Plastic Pollution, Microplastics & The Mess We’re In – with Dr Olga Pantos

There have been a few big news stories circulating, claiming that microplastics have reached such a level that 5% of our brain is now made up of them.While that data is… questionable, it’s undeniable that plastic pollution is a major concern. That’s why, in this episode, we’re digging into the scientific evidence to separate fact from fiction.

In what might be a slightly bleak but necessary conversation, I’m joined by Dr Olga Pantos to help clear things up about plastics and microplastics.

Dr Olga Pantos is a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research and co-lead of the MBIE-funded project Aotearoa Impacts and Mitigation of Microplastics.Her background is in marine biology - she completed her undergraduate degree in Marine and Environmental Biology at St Andrews University in Scotland and her doctoral studies at The University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

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Transcript

Kia ora, kaitiaki, and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green. I'm your host, Brianne West—an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about taking a scientific approach to making the world a better place—without the judgment—and making it fun. And, of course, we'll be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet with.

So, if you're looking to navigate everything green—or not so green—you've come to the right place. Kia ora, kaitiaki, and welcome back.

Okay, so you’ve probably seen the headlines over the last few weeks about our brains being made up of 0.5% microplastics—or enough to form an entire spoon. And I know some people act like they've just got a spoon in their head, but you can relax a little because I don’t think all the scientists in the world agree with that study. It has some limitations.

But, since this is an opportune moment to talk about it—and because a lot of people have questions about microplastics—I have the wonderful Dr Olga Pantos with us today. She’s a marine biologist and a senior scientist at ESR here in Aotearoa. Her research includes everything from assessing the potential impacts of contaminants on wild-caught seafood and ecosystem health to investigating how we might reduce those impacts.

I am, obviously, skipping over a whole lot of her work, which she’ll dive into for us, but she’s at the forefront of understanding how these tiny, tiny plastic particles are getting into, well… everything. And whether we should be as concerned as the mainstream media are making us out to be. I think we probably should be—but I don’t think we know enough about it yet. But now we will.

Welcome, and thank you so much for joining me!

Olga: No, it’s great to talk to you.

Brianne: I am very excited to have you.

Now, the Gin Ladies—and people listening to the podcast—you’ll be interested to hear that the Gin Ladies will be on the podcast in a couple of weeks. They’ve told me a lot about you.

But you’re a marine biologist—and honestly, I don’t know a single person who didn’t want to be a marine biologist at some point in their life. It’s like the dream career, right? So… why? Why did you study it? How did you get into it? And I believe you studied in Scotland, so you obviously like cold water.

Olga: Yeah, that was more a means to an end. I’ve always wanted to do marine biology. I remember, as a six-year-old, for a primary school project, I made a showcase for a bunch of shells I’d collected and labelled them with their Latin names. My dad helped me put it together.

I think my love of the sea and everything in it came from spending every summer in Greece because my father is Greek. And since I grew up in the UK, our summer holidays were always in Greece. We had a house just five minutes from the sea.

So, if I ever went missing, he’d say, "Where’s Olga?" And the answer was always, "She’ll be in the sea." And I was in the sea. Hours and hours, just swimming around, looking, trying to understand things. And every year, we’d go back, and I’d check on everything—the seagrasses, the sea pens, the starfish.

One year, I actually found some solitary corals, and still, when I have the opportunity to go back, I check the rock I found them on. I’ve always loved it. So, my aim was to do it as a job, and I knew I needed to go to university.

So I did a degree in Marine and Environmental Biology at St Andrews University in Scotland. After that, I did a PhD in Newcastle, UK, looking at corals in the Caribbean and the diseases that affect them.

Brianne: So, you do like cold water!

Olga: Well, I did learn to scuba dive in Scotland. But then, for my PhD, I did a month’s fieldwork in Barbados—and I never went back in the cold water.

Brianne: Yeah, good call.

I actually think it's a great idea to learn in cold water, where it's just a little less pleasant, and then spend the rest of your time in the warm. You get the best of both worlds. It works out.

Have you ever swum with a basking shark in Scotland, actually? Or have you ever seen one?

Olga: No, that’s on the bucket list. They look spectacular.

Brianne: Yeah, they really do.

