# The Power of Responsible Consumerism - TEDx Transcript ## Transcript Metadata - Title: The Power of Responsible Consumerism - Speaker: Shaun Frankson - Role: Co-Founder and CTO of Plastic Bank - Event: TEDxStanleyPark - Year: 2017 - Duration: 16 minutes 50 seconds - Source Video: https://plasticbank.com/shaun-frankson-tedx-talk/ - Organization Mentioned: Plastic Bank - Primary Topics: responsible consumerism, ocean plastic, social plastic, corporate accountability, recycling, blockchain, poverty reduction ## Transcript Summary This transcript is from Shaun Frankson's TEDxStanleyPark talk, "The Power of Responsible Consumerism." In this talk, he explains how consumer choices influence corporate behavior, how responsible consumerism can help reduce ocean plastic, and how Plastic Bank created a model that turns plastic waste into value for vulnerable communities. He also describes how public demand, social media, and technology such as blockchain can support large-scale environmental and social impact. ## Full Transcript Shaun Frankson explains how every purchase is a vote and how just five minutes of responsible consumerism can drive corporations to change. He shares the Plastic Bank story: how a movement of conscious consumers helped turn ocean-bound plastic into a digital currency that empowers communities in poverty. ## The Scale of the Problem In the next 18 minutes over 600,000 pounds of plastic will enter our ocean. This is equivalent to 18 garbage trucks pulling up to the beach and dumping the entire load right in the water. And sadly, a garbage truck worth of plastic enters our ocean every single minute of every single day. Plastic is poisoning our oceans, which in turn is poisoning our food chain. But let's face it. It's not the plastic's fault it enters the ocean. I mean, plastic doesn't grow legs and magically fulfill a lifelong dream to go sit on a beach or swim in the ocean. And plastic doesn't reproduce and make little baby plastics every single year. Ocean plastic is not a plastic problem. It's a human problem. And no, you're probably not the human dumping the plastic into the ocean. You are the one with the power to help stop it from happening. And your power goes well beyond the world of plastic. ## The Power of Your Purchases So, how do you unleash that power? By shifting your mindset and changing the way you think about consumerism. In our modern world we are all consumers. And it is your voice and your vote as a 21st-century consumer that actually makes you one of the most powerful and influential people in history. And just like Ben Parker once told Spider-Man: "With great power comes great responsibility." Every purchase you make is a vote for how a product was made and a vote for the company that made it. And you have the power to reward what you want repeated through your purchases. Blind consumerism is when we reward without research. I'll admit, for most of my life, I was a blind consumer, until I came to realize that blind consumerism is dangerous and unsustainable. But consumerism does not have to be a dirty word, as long as we use our consumerism with purpose. The opposite of blind consumerism is responsible consumerism. Responsible consumerism is when you take an extra five minutes to use your voice and your vote, to do a little bit of research, and learn a little bit more about your options and alternatives. As a responsible consumer, you expand your definition of cost and value to include the environmental and social impacts of your purchases. Simply put, as a responsible consumer, you consider it your responsibility to make the responsible purchase. ## Consumer-Driven Change: The Plastic Bank Story So I will ask: Do you recall the last time that you took an extra five minutes to make a responsible purchase? Now, if something came to mind, no matter how small that something may feel, you should be proud of that something. Because I am always amazed by how often people completely underestimate the impact they make with just five minutes. So, I would like to share an example of using your voice and using your vote to create consumer-driven change. Four years ago, I joined my business partner David Katz on a quest to proactively stop the flow of ocean plastic. We discovered that 80% of ocean plastic starts on land in vulnerable regions that have almost no existing waste management systems. This is Peru. Shortly after I took this picture, all the plastic you see was washed into the river as soon as it rained. This is the Philippines. The Philippines is one of the largest sources of ocean plastic on the planet. And this is Haiti. All around the world, environments like these are more common than most people realize. In these environments, people see plastic as something that has no value. They see it as waste. It is actually common practice to just throw plastic into rivers, canals, and ocean-bound waterways as a means of throwing it away. But when we throw something away, it has to go somewhere. And all too often, away means the ocean. ## Building the Solution But after some research, David Katz and I became confident that we could create a self-sustaining business solution to stop the root cause of ocean plastic. We could make plastic waste too valuable to ever get thrown in the ocean. First, we needed to create a rewarding incentive system that would transfer the value of the plastic into the hands of the person collecting it. We needed to create a system where anyone could go out, collect enough plastic, and provide for their families and send their children to school. Second, we needed some of the world's largest corporations to purchase social plastic for use in manufacturing and to support the expansion of these social plastic ecosystems around the world. Finally, to make that happen and get their attention, we needed to attract and inspire a movement of responsible consumers asking for social plastic. ## The Million-Person Ask So, we started by creating a wave of mass media. I was able to find a storyteller at just about every major media outlet who was inspired to use their power to share our mission. And after more than 300 media features, we started to attract the attention of responsible consumers. When responsible consumers see something of interest, they take that extra five minutes to learn a little bit more, do a little research, and look for a way to make an impact. And we made it really easy. We asked people to like our Facebook page to prove the demand for