speaker 2:It's in the book for free, your website. We will put it into the podcast. Yeah, so there's a couple places. One is phantomplasticscom. Um, that's where I consult. That's my actual job, not this that I'm doing now. And then I have a new website, it's um plastics research councilcom, and that's a non-profit where top scientists you can see, we have a toxicologist, we have professors and we work without a single penny of salary to share the science, verbatim with links to the peer-reviewed science. So literally it's word for word, copied and pasted from the studies, with no spin, with links and vetted by professors around the world, working without a single penny of compensation. And that's plasticsresearchcouncilcom. So you might wonder where does the money go? And the point is that money is to buy a bigger megaphone. So we take this peer-reviewed science that we've collected for free and shared for free and we're paying PR companies to try and get it out there to these journalists.
Speaker 1:So are the journalists building the froth here? Is that what you're suggesting?
Speaker 2:Oh well, it's been scientifically proven. So they did a study comparing what journalists tell us about microplastics to what scientists tell us. And if you look at the scientific studies, the vast majority say there's no evidence of anything whatsoever. And if you look at the journalists, what they're telling us in the media, 93% of their articles say that there's a definite threat. So the consensus of scientists, after thousands of studies and 50 years is and the FDA and everyone agreeing there's no threat. And then journalists are telling us every day there's a threat, there's a threat by our newspaper.
Speaker 1:I was seeing something very similar on the BBC just a week ago and I had to turn it off because it's patently rubbish no-transcript.
Speaker 2:It's very tempting to make some facetious comments about people's brains, but that's not for this discussion. I once talked to a Washington Post again reporter. She was worried about vinyl chloride from pipes in the water. She said oh, what about this vinyl chloride? Is it coming out of the pipes into the water? I said no, it's impossible, there's none there. And she said but is it coming out of the pipes into the water? I said no, it's impossible, it's, there's none there. And she said. And she said but is it coming out of the pipes? I said well, look at it this way. Are you worried about lions escaping from your garden? She said no, I don't have any lions. I said, aha, exactly, if it's not there, it can't escape. It's never there. It's not there in the first place. Right, it's all regulated, it's all detected. They even have like surprise inspections on pvc pipe factories where they steal pipe from the factory and analyze the heck out of it. For decades They've never found anything.
Speaker 1:Would you rather have lead coming out of your pipes?
Speaker 2:I know, I know that's a scary thing. There's even an NGO who's paid by Michael Bloomberg and they go around saying that plastic pipes shouldn't be used and you should use copper instead. So I thought well, I wonder how true that is. So first of all, I checked the life cycle studies. Plastic pipes are vastly better than copper for the environment. And then I looked at toxicity. Copper is toxic at one part per million. If you've got more than one part per million copper in your drinking water from the pipes, it's toxic and there's literally proven cases of poisoning. It's not like theoretical, it's actually happening, especially if you've got acidic or basic water. Copper pipes actually fail the safety test if it's not at neutral ph, and the plastic pipes indeed pass, and the copper pipes fail. To show you how dangerous it is, the epa have um, it's called the lead copper rule, so they literally come to my house every year and ask me to take a sample of my water and test it for lead and copper because it's so poisonous. They're worried about it.
Speaker 1:And again, the journalist just covered whatever they've heard. Where are the next steps? I think you're going away to a congress, I think in the next couple of days, aren't you as well? Chris?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's been a big development since we last book, because no one else has read the science. No one else. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to read 5 000 studies unpaid? Nobody else is that is that.
Speaker 1:Is that foolhardy quite a feat.
Speaker 2:yeah, so because of that. Um, so people are like, oh, how did you become the expert? Like because no one reads anymore, that's how? So because of this, because of the other book, because people are saying so, this is all shared for free. And then people say, well, will you come and tell me about this? Will you fly to Hong Kong, for example, next week? And I'm like, I hate traveling, I despise it. So when people ask me to go for free, obviously I can't drop my paying job and leave my family and go flying around the world all the time. I just can't do that. So that has become a big thing Keynotes around the world and I get paid for that. I have to accept money for that because otherwise there's just no way I could do it. I've been to Hong Kong, I'm going to Hong Kong. I've been to Mexico twice.
Speaker 2:I met the minister for the environment of Mexico and when we left the meeting she said oh, I get it. Plastic is the least of our worries, because I showed her the data Plastic is half a percent of materials we use. They grow at the same rate as every other material concrete, metal, glass, paper, paper and they're the greenest, lowest impact choice nine times out of ten if you look at life cycle studies. So I'm again. I'm not minimizing the impact of plastic, but a moment where we're obsessing over half a percent of materials that are the greenest option nine times out of ten. Anyone who was truly worried about the environment would be talking about the other 99, which are worse for the environment. They create four times more waste, they create three times more greenhouse gas, they create more litter and they cost more as well. So people with a good intention are paying more to make the environment worse. That's what's going on now, because they've been misled by the media and by greedy environmental groups.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an interesting way of putting it, I think, one that's going to resonate with a lot of people, and I mean that we, of course, are going to be talking about this conversation with our business partners in the chemical industry and elsewhere, but the issue, I don't think, is really there. I think it's in the consumer's mind, and the more that you can work, as you're doing now, to influence and to inform journalists, in particular, with what the realities of life are, yeah, but what's the better?