Olga: I have done some spectacular diving in Scotland, though, with fields of brittle stars—which was very good for buoyancy training, because you didn’t want to put your hands down anywhere. It was like a writhing mass, like you see in documentaries.

Brianne: Wow. Because they move in such a creepy way, don’t they?

Olga: Yeah, they’re fabulous.

Brianne: Very cool.

So, tell me a little bit about your research journey—because, obviously, today we’re going to talk about microplastics. But I know your work is much broader than that. You’ve looked at diseases in corals. How did you get to researching pollutants? Was it a long journey?

Olga: Long, but fairly direct.

Looking at diseases in corals, the factors affecting those diseases were all anthropogenic impacts—climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, eutrophication from land runoff.

So I moved in and out of specifically looking at corals, to looking at coral reef systems, back to corals, then to looking at tropical and subtropical coastal ecosystems. I was specifically looking at microbial communities in these environments and how external factors affected them. Because, like us with our gut microbiome, corals have a microbiome.

And these microbial communities play a critical role in keeping organisms and environments healthy. That’s the area I was particularly interested in.

Then, back in 2013, I became really interested in plastics and started looking at microplastics in coral reef systems. But then I moved to New Zealand—not so many corals here—so I kept the microplastics focus but applied it to different ecosystems.

Brianne: So, 2013. Microplastics have only really entered mainstream awareness in the last, what, three years? Or am I understating that?

Olga: Yeah, I think it’s only really come into the general public’s awareness in the last maybe seven or eight years.

I’d applied for funding to do this work—or any work on it—for a long time, but I kept hitting a wall because it wasn’t a public concern. Me and a lot of other scientists were saying, "This is really important, we need to be looking at it," but it wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.

Now, obviously, it’s a big talking point.

Brianne: Hopefully, you’re getting lots of research grants thrown at you now.

Olga: Oh no, what have we got ourselves into? Are we going to have real problems?

Brianne: Possibly, yeah.

But before we get into that—I think most people have a general idea, but what is a microplastic? It’s a broad category, isn’t it?

Olga: Yeah, and it’s actually a little unhelpful at times.

So, the definition of a microplastic is a particle of plastic—a synthetic polymer—that’s five millimetres or smaller. Then, from one micrometre (so, a thousandth of a millimetre) and smaller, it's defined as a nanoplastic.

These definitions vary slightly depending on who you ask, but the general consensus now is to stick with that.

The reason I say it’s a little unhelpful is that there’s a lot of talk about microplastics being bad, which leads some people to think, "Well, if it's bigger than five millimetres, then it’s fine,"—which, of course, isn't true.

It’s just a definition to help categorise things and make reporting easier. But anything above five millimetres isn't automatically not bad—it’s just that the way it interacts with different organisms changes depending on its size. So, really, we should be talking about plastic particle pollution rather than just microplastics.

Brianne: That makes sense. And microplastics as a category—it’s a really complex pollutant, isn’t it?

Olga: Yes! It’s not just the plastic itself.

When we think of plastic, we tend to imagine something like a polyethylene milk bottle or a polypropylene margarine container. But plastic is actually the polymer—so polyethylene or polypropylene refers to the polymer itself.

To turn that polymer into a plastic product, manufacturers have to add a lot of extra ingredients. There are things added during synthesis, and then even more things added in manufacturing—like slip agents, thermal stabilisers (because plastic needs to be heated up, and you want it to maintain its integrity), and colourants (because, say, you want your ice cream container to be blue).

There are about 16,000 different chemicals that have been identified as being associated with plastics.

Brianne: That’s a really good point. I don’t know why I’ve never really thought about that—because, yeah, when you think about plastics, you just think about PET, or whatever the base polymer is. But, of course, there’s all the other stuff in there too—colourants, additives… that's a very good point.

Olga: Right! And of those roughly 16,000 chemicals, about a quarter have been identified as being of concern for human health and environmental safety.

So, we know there’s a huge body of evidence saying that a lot of these chemicals are harmful. And the high-production consumer plastics—your polyethylene, polypropylene, PET—those are the ones people are most familiar with. Those common plastics alone have about 400 different chemicals of concern associated with them.

Brianne: 400?

Olga: Yes.

And then you’ve got the particle itself—which can have its own effects. It could be a fibre, a bead, or a sharp fragment, and each of those shapes will interact with organisms differently.