corporations to use social plastic. We did not ask if they liked our company. We did not ask if they liked the product. We asked if they shared a passion and believed in our mission to reduce ocean plastic and poverty. Now you might ask yourself: So what? What difference does a single Facebook like make? I can tell you this. It starts with a like. Then it becomes multiple likes, then hundreds, then thousands. Today, we have one million people asking for corporations to use social plastic. Every single like was part of a million-person ask, and when a million people ask for the same thing, the world's largest companies start to listen. But it did not end there. A lot of people took an extra step and started to ask brands by name on Twitter to use #SocialPlastic. And as more people kept doing these tweets and asking brands to use #SocialPlastic, they started taking pictures of these tweets and sending them to those companies. When companies got that email, they saw the demand, they saw the tweets, and more often than not, they responded immediately: "You have my attention. Let's chat." With just five minutes of extra effort, those responsible consumers helped us open some of the biggest doors possible. We are now selling social plastic to some of the largest companies on the planet. ## Technology and Blockchain We are even having some of the most powerful partners help us amplify this around the world. For example, IBM saw the opportunity to make a genuine impact, and they are helping us literally turn plastic waste into a digital currency. In areas where we operate, people often live in vulnerable conditions and it is dangerous for them to carry cash. At the same time, many people cannot qualify for bank accounts. So we are creating a digital exchange and digital currency system that makes it safe for someone to transact and earn a living through recycling. This uses advanced technology: blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric, and LinuxONE. In simple terms, this is an enterprise system meant to empower a billion people to gather together to monetize waste. And soon, anyone in the world will be able to download an app and start earning a living through recycling or help prevent ocean plastic and poverty from happening. And I am proud to say that in the next ten years, we anticipate preventing over one billion pounds of plastic from entering the ocean. All of that is possible because a large number of responsible consumers took an extra five minutes to use their voice and use their vote to ask for the change they wanted to see. ## The Universal Principle Now, I tell this story and share these tactics because proactivity works. And the concept of consumer-driven change is universal. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, and petition sites such as Change.org are empowering people to cause genuine change. Every year, we see more and more successful examples of consumer-driven change. We are seeing more ethically sourced products, more sustainably sourced products, and more cruelty-free products. We are seeing more of these because more people are asking, and more people are voting with their wallets. So the next time you see a problem or cause you care about and you catch yourself saying, "Somebody should do something about it," remind yourself that you are somebody. And though corporations have epic power, they no longer have all the power. You do. Because corporations only produce what consumers buy repeatedly. When enough people stop buying an item, that item stops getting made. When enough people stop buying from a company, that company goes out of business. And when enough people ask for the same thing, corporations compete to meet that demand because corporations only exist to meet consumer demand. And therein lies the secret to using your power to create epic change. ## Five Minutes to Change a Habit Every year, it is getting easier for you to act like a responsible consumer. In our interconnected online world, trust and transparency are reaching entirely new levels. You can now take out your cell phone and search the difference between two options right from the grocery store. You can also use that same cell phone to take a picture of wrongdoing or injustice anywhere in the world as it happens. It is getting harder for corporations to hide the bad and easier for you to discover the good. If you held two products in your hand and they were the same cost and the same function, but you knew with confidence that one product would cause harm to the planet and the other would make a positive impact, I am confident that you would make the responsible choice every time. Because it goes against human nature to want to do intentional harm with your purchases, just as it goes against human nature to change your habits overnight. But I have found that change is best done incrementally. So my wife and I made a simple commitment. Once a week, we would sit down, do a little research, and improve one purchasing habit. Every week, the same routine. This could be simple things like finding locally sourced food or ensuring that everything you buy can actually be recycled in your own community. These actions might sound small, but over time, incrementally improving your habits adds up to a huge impact. ## A Human Thing It is this incremental approach that makes me optimistic. I do not believe the world will change overnight. But I do believe it can change over time for the better. We are approaching a new era in which the average person is starting to act like a responsible consumer. And the beautiful thing is that we do not need everyone to act this way for it to work. We just need to get to the average, because once we get to the average, we hit a cultural tipping point where it no longer becomes a hippy thing or a millennial thing. It becomes a human thing to purchase responsibly. And thankfully, being human is the one thing we all have in common. And know this: since I started talking, almost 18 garbage trucks worth of plastic has entered our ocean. But I know that you have the power to stop that trend, and others like it, by using your voice and using your vote to ask for and create the change this planet desperately needs. ## About Plastic Bank Plastic Bank is a social enterprise that builds ethical recycling ecosystems in vulnerable coastal communities, helping stop the flow of plastic into the ocean while improving the lives of collector communities. Website: https://plasticbank.com