MAY 21 — Malaysia is aging much faster than many realise. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the country officially became an “aging nation” in 2021 when the demographic of those aged 65 and older reached 7 per cent. Based on current projections, we are expected to transition into an “aged nation” by 2048, with this group making up 14 per cent of the population. Despite this undeniable demographic shift, Malaysian law currently does not impose a
MAY 21 — Malaysia is aging much faster than many realise. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the country officially became an “aging nation” in 2021 when the demographic of those aged 65 and older reached 7 per cent. Based on current projections, we are expected to transition into an “aged nation” by 2048, with this group making up 14 per cent of the population. Despite this undeniable demographic shift, Malaysian law currently does not impose a blanket upper age limit on private driving licenses. The process remains governed by the standard operating procedures of the Road Transport Act 1987. Specifically, Section 30(3) of this Act mandates that all drivers, regardless of age, must ensure they are in good health to operate a vehicle safely. However, for everyday private vehicle owners, this relies entirely on self‑declaration rather than formal medical proof, a policy that is facing intense public scrutiny.
This scrutiny has been amplified by several highly publicised and tragic accidents in early May 2026. On May 5, 2026, an elderly man in his 70s lost control of his Proton X70 in Section 17, Petaling Jaya. The vehicle sped into the opposite lane and brutally rammed a motorcyclist where a food delivery rider in his 20s, who tragically died at the scene. The elderly driver was subsequently released on police bail due to his own underlying health reasons. Just days later, social media platforms like Reddit Malaysia were flooded with footage of another alarming incident where an elderly driver lost control and crashed directly into a bustling kopitiam stall, severely injuring a worker with hot liquid. These incidents have sparked widespread public outrage and reignited demands for stricter regulations.
Various authorities, including the Bukit Aman Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department, have continuously urged the government to implement specialised screening rules for seniors before they can renew their licenses. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon
Instead of a strict, arbitrary age cut‑off, the most prominent solution being debated is the introduction of mandatory health assessments for drivers aged 65 and above. Various authorities, including the Bukit Aman Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department, have continuously urged the government to implement specialised screening rules for seniors before they can renew their licenses. Enforcing mandatory medical screenings ensures that natural, age‑related physical declines such as deteriorating eyesight, slower reflexes, hearing loss, or cognitive conditions which do not put the driver or the wider public at risk. Establishing a firm, legally required health check removes ambiguity and saves families from the painful, subjective burden of telling an aging parent they are no longer fit to get behind the wheel. It shifts the responsibility from a personal family conflict to a standardised, unbiased medical evaluation.
Conversely, forcing elderly drivers to undergo mandatory health screenings or strict age caps risks institutionalising ageism and ignoring the vast spectrum of healthy aging. A major misconception is that chronological age universally dictates competence on the road; many advocacy groups point out that reckless behaviour and speeding among younger demographics still account for a massive portion of road fatalities. Automatically placing administrative hurdles in front of a sharp, physically active 75‑year‑old ignores their individual capability. The most severe drawback, however, is the very real economic and social strain this could cause. Stripping away an elderly person’s driving license or making it exceptionally difficult to renew through costly or stressful medical hurdles severely restricts their independence. For many older Malaysians, especially those in areas lacking robust public transit, the ability to drive equates to the ability to earn a living, buy groceries, or access vital healthcare. Cutting off these avenues prematurely could deepen financial hardship and social isolation for an increasingly vulnerable demographic.
Ultimately, navigating the driving capabilities of senior citizens is a complex balancing act for Malaysia, especially in the wake of recent tragedies. While strict age limits or sweeping mandatory assessments can act as a necessary safeguard for public safety, they also risk unfairly marginalising a massive portion of our population who are still capable and rely on their mobility to survive. Rather than implementing absolute bans based purely on a number, the most realistic and compassionate path forward likely involves highly targeted, government‑subsidised, and easily accessible health evaluations that aim to support and assist seniors rather than blindly penalise them. This approach prioritises the safety of Malaysian roads without sacrificing the dignity, mobility, and hard‑earned independence of our elders.
* Ts Dr Muhammad Ammirrul Atiqi Mohd Zainuri, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
MAY 19 — Not long ago, I was reading a draft journal article submitted by one of my postgraduate students. The structure was sound. The language was clear and precise. The arguments were presented in a logical sequence, supported by appropriate references. Everything seemed in order. It was only when I reached the discussion section that I paused.The writing remained polished, and the analysis appeared coherent. Yet there was something about it that felt incomp
MAY 19 — Not long ago, I was reading a draft journal article submitted by one of my postgraduate students.