And then you’ve got the chemicals inside that particle—so it’s not just a simple pollution problem. It’s a massive cocktail of other chemicals that leach out as plastics break down—or, sometimes, they don’t even need to break down; the chemicals just gradually leak out over time.

It all depends on what environment they end up in.

Brianne: That was actually going to be one of my questions—whether we should be more concerned about the physical structure of microplastics, or the leachates (the chemicals they release), or both. But you’ve just answered that—it’s both.

And you mentioned plastic breaking down—but plastic doesn’t break down in the way we usually think of things breaking down, does it? It doesn’t decompose—it just breaks up into smaller and smaller fragments, right?

Olga: Exactly. We call it fragmentation.

Plastic will break into smaller and smaller pieces, and eventually, it’ll reach a point where we just can’t see it anymore—but it’s still there.

So when people say, "Oh, it’s gone,"—it’s not. It’s just invisible.

Brianne: Right.

And that’s why oxo-degradable plastic bags were such a bad idea. Sure, they won’t choke a turtle, but they’ll just turn into trillions of microplastics instead.

Olga: Exactly. You still have a physical particle in the environment.

And once plastic fragments get really small, they’re practically impossible to remove. So the best thing we can do is stop them from getting there in the first place.

Brianne: And that’s the really scary thing about microplastics, isn’t it? We’re literally finding them everywhere. Even in places where humans have barely been.

So, once they’re out there—especially when they’re five millimetres or smaller—the chances of removing them are pretty much zero.

So, I completely agree: turning off the tap is the only real option.

But let’s back up a step—where do they come from?

Obviously, they come off clothing, tyres… but is there a breakdown of which sources are contributing the most?

Olga: Well, plastic particles start fragmenting in different ways—UV exposure, mechanical processes, even biological processes.

For example, there are reports of microplastics in the ocean having very triangular shapes—because they’ve been bitten by turtles or fish. So, it's not just environmental factors breaking them down—animals are playing a role too.

Or, you might have a plastic item that’s started to crack in the sun, and then it ends up in soil, where plant roots work their way in—kind of like how tree roots crack pavements. That same process is happening to plastics, just at a much smaller scale.

It also depends on where the plastic ends up.

If it’s buried on a beach, it’s probably not fragmenting, because it’s not exposed to heat or sunlight. If it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, it's also in an environment where it won’t break down much—there’s no UV, no high temperatures.

Brianne: That makes sense.

And when we talk about microplastics, it’s usually in the context of water—whether that’s oceans, fresh water, tap water, or bottled water.

But they’re also in soil, right? Are they predominantly making their way into waterways, or is that just where the conversation has focused?

Olga: There’s a huge amount of plastic in terrestrial environments—it just hasn’t been talked about as much.

The focus has mostly been on marine plastic pollution, which is great because it’s raised awareness. But there’s so much plastic on land as well.

And I’m not just talking about landfills—although landfills do contain massive amounts of plastic. We’ve seen examples like the Fox Glacier landfill, which was once contained but is now spilling waste into the environment.

But plastics are also in agricultural soils. Horticulture and agriculture rely on plastics—for food production, food security, climate resilience.

Plastics can have useful properties in those settings—reducing water loss, cutting down on pesticide use—but if they’re not managed properly, they become another pollution source.

Brianne: Right.

And then there’s wastewater.

Olga: Yes—wastewater treatment plants are a huge source.

A lot of people don’t think about where their wastewater goes, but it’s a major way that microplastics enter the environment.

Some of the microplastics get filtered out—but then they end up in biosolids (the sludge left over from wastewater treatment). Those biosolids get applied to land as fertiliser in many countries.

Brianne: Oh. I hadn’t even thought about that—but of course that’s where it ends up.

Olga: Yeah, exactly.

So, in places like Norway, about 80% of their biosolids from wastewater treatment plants are applied to horticultural land. We don’t do that in New Zealand for cultural reasons. Here, biosolids are either sent to landfill or used in land remediation projects.

But even when biosolids do go to landfill, they can still make their way into the environment—because landfill leachate can carry microplastics into wastewater treatment plants, and from there, they get discharged into waterways.

If biosolids are applied to land, they might get buried under layers of soil, but ultimately, they are out in the environment.

Brianne: That’s definitely not something I’d ever thought about before—but it makes perfect sense.