Speaker 2:well, here's the funny part, right? If you ask me what would I prefer, I would grab a metal can or a glass bottle over a plastic pt1 any day. I prefer it what? I'm not telling people what to do, I'm not their parent, right? I'm not the government. But what I don't like is that people with a good heart are paying extra to make things worse. They've been lied to. That's what I mind. If you know the truth and then you pick the glass bottle, you go and do it, but don't do it because some glass company lied to you and said it's the greenest solution, because it clearly isn't.
Speaker 2:Every study and I've got a mckinsey study right in front of me, because I'm a scientist and I always speak from facts and it's no Nodergaard, gordon et al 2025. They literally compare. What do the consumers think? They think that glass jars are the best option and they're the worst according to every study ever done. And then they think paper is the next best option, which is not true. Then they think metal cans, which is also not true. Right at the bottom, they think that plastic is the worst and plastic has the lowest impact, not according to studies from the plastic industry, according to every independent study by every university in the world. It's just that clear, but people don't know it.
Speaker 1:You expressed to me a while back. One of the simple ways to look at it is what does something weigh? In terms of looking at environmental impact.
Speaker 2:Yes. So if you replace plastic and you can check this yourself in your own kitchen right, go and weigh. First of all, weigh, no straw, zero weight, and that's the greenest option. Don't take a straw. I'm not telling you to take a plastic straw Take no straw.
Speaker 2:Next weigh the plastic straw less than a gram. Next weigh the paper straw two grams. Next weigh the metal straw 20 grams. Glass straw 30 grams. Weigh them and that's almost the same as their impact. Or look at the cost of them. The more it weighs, the more it costs, the worst it is for the environment. And gold is a great example. You generate 20,000 kilograms of CO2 to make one kilogram of gold. And what else do we know about gold? Horrendous for the environment, horrendously expensive and it's always recycled because of those things. And on the other end of that seesaw we have plastic very low impact for the environment, very cheap and therefore not as economical to recycle because it's so cheap and so green.
Speaker 2:So that's the trick that the aluminium people are playing on us. They're saying buy an aluminium can. It's got so much value at the end of life. I'm like, yeah, that's because you wasted so much energy and money making it in the first place. This argument is the same as telling you to go and buy a Ferrari because at the end of the life it's going to have a higher trade-in value than if you bought a Fiat. I mean, what nutcase would fall for that argument? Go and buy a Ferrari because it's got a higher trade-in value than a Fiat and you're like, but hang on a minute, a Ferrari is $200,000 and a Fiat is $20,000.
Speaker 2:That makes no logical sense. But that's pick. The aluminium can, but I can afford to and I prefer it. But I wouldn't pick it based on lies. I'd pick it because I want it no, indeed not.
Speaker 1:I think the straw question was the one that always riles me, because I'm also concerned about the the bacterial qualities of used metal straw yeah you know, and how much it costs to clean that straw and how is it actually clean and what's what usage in that straw, and so on and so on, and look at the impact of that is absolutely horrendous yeah, as you know, this all started because my daughters were told clear lies at school and that made me angry.
Speaker 2:That's what gave me the energy to read all those studies. Congratulations on that and they were given metal straws by school. Complete nonsense, terrible for the environment and, as you said, they never use them. They sit in a drawer and so they either take no straw or my my youngest daughter reused a plastic straw 50 times. And that's the thing about single use. Nobody's making a throw in the bin. We can reuse these things if we want to to. We have polystyrene spoons that we've reused for five years and they're still going strong.
Speaker 2:So you can put them in the dishwasher and reuse them again and again. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and saying here, throw it away after one use.
Speaker 1:I guess it's taken a century or so for people to learn to reuse glass, for example. A glass jar. You use it for other things, and perhaps what we're talking about here is really just a distortion of time In the length of time we've had to get used to plastic straws. Yes, that is part of it.
Speaker 2:These other materials are kind of in our psyche. They're considered natural. People see paper and they think it's natural must be good. People see metal and glass. We've had them for thousands of years and so there's a deep trust of those materials which we haven't got yet. About plastic when you see a plastic bag on the kitchen counter, it looks awful. The whole room's messy just from one bag because it looks so synthetic and it jars the eye, and that is a big part of this. It's very easy to demonize plastic because it's the new kid on the block and we haven't accepted it as something that's exactly nature.
Speaker 1:That is an issue well, if I make this, I'm going to wish you the very, very best at your upcoming meeting in hong kong. Thanks, and I hope it's uh, you, you are as always as persuasive to get a 500 people out of that congress, really understanding the facts and promoting the facts.
Speaker 2:Thank, you for the myth. It's going to be two keynotes and then further, so one on the regular, all the topics, another one, the only one in the world, dedicated to microplastics, dispelling every single myth with science. And then I'm going to go and do on a university tour, media engagements and all of that, and meet all of the influential business people. So it should make more sense.
Speaker 1:Well, well, I wish you all the very best with that, chris, and I hope that we have a chance to catch up in the next few months and see what else is happening around the world in this wonderful area. Thanks, and let's not leave it so long next time, as you say.
Speaker 2:Yeah absolutely not See you very soon.