The structure was sound. The language was clear and precise. The arguments were presented in a logical sequence, supported by appropriate references.
Everything seemed in order. It was only when I reached the discussion section that I paused.
The writing remained polished, and the analysis appeared coherent. Yet there was something about it that felt incomplete.
The conclusions followed from the findings, but they did not seem to fully engage with the deeper implications of the work. The argument moved forward, but it did not quite arrive.
I read the section again, trying to understand what was missing.
It was not a question of correctness. The analysis was not wrong. It was simply incomplete in a way that was difficult to articulate.
The words were there, the structure was there but the sense of insight that comes from careful reflection seemed absent.
In recent years, tools powered by artificial intelligence have become increasingly capable of producing text that is coherent, well-structured and persuasive.
Intelligence, as it is often expressed in such systems, is closely tied to the ability to process information, identify patterns and generate responses that align with those patterns. — Reuters pic
They can summarise complex ideas, generate explanations and assist in drafting academic work. In many ways, they have changed how we engage with knowledge.
There is much to appreciate in these developments. They can support learning, improve efficiency and make knowledge more accessible.
For students and researchers alike, they offer new ways of exploring ideas and organising thoughts.
Yet experiences like this raise a quieter question about how we recognise understanding when we encounter it.
Intelligence, as it is often expressed in such systems, is closely tied to the ability to process information, identify patterns and generate responses that align with those patterns.
It can be fast, efficient and, at times, remarkably convincing. Wisdom, however, seems to take shape in a different way.
It does not emerge from the arrangement of knowledge alone, but from a sustained engagement with ideas over time.
It is formed through reflection, through the willingness to remain with questions that are not immediately resolved, and through the gradual development of judgement that comes with experience.
It involves not only asking what can be concluded, but also considering what those conclusions mean and how they should be understood.
In academic work, this distinction can be subtle, but it is significant. A piece of writing may accurately describe results and connect them to existing literature, yet still leave unanswered the deeper questions that give the work its meaning.
What does this finding change? How does it challenge existing assumptions? Where might it lead next?
These are questions that cannot always be addressed through structure or language alone, but require a level of attentiveness that develops over time.
Such understanding is not always immediate. It often takes shape through revision, reconsideration and, at times, through recognising that an answer has not yet fully emerged.
This process may appear slow, but it is where genuine learning resides.
In this context, the presence of increasingly capable and powerful systems invites not only technical adaptation but also a renewed awareness of how we think.
The clarity and fluency of generated responses can give the impression that understanding has already been achieved, when in fact something more is still unfolding.
The more subtle challenge, perhaps, is not that such systems can produce convincing responses, but that we may begin to accept them without asking whether they are complete.
This does not diminish their value. Rather, it highlights the importance of remaining engaged in the process of thinking, of reading with care, and of recognising when an argument has been fully considered and when it is still in formation.
As I returned to the student’s draft, I realised that the task was not simply to refine the writing, but to encourage a deeper engagement with the work itself.
What was needed was not more knowledge but more reflection, not a clearer sentence, but a clearer understanding.
That distinction is not always visible on the surface but it is where much of intellectual growth takes place.
We are entering a time when the ability to produce intelligent responses is no longer the primary challenge.
That capability is becoming increasingly available. What remains, and what perhaps becomes more important, is the cultivation of a different kind of understanding.
And it is in that gradual process of reflection, shaped by time, experience and a willingness to think beyond what is immediately given, that we begin to recognise the shape of wisdom.
*Ng Kwan Hoong is an Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Imaging at the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya. A 2020 Merdeka Award recipient, he is a medical physicist by training but also enjoys writing, drawing, listening to classical music, and bridging the gap between older and younger generations. He may be reached at ngkh@ummc.edu.my
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
Researchers in the United Kingdom found that people who engage with the arts biologically age more slowly than those who do not. These results echo others over the years that show a correlation between exercising creative muscles and improved health outcomes.
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Researchers in the United Kingdom found that people who engage with the arts biologically age more slowly than those who do not. These results echo others over the years that show a correlation between exercising creative muscles and improved health outcomes.