Okay, I’ve just been to Norway, and obviously, they’re known for being very environmentally aware—which is kind of ironic for a country built on oil money, but that’s another conversation entirely.

Olga: Yeah…

Brianne: It’s actually quite distressing when you think about it.

And this is a global problem, obviously. Microplastics aren’t staying in one place—they’re in waterways, but they’re also in the air. They’re literally raining down on us. So, everyone is going to have to deal with this at some point.

Is there anything people might find surprising about microplastics? Any misconceptions or assumptions that you run into a lot?

Olga: One thing that does worry me is the attitude of “Well, it’s everywhere, so what can we do? Why should we even worry about it?”

But the thing is, we can always make things worse.

Brianne: That’s true.

Olga: And just because something is already a problem doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything about it.

Yes, microplastics are already in the environment, and plastic does have benefits in certain applications—so no one is saying we should ban it completely. But we can stop using unnecessary plastics.

Recycling isn’t the solution—it’s just one of the ways to deal with essential plastic. Things that actually benefit society, like medical equipment.

Not straws.

Brianne: Yes!—which, of course, our wonderful American president is now bringing back.

Actually, I say our wonderful—it’s got nothing to do with us.

Olga: Yeah…

Brianne: But one of the other things we need to do is develop better alternative materials.

And alternative materials that don’t come with unintended consequences.

Because we have this habit of jumping to so-called solutions that just create new problems. Like when we switched from plastic bags to paper and assumed it was automatically better—even though, in many ways, it’s worse.

Obviously, paper doesn’t have the microplastics issue, but it’s not as green as people think.

Are there any perfect solutions out there in terms of materials? I know there’s a lot of work being done on things like seaweed-based plastics.

Olga: There’s a lot of promising research happening, and I don’t think we should dismiss those efforts.

But at the same time, we need to take a whole-of-life-cycle approach.

Because if we don’t look at every stage—from raw material extraction to manufacturing, use, and end-of-life disposal—then we’re just setting ourselves up for another false solution.

Brianne: Right.

Olga: And doing that is how we avoid making the same mistakes again.

Brianne: Well, I mean, if you look far enough back, plastic itself was originally invented as a sustainable alternative—to replace ivory.

Olga: Exactly.

Brianne: So, it’s a perfect example of what happens when we rush into something without considering the full picture.

Granted, things were a little different back then.

Okay, let’s go back to the headlines we’ve been seeing lately—about microplastics showing up in human bodies.

Now, I know this particular aspect might not be your area of expertise, so feel free to pass on this one. But there’s been recent evidence suggesting that microplastics are moving into human cells—and even into the nucleus of cells.

That sounds really alarming. But we don’t actually know what they’re doing in there, do we?

Olga: No, we don’t. That’s still to be determined.

The research into microplastics and human health has barely been going on for a decade.

And the problem is, microplastics aren’t just one thing.

Like we talked about before, you’ve got:

• Different polymers
• Different additives
• Different shapes and sizes
• Different organisms interacting with them

A whale might swallow a plastic bottle and be fine—but if I swallowed a plastic bottle, that would be an immediate problem.

So the impact of microplastics depends on what they are, where they end up, and who they interact with.

And then there’s the age of the particles—because as plastics get older, their surface properties change.

If they develop cracks and fissures, they have a larger surface area, which means they can absorb more contaminants.

We’re even seeing plastics coming out of wastewater treatment plants that are harbouring human pathogens.

Brianne: Fabulous.

Olga: Yeah. And some of them are even carrying antimicrobial resistance genes.

Brianne: Oh, fantastic. So, they’re literally helping to spread antibiotic resistance?

Olga: Potentially, yes.

So, it’s not just a case of “There’s plastic in the environment”.

Plastics are acting as carriers for all sorts of other contaminants.

And that’s why, even though there are studies showing that certain microplastics might not have a harmful effect in one specific scenario, that doesn’t mean they’re harmless overall.

We need a lot more research, and we need to be able to repeat studies before we can say anything with certainty.

And that’s one of the biggest struggles right now—because the research is so new, and people are jumping to conclusions before we have enough data.

Brianne: Exactly.

And that’s exactly the point, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, we don’t know nearly enough yet.

The issue is so much more complicated than just “There are tiny shards of plastic rolling around in your brain”—which is how the media are portraying it.

