So for me the whole plastic thing is on a roll now but it is just the tip of a huge problem which is going to have to lead to a change in social behaviour, corporate behaviour and politics with nations acting together, economies acting together and to a reform of our view of capitalism. When you are speaking to the politicians are they getting bigger story or are they still focusing on the plastic?

Taylor: We haven’t had a huge experience with face-to-face politicians but we both come from the world of non-profits and standing up for social and environmental things. But you’ve got to start somewhere and it’s like clean your room before you clean your house. Plastics are something we can see and something we can do something about so this is really our emphasis in getting communities engaged. If you look at the smoking bans that happened in the States, they didn’t start at state level or at federal level, they started in small communities who said ‘ We aren’t going to have this here’. I think when you look at these environmental crisis if we really all spent our time focusing on one subject at the time we would be to tackle them better. The saying goes “keep the people divided to rule” keep them fighting with themselves and we can still stay on the top. Revolutions and reforms take a long time but if we can band together and tackle one thing at a time building momentum and political power through community we can effect change.

Ben: You mentioned capitalism and ultimately we need to shift from our global economic structure and not focus on exploiting resources, but rather managing them. I think that’s a huge issue. With any capitalist system it is all about profit and it says that scarce resources are something to exploit and extract and continue to take and not really give back or planning the long term outcomes. It definitely also has to do with behavioural change. The mentality and mindset of ‘the flick’ is symbolic of the out of sight, out of mind mentality and ideology. We are hurting ourselves in the long run.

Taylor: From a design perspective we look at problems differently, we have to see the opportunities. When you look at the charts that say there are going to be three billion more people in the next 50 years and we are projected to consume so much more, you just think where the hell is all that shit that we make going to go? It’s already washing up in the remotest places on earth. But when you look at the redesign of not only our economic structure, and the new material sciences you can see huge opportunities to create more circular economies, and not just be caught in this linear ‘ create, consume, throwaway’ path. We can create better materials reuse and reduce. These terms have been thrown around for so long but now it is coming full circle and we have to do it.

I mean the earth will go on and on. It’s been here for a long time. Humans have just been a blip on the timeline living on it. So ultimately it’s a question of society. Do we want to continue to sustain human life on the planet and evolve our thinking, or not? We’ve evolved as human beings but now it’s time to elevate and practice how we evolve humanity on the planet. If we cease to do that, then the earth will go on and humans will eventually fade out.