When it comes to morel mushrooms, I’ve spent more time looking than finding. Far more. With that in mind, I wasn’t optimistic when I wandered out this spring to check last year’s burn area for morels.
Fifty acres burned last September.
Local lore says that morels grow exceptionally well the first year after a fire. Burn scar morels grow in relationship with conifers lying dormant in the soil for decades, just waiting for this opportunity. The fire removes competition and feeds the soil, creating
When it comes to morel mushrooms, I’ve spent more time looking than finding. Far more. With that in mind, I wasn’t optimistic when I wandered out this spring to check last year’s burn area for morels.
Fifty acres burned last September.
Local lore says that morels grow exceptionally well the first year after a fire. Burn scar morels grow in relationship with conifers lying dormant in the soil for decades, just waiting for this opportunity. The fire removes competition and feeds the soil, creating a nutrient-rich environment for the morel mycelium to fruit. With last summer’s fire so close, it’s easy for me to check it out.
As I enter the burn scar, there are no mushrooms on the first south-facing slope: no morels, no little brown mushrooms, nothing. I’m not surprised. Three-quarters of the way along the next slope, I see one. The tiniest little morel I’ve ever seen. Just the size of my thumbnail. I note the location and move on, excited that I was able to find one so small.
A few paces further, a pair is pushing next to a boulder. I will come back to this spot after a day or two of warm spring sunshine. The soil has to warm to about 50° for morels to start fruiting. That usually requires a combination of days in the 60s and nights in the 40s. It’s not been that warm at night yet.
Around the side of this same hill, the ground is covered with stalked bonfire mushrooms. Where they grow in the char, morels are likely to be. And there they are – tiny ones, but the more I look, the more I find.
My husband says, “They’re so small, how do you even find them?!?” Enthusiastically, I replied “I’ve been training my whole life for this!”
So now I know they really are there, and they prefer the pine needle-covered charred earth. I go back two warm days later. There are more, but still too small. Another two days and another doubling of the wrinkly coneheads pushing up.
And then, it rains.
This is just the thing to make them explode! I go back and fill my basket. Mushrooms have never tasted so good!
If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.
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Americans throw away nearly 5 million tons of film and flexible plastic packaging every year, and less than 1% of it gets recycled, according to The Recycling Partnership. The salad bag, the potato bag, the pallet wrap behind every grocery store — all of it is technically recyclable, almost none of it actually is, and food contact applications make the math even harder, because the FDA requires rigorous migration testing before a single recycled pellet can touch what we eat. Kevin Kelly, CEO of
Americans throw away nearly 5 million tons of film and flexible plastic packaging every year, and less than 1% of it gets recycled, according to The Recycling Partnership. The salad bag, the potato bag, the pallet wrap behind every grocery store — all of it is technically recyclable, almost none of it actually is, and food contact applications make the math even harder, because the FDA requires rigorous migration testing before a single recycled pellet can touch what we eat. Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, the largest supplier of retail flexible packaging to the U.S. produce industry, has spent decades on that problem from inside the industry. In December 2025, his Union City, California–based, third-generation family business announced that it had eliminated more than 1 million pounds of virgin polyethylene over the previous year by replacing it with post-consumer recycled (PCR) material, including, in partnership with Walmart, Idaho Package, and Wada Farms, the first 30% PCR potato bag approved for direct food contact. On this episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, Kevin walks through what it actually took to get that bag on a Walmart shelf, why most flexible packaging companies still won’t try, and why the most ambitious recycling law in the country may push the industry in the wrong direction.
Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, is our guest on Sustainability In Your Ear.
Food-grade PCR is a different animal from the recycled plastic in a milk crate or a contractor bag. To pass FDA scrutiny, the feedstock has to be traceable from a known, food-adjacent source. For Emerald, that mostly means pallet wrap collected from Walmart distribution centers, washed, dried, and repelletized by suppliers like Dow Chemical’s Circulus mechanical recycling business and Canada’s Nova Chemicals. Variation in any given load of recyclable plastic causes carbon buildup on Emerald’s extrusion lines, forcing a shutdown every eight hours for cleaning, and waste rates are higher than with virgin resin. The company has had to audit its own suppliers in person, push back on competitors who hide non-food-grade PCR in the middle layer of multilayer films and call it sustainable, and walk produce buyers through what “food-grade” actually means before they sign on. Kevin describes Emerald as “the canary in the coal mine” for food-grade PCR — he can’t find another bag in the store that’s labeled the same way.