And I don’t even blame the media, to be honest. They’re not researchers. They’re just trying to get clicks so they can keep their organisations afloat.

But the reality is so much more nuanced than the headlines make it seem.

Olga: Exactly.

Brianne: And that’s true of everything in sustainability and science.

Olga: Yep.

Brianne: And I talk about life cycles a lot. Because you cannot judge how sustainable something is just by looking at end of life.

That’s farcical.

It doesn’t matter how compostable or biodegradable a coffee cup is—if it’s still a single-use, disposable product, then it’s never going to be a sustainable choice.

Brianne: So, you said we can do something about this.

Yes, we need to turn off the plastic tap. And yes, there are lots of macroplastics—big bits of plastic—that we can physically remove with things like The Ocean Cleanup Project and similar initiatives.

But what about micro and nano plastics? Is there anything we can do about them once they’re in the environment? Or are they just… there forever?

Olga: Well, I guess they’re there for the life of the planet, really.

But one major source of microplastics that we can tackle is our clothing.

Brianne: I was going to ask you about that!

Olga: Yeah, so that’s something we definitely have control over.

If we can reduce how much plastic clothing we produce and buy, we can significantly cut down the amount of microplastics being released.

But we also need to rethink our entire demand for plastic—because as long as there’s demand, companies will keep making it.

And the thing is, plastics don’t just shed microplastics when we use them.

There’s a whole hidden part of this process that people don’t think about—plastics are shedding particles at every stage of their life cycle.

Brianne: Right.

Olga: So, in factories where plastics are being made or recycled, huge amounts of plastic dust and microplastics are released into the air.

Then there’s transport—every time plastic gets moved around, there’s a chance it’ll spill or degrade.

And that’s how you get things like nurdle spills—where entire shipping containers full of tiny plastic pellets end up in the ocean.

Brianne: Yeah, like the Plastic Ocean documentary showed—those nurdle spills are a massive problem.

Olga: Exactly. So, the more plastic we produce and transport, the more pollution we’re generating.

That’s why reducing overall demand is so important—because it’s not just about what happens when you use it. It’s about everything that comes before that.

Brianne: Exactly. The sooner we ban Temu and Shein, the better off the planet will be.

Obviously, they’re not the only companies producing polyester fast fashion, but I’ve talked about plastic in fashion before, and the world would be so much better without them.

Okay, so we know microplastics are inside us.

We don’t know to what extent or what they’re actually doing to us yet.

We do know that they’re in everything—our food, our water, the air we breathe.

And we also know that, as consumers, we contribute to this problem in loads of different ways.

Is there anything that you personally avoid to limit your contribution to microplastic pollution—or to reduce your own exposure?

Olga: Yeah, I have a few things!

One big one is tea bags.

Brianne: Yes!

Olga: If I’m at home, I always use loose-leaf tea.

Brianne: Because tea bags are a huge source of microplastics.

Olga: Right. Some are worse than others, but many tea bags contain plastic fibres, and when you steep them in hot water, they shed an insane number of plastic particles.

So, switching to loose-leaf tea is an easy fix.

Another thing is trying to reduce the amount of plastic in the kitchen.

I have this colander with a plastic coating that’s flaking off, and every time I use it, I get so much anxiety.

Brianne: I relate to that.

Olga: I mean, I’m not going to throw it out just yet—because it’s still functional, and replacing it unnecessarily would be wasteful.

But when the time comes to replace it, I won’t be getting another plastic one.

Brianne: Yeah, use what you have until it turns to dust—because it’s going to become microplastics anyway, so you might as well get the full use out of it.

Olga: Exactly.

Brianne: Try explaining that to a teenage girl who wants a new outfit every week, though.

Olga: Yeah, I imagine that would be tough.

Brianne: Yeah, well… don’t get me started on marketers, but that’s a whole other conversation.

They’ve got marketing manipulation down to a fine art.

You know, "Buy this dress, and you’ll feel better about yourself!"—and then next week, it’s another dress. And another one. And another one.

Olga: Yep.

Brianne: Okay, so—avoiding tea bags, reducing plastic use in the kitchen, and where possible, avoiding plastic clothing.

But if you do already have polyester clothing, keep using it—because throwing it out doesn’t help.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by it all?

