Photo credit, Karl Gibbons, Third-Eye Management

In April, Melissa Snavely and I, co-directors of Red Rose Reuses, had the pleasure of presenting a talk on reducing single-use plastics. Red Rose Reuses originated under the umbrella of  College Park Climate Action Neighborhood (CAN), an affiliate of RegenAll. RegenAll is a local non-profit working towards carbon neutrality across business, agricultural, and neighborhood networks.

CAN borders F&M and Buchanan Park in Lancaster, PA, and just completed its first year of community climate action. One of our first initiatives was the Plastics Awareness Project – part personal audit, part educational, and part call for direct action. But mostly, it was a thorough look at the proliferation of plastics in our everyday lives, not just in our homes and the environment, but also at the growing evidence of microplastics in our bodies. It was through that program that a small but determined group decided to advocate for the reduction of single-use plastics in the City of Lancaster.  Hence, Red Rose Reuses was born. 

We have lived on planet Earth for a long time, but in the centuries since the Industrial Revolution, we began living out of balance, resulting in oversized problems that we never took the time to solve upfront. Nuclear and hazardous waste, human waste, and now plastic waste all contribute to our waste issues. Some have no viable, permanent solutions, like nuclear waste; some add chemicals to the water as part of the solution, like human waste, and some, like hazardous waste, can be contained in a facility, but eventually, those containment sites will need to be rethought since they are only stopgap measures.

And now we have plastic, which doesn’t break down or biodegrade except into smaller and smaller pieces.  Sadly, the more plastic we make, the more we have to clean up, and since we don’t yet have a viable way to deal with plastic pollution, rather than amp up production, we should be looking for ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Here are a few facts: 

• 9.1 billion tons of plastic have been produced since its introduction in the 1950s. 

• Virtually every piece of plastic ever made still exists in some shape or form (except the small amount that has been incinerated).

• 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled, and plastic doesn’t biodegrade, which means it could exist for hundreds or even thousands of years.

• One million plastic bottles are purchased every minute around the world.

• 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year. 

• Marine animals eat plastic, thinking it’s food, and it causes them to starve because they can’t digest it. 

• By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

• On average, people ingest 5 grams of plastic (about the weight of a credit card) every week, or approximately 100,000 pieces of microplastics each year.

• The result?  Microplastics have been found in our lungs, livers, spleens, and kidneys, sometimes with fatal effects. 

Let’s talk about the costs:

• It takes 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture the 30 billion plastic bags consumed in the US annually. 

• About 8 percent of the world’s total oil production goes to making plastic. More importantly, production is expected to triple by 2050.

• A single-use plastic bag costs between $.05 and $.07 and has a useful life of about 12 minutes.

• A single-use ketchup packet costs between $0.03 and $0.25, depending on your buying capacity; an estimated 855 billion condiment packets are discarded yearly globally!

• Besides pollution, there are many other unintended consequences of plastic waste, such as Health care costs. The National Institutes of Health says we spend about $250 billion/yr in health care costs, attributable to the chemicals used to make plastics, which is not surprising given that microplastics are consistently being discovered in our brains, blood, and bodies in general.

There are a great many benefits to be derived from reducing our reliance on plastics and the petroleum products that create them (and which I will save for the next post).

For now, I’d like to introduce you to Karl Gibbons, a Business Growth Architect, and one of the most intriguing and knowledgeable people I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Karl has some heady ideas about changing human behavior and offered to write the following piece. I hope you will read it and chime in with your own thoughts on this topic, which, from an environmental and health standpoint, is one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Behavioral Economics & the Packaging Problem: How to Nudge the World Toward Sustainability

Behavioral Economics is the study of how people actually make decisions — not how we think they should. It blends psychology with economics to understand the biases, triggers, and shortcuts that guide human behavior. And when it comes to saving the planet, those insights aren’t just useful — they’re essential.