The harder argument Kevin makes is about policy. California’s SB 54, the most ambitious extended producer responsibility (EPR) law in the country, with a 65% recycling rate target and a 25% source reduction mandate by 2032, was supposed to drive exactly the kind of work Emerald is doing. But Kevin says the rulemaking went the other way. The pound-for-pound PCR credit that would have rewarded companies for replacing virgin resin with recycled content was stripped out, and the fees are low enough that producers can hit early reduction targets through agricultural film and other low-hanging fruit without ever switching to food-grade PCR. The deeper structural problem Kevin lays out is the capital story. Family-owned manufacturers freed from quarterly returns pressure, Kevin argues, are doing more to push food-grade PCR forward today than the capital pools that are theoretically supposed to fund the energy and sustainability transition.
To find out more about Emerald Packaging, visit empack.com.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability In Your Ear. This is the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable, carbon-neutral society, and I’m your host, Mitch Ratcliffe. Thanks for joining the conversation today.
Every year, Americans buy roughly 5 billion pounds of fresh produce that’s packaged in flexible plastic — that’s salads, carrots, potatoes, lots of produce. That packaging extends shelf life, reducing food waste, but most of it is made from virgin polyethylene refined from fossil fuels, and almost none of it gets recycled.
My guest today is Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, the largest supplier of retail flexible packaging for the U.S. produce industry. And on December 11 of 2025, Emerald announced a significant milestone: that over the previous year, the company had replaced more than 1 million pounds of virgin polyethylene with post-consumer recycled material, or PCR, as you’ll probably hear it in this discussion.
That shift — granted that it’s only a million fewer pounds of plastic packaging in a vast sea of it — is a suggestion of what’s possible in food packaging. However, getting recycled plastic approved for direct food contact isn’t simple. Produce packaging is especially demanding, because shelf life and food safety are not negotiable. The FDA requires rigorous testing to ensure that no contaminants from that PCR migrate into food, and for years, the industry defaulted to virgin plastic because recycled content couldn’t meet those standards reliably at scale.
Emerald is working to change that equation. In collaboration with Walmart, Idaho Package, and Wada Farms, amongst others, they’ve introduced the first 30% post-consumer recycled materials potato bag approved for food contact, and Emerald’s initiative supports Walmart’s Project Gigaton, which aims to eliminate 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from the retailer’s supply chain by 2030. Emerald has also partnered with D’Arrigo, the company behind Andy Boy produce, to introduce another 30% PCR bag for romaine lettuce hearts — and that’s a shift that has removed over 600,000 pounds of virgin plastic from the supply chain between June 2023 and 2025.
Emerald is a third-generation, family-owned company based in Union City, California. Kevin brings the perspective of an organization that has operated through six decades of rapid, often revolutionary changes in how Americans buy and consume food. He’s led the company through its evolution from a regional bag manufacturer to becoming an industry leader, pushing the boundaries of sustainable, flexible packaging.
So we’re going to talk with Kevin about what it took to get recycled content into food contact packaging at scale, whether grocery customers are willing to pay more for sustainable options, how California’s recent SB 54 packaging law is reshaping the industry, and whether flexible packaging can ever become truly circular when most curbside programs still don’t accept it. You can learn more about Emerald Packaging at empack.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. Empack.com.
Can recycled content packaging go from future milestone to mainstream reality? Let’s find out, right after this. Welcome to the show, Kevin. How you doing today?
Kevin Kelly (3:33)
I’m doing great. How are you?
Mitch Ratcliffe (3:35)
I’m well, I’m well. Thanks for asking, and thanks for joining us. We’ve been working to get together for a few months now, and I’m glad that we actually now have the opportunity to complete the conversation. I’ve shared a summary of Emerald Packaging’s recent activity in my introduction, but could you share the backstory? When did your grandfather start the company?
Kevin Kelly (3:52)
It was actually my father. He started it in 1963 with three partners. They were based in Berkeley, California, and they mainly made — not produce packaging, which is what we specialize in now — they were making bread bags, because they were in the bread district. They were unionized by the bread workers’ union. It was a very different company when they started out. It also had one printing press and two bag machines.