Olga: Oh, absolutely.

Brianne: Same.

Who’d have thought?

Olga: Exactly.

And that’s why I don’t understand the argument of "Oh, well, it’s too big of a problem, so we shouldn’t bother."

Brianne: Exactly!

Okay, last question—and I already know what your answer is probably going to be.

If you were global supreme overlord and had total power to make one major change to help fix this problem, what would it be?

Olga: Oof. That’s complicated.

But I’d change the convenience mindset.

Brianne: Yes!

Because convenience is at the heart of the plastic problem, isn’t it?

We just assume, "This thing is useful, so I’ll use it,"—without actually thinking about where it came from or where it’s going.

Like, food-safe plastic—is it actually food-safe? Who knows?

Olga: Exactly!

We’ve only been using plastic at this scale for a couple of generations.

We can go back to using it only for essentials—we just need a mindset shift.

Brianne: I could talk to you forever, but I know you have another meeting, so I just want to say thank you again.

This has been so fascinating.

Not particularly uplifting, I’ll be honest—you have depressed me slightly—but it’s answered a lot of questions.

And I think people will find this both informative and horrifying—which is the best kind of episode.

Olga: Yep! We’ve taken some of the mental load for you.

Brianne: Thank you so much!

I don’t know about you, but I found that conversation disturbing.

And I thought I knew a reasonable amount about microplastics! I’ve read some truly horrifying studies—but somehow, this was worse than I anticipated.

Because, of course, I never really considered all the other things added to plastic—the dyes, the stabilisers, the sheer number of chemicals.

And then there’s the fact that plastics absorb even more toxins from their surroundings.

Like, in the ocean, microplastics get coated with things like dioxins—which are, of course, horrifically toxic.

So, it’s not just about the structure of the plastic itself—it’s also about everything attached to it.

And the 16,000 chemicals associated with plastics? Olga said about 25% of those are known to be harmful.

And the only reason the other 75% aren’t classified as dangerous is because… we haven’t tested them yet.

And then there’s this massive news story making the rounds—the one claiming that 0.5% of your brain is microplastics by weight.

The headlines are outrageous: "Plastic shards stabbing into your brain tissue, causing dementia!"—which, of course, we don’t actually know.

Now, I get why the media run with this stuff. They need clicks. They need to keep their organisations afloat. But it’s wildly misleading.

Because if you actually look at that study, it’s deeply flawed.

First, it was done on 52 brains.

Now, sample size really matters in research, and 52 brains is nowhere near enough to make claims about a small town, let alone the entire world.

On top of that, experts are already criticising the study for potential contamination issues, which could have caused false positives.

So, yes, microplastics are probably in our brains—but this particular study? Not the slam-dunk evidence it’s being made out to be.

That said, we should still be concerned.

Because as Olga pointed out, we don’t know what microplastics are doing inside us yet. We just know they shouldn’t be there.

But there are things we can do to reduce our exposure and contribution.

Tea bags—I knew this would surprise people when we posted about it a couple of weeks ago, and so many of you were shocked to learn how many microplastics come out of a single tea bag.

Plastic clothing—this is the biggest contributor, and it’s so easy to overlook.

And tyres—which are harder to avoid, but still, something to be aware of.

And on that note—luxury brands that use polyester and still have the audacity to call themselves luxury? Get in the bin.

Honestly, I wanted this episode to end on a positive note. I hoped Olga would have some good news for us.

But… nope.

That’s not the way the science is trending.

So, to switch things up, next week we’re talking about… fertilisers!

Yep.

Because not long ago, someone asked me to sign a petition to ban synthetic fertilisers. And I don’t think people fully understand how many people would die if we did that.

Which is an incredibly unpopular opinion.

But hey, here we are.

So, I’ll see you next week for that discussion.

And look—I know this episode was a little bleak.

But, as Olga said, sharing is caring.

We need to be aware of these things.

See you next week. Kia ora.

And there you go.

I hope you learned something.

And I hope you realised that being green isn’t about having an aesthetic pantry full of matching glass jars… or about moving to a commune.

I mean, if that’s your thing, fabulous.

But at its core, sustainability is just about using what you need.

If you enjoyed this episode, please don’t keep it to yourself.

Feel free to drop me a rating and hit subscribe.

Kia ora, and I’ll see you next week.