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Throughline

Reframing History: The Litter Myth

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.715K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There is more waste in the world today than at any time in history, and the responsibility for keeping the environment clean too often falls on individuals instead of manufacturers. But, why us? And why this feeling of responsibility? This week, how one organization changed the American public's relationship with waste and who is ultimately responsible for it.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone, we're doing something a little different for the next few weeks.

0:03.8

We've been thinking a lot about what history is taught in school and how it's taught in school.

0:09.3

Yeah, it's one of the reasons this show even exists.

0:12.8

What we wanted to do was fill in the gaps and reframe the things we learned in history class.

0:18.5

So a few months ago, we started asking teachers for some of their favorite through-line episodes that do just that

0:24.6

and that they liked their students to hear before returning to school.

0:28.2

So starting this week, we're going to hear some of these teacher curated episodes.

0:32.9

This week is an episode recommended by Daniel Lopez from Whittier, California, who teaches physics.

0:39.7

And during one class talking about the broad application of physics in modern society,

0:45.1

we discussed both the beneficial and detrimental nature of human innovation.

0:49.3

From there, we started talking about plastics.

0:51.8

The through-line episode of the litter myth was very helpful in giving us a new perspective

0:58.0

on not only the scope of plastic manufacturing and consumer use today,

1:02.0

but the historical context of how we use new litter.

1:05.6

As an educator, we love to see it when students connect different subjects together

1:10.0

and leave the classroom with a better understanding of how everything is connected.

1:14.1

Thank you through-lines for connecting us.

1:22.0

The average American chucks a hefty four and a half pounds of trash a day.

1:32.4

I think we can do a little bit better Americans and our recycling habits have a lot of room for improvement.

1:37.2

The garbage reality is bigger than you might realize.

1:41.3

Garbage garbage trash litter problems on the streets and sidewalks.

1:46.9

People are still throwing trash out indiscriminately.

...

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