If we want people to choose recyclable or biodegradable packaging, we have to accept a simple truth: facts alone don’t drive action. Logic informs, but emotion moves. The good news? We can use behavioral nudges — small, strategic shifts in the environment or incentives — to encourage more sustainable choices.

Take ketchup packets, for example.

Globally, we throw away an estimated 855 billion single-use condiment packets every year. These tiny sachets — mostly made of plastic and aluminum — are nearly impossible to recycle and almost always end up in landfills.

So, how do we change the behavior?

Simple: we attach a cost to the unsustainable choice and remove the friction from the better one.

Imagine a fast-food restaurant that charges 50 cents per ketchup or mustard sachet – a WasteRate, but offers manual pump dispensers at no cost and issues PlanetPoints. That’s not just an eco-friendly option — it’s a behavioral nudge rooted in loss aversion (people hate losing Money) and convenience. Suddenly, the path of least resistance aligns with the planet’s interests.

This is how we use Behavioral Economics to reshape habits—by creating either pain (a penalty or cost for wasteful choices) or pleasure (a reward or savings for sustainable ones).

Let’s apply this to supermarkets. What if clear plastic containers were taxed a WasteRate at checkout — but products in biodegradable or recyclable packaging came with a discount or loyalty PlanetPoints bonus? That small price signal would subtly shift consumer behavior over time, nudging people to favor packaging that doesn’t live forever in a landfill.

And it’s not just about consumers. Packaging manufacturers could be offered tiered incentives based on the recyclability and sustainability of their materials. EcoCredits (tax credits) for producing compostable containers. EcoTax penalties for generating hard-to-recycle waste. That’s how you drive change not only at the point of sale—but at the source.

The science is clear: people don’t always do what’s best for the environment — but they will respond to clear signals, smart incentives, and well-designed choices. Behavioral Economics gives us the blueprint to redesign those decisions.

Saving the planet won’t come from guilt trips or greenwashing. It’ll come from creating systems that make the right choice the easy choice.

About the Author
Karl M. Gibbons is a Business Growth Architect and the Founder of Third Eye Management & Associates (TEMA)—a strategic partner for purpose-driven entrepreneurs, brands, and organizations looking to grow smarter, scale faster, and build businesses that truly matter. With over 40 years of experience across multiple sectors, Karl blends Behavioral Economics with real-world strategy to help leaders create brands that are not only successful but uncopyable in their mission and marketplace.

 www.ThirdEyeManagement.com
 [email protected]
 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlgibbons
 (239) 961 0927

Regards

Karl

Karl M. Gibbons

Business Growth Architect

Cell +1 (239) 961 0927  Email [email protected]

Websites Third Eye Management & Associates

Facebook Facebook – Third Eye Management & Associates  Facebook – Personal

LinkedIn LinkedIn  YouTube YouTube

Pretty smart advice, eh? If you are an entrepreneur who sees value in a behavioral approach to business, I encourage you to contact Karl at any of the contacts above.

And stay tuned for Part 2 of Managing Our Love Affair with Plastics.

As always, thanks for reading.

pam lazos 5.16.25

Originally Published on https://greenlifebluewater.earth/feed/

Pam Lazos

Pam Lazos is an environmental lawyer and the author of the enviro thriller, "Oil and Water," about oil spills and green technology; of a collection of novellas, "Six Sisters," about family, dysfunction, and the ties that bind us; creator of the literary and eco blog www.greenlifebluewater.earth; a blogger for the Global Water Alliance (GWA) in Philadelphia; on the Editorial Board for the wH2O Journal, recently rebranded as the International Journal of Water Equity and Justice (University of Pennsylvania); an editor and ghostwriter for the newly published book, "Finally Home" by Deacon Mike Oles; author of a children's book, "Into the Land of the Loud"; and former Senior Assistant Regional Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she protected water and wetlands for over 33 years. Pam continues this work through her writing. She practices laughter daily.