The next time you sip on a drink from a straw, you may want to think twice because humans are producing an inordinate amount of plastic waste on straws alone. Plastic straws are one of the leading contributors to ocean trash, they take up to 200 years to decompose and they can’t be recycled.  Every year, the US alone uses enough straws to fill up nine baseball stadiums. Plastic straws are pretty much the definition of wastefulness, they serve very little purpose and are terrible for the environment.  This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to two people who are doing their best to combat plastic waste in our oceans. First, Mark Marinozzi from World Centric gives us some important facts about plastic straws and talks about the best ways to fight the problem. Then, we hear from Romain Troublé whose organization, Tara Expedition, has been making scientific ocean voyages for the past fifteen years to monitor and collect data about ocean plastic waste.

Narrator  0:01  This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability, I'm Alex Wise

Mark Marinozzi 0:20  it won't necessarily be a transition. In terms of straws as a category, it will be a transition in terms of the behavior of the trade customer and the consumer.

Narrator  0:34  The next time you sip on a drink from a straw, you may want to think twice because humans are producing an inordinate amount of plastic waste on straws alone. plastic straws are one of the leading contributors to ocean trash. They take up to 200 years to decompose, and they can't be recycled. Every year, the US alone uses enough straws to fill up nine baseball stadiums. plastic straws are pretty much the definition of wastefulness. They serve very little purpose and are terrible for the environment. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to two people who are doing their best to combat plastic waste in our oceans. First, Mark Marinozzi from World Centric gives us some important facts about plastic straws, and talks about the best ways to fight the problem. Then we hear from Romain Troublé, whose organization the Tara Foundation has been making scientific ocean voyages for the past 15 years to monitor and collect data about ocean plastic waste.

Alex Wise  1:57  I'm joined now on Sea Change Radio by Mark Marinozzi. He's the VP of Marketing at World Centric. Mark, welcome to Sea Change Radio.

Mark Marinozzi 2:05  Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

Alex Wise  2:07  So a lot of us have started seeing a spike in compostable packaging it seems to be anytime you go to a salad bar, let's say a whole foods you see these different type of clam shells and plates that are made out of cardboard that we may have seen plastic 10 years ago? Why don't you first explain the market and how World Centric plays a part in it?

Mark Marinozzi 2:32  Well, first of all, World Centric was started in 2004 by our founder and CEO Aseem Das. He was looking to raise awareness for large scale humanitarian and environmental issues, and to alert people that the pursuit of the good life was severely damaging the planet's ecosystems. So he started the company to both establish as a nonprofit, that awareness and also to advocate for creating better sustainability in our society, as well as trying to lessen the inequities between the two and a half billion people that live on less than $2 a day. So by 2009, he decided it was probably best to switch the company over to a for profit. But in 2010 actually converted it to a California benefit corporation and a B Corp. and B corpse are organizations that really focus on Triple Bottom Line and are looking to harness the power of business to solve social and economic problems.