Today, we have 32 bag-making machines, seven printing presses, and I don’t know how many other machines, and about 250 employees. It became a family business in ’93, and then gradually the other siblings retired, and I’m the last one here. So we’ve got a wonderful staff behind us — very creative, very technical, and best of all, they’re very detailed, which I’m not, which is why we’ve been having problems getting together for a couple of months.
Mitch Ratcliffe (4:52)
Tell me, how has the company changed since you’ve been involved with it? Obviously you just described a massive transition. But why the sustainability focus? When did that take hold?
Kevin Kelly (5:05)
Well, I started worrying about sustainability and packaging back in 2000, believe it or not, when the California Integrated Waste Management Board did a study of what was in landfills, and it turned out that plastic was a lot of what was in landfills, especially the ground covering that the agricultural industry uses in their growing operations. And so we started, with a bunch of California companies back then, having a conversation with the American Chemistry Council, which I can’t stand — I’m just going to be upfront about it — about creating a recycling system in California, because you could tell in the early 2000s this moment was coming. I mean, maybe it was a distant moment, but it was coming.
And the ACC told us absolutely not. The resin companies wanted nothing to do with fees. So really, back then, a bunch of small plastics companies in California couldn’t do anything if the ACC wouldn’t let us do anything. They had that much influence amongst both parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.
And so from there, I was sort of an orphan for a long time, you know — trying this, trying that. Worked with potato-based films, worked with PLA, polylactic acid. Tried different approaches. And then finally, a few years ago, post-consumer recycled resin became, I think, more affordable. It’s still about three times, four times the cost of virgin resin, but blended with virgin resin, I thought it was an affordable option now.
Trying to get people to buy anything that they can’t pass on — what a lot of people don’t know is that CPGs have year-long contracts with retailers, and there’s no causes for price increases, including acts of war, acts of God, supply disruption. So a lot of these companies are getting killed right now, but that’s another story for another day. They have no way to really pass on increases. And Walmart’s always said, we want sustainable packaging — we want it for free. They don’t say free; they say we want it for the same price as what we’re paying right now, which I take to mean free. They’ve gotten a little bit better in that stance, by the way, but there was really no way to pass things on.
So finally, in 2023, I just said, damn it. I’ve been working on this issue in one form or another for most of my career in packaging. I’m just going to do it. And so we convinced a customer to take their entire line and put 30% PCR in it, and we ate the cost of it. That was about 400,000 pounds of PCR right there. And from there, we attracted the interest of other companies. Some companies have taken surcharges, but PCR has really become our thrust at this point.
We’re still working with a lot of compostable options — in other words, experimenting — because at 5x, 6x, 7x, 10x, it’s still a very difficult proposition for most companies to take on. Companies with big margins, or specialty companies that don’t have year-long contracts, they have a little bit more leeway in this area, I think. But compostables remain — I’m not going to call it a pipe dream, because I’m feeling like the extended producer responsibility programs are making it more feasible — but they’re just not there yet.
Mitch Ratcliffe (8:39)
You’ve removed more than a million pounds of virgin plastic from your supply chain so far with recycled material, and that’s just within the last couple of years. How did you have to change the company to embrace the PCR process and address customer concerns about food safety?
Kevin Kelly (8:57)
Well, those are two great questions. I’ll break it down on a couple of different levels. Internally, when you’re the CEO of a family-run business and you say, hey, let’s go do this, people tend to start going and doing it. And there was a great deal of enthusiasm amongst the troops anyway about taking on a real project and commercializing it. So within the company, there wasn’t much opposition.
Now, Kevin walking into a room and saying, hey, there’s this really great technology — there’s a company, Circulus, that’s got an operation out in the Central Valley of California, about two hours away — let’s start working with them. Well, then my poor Director of Operations, Michael Rincon, has to make it happen. And PCR is an animal all its own. In terms of production runs, there’s a lot of variation within loads, for instance — not just between loads, but within. It causes a lot of carbon buildup on the extrusion lines, and so you have to shut down and clean them every eight hours. There’s much greater waste because of the variation within the loads, and so on and so forth. So we had a lot of learning on the production side in order to make this happen. We’re still learning.
But the other piece there has been the inconsistency amongst suppliers. Everybody talks about recycling and packaging, and yet you go to recycling conferences, and all you hear and all you really read about are the financial problems of recycling companies. The end markets really still aren’t there for them. In the case of PET, they’re competing with overseas supply that’s much cheaper. And so getting a consistent source as one company after the other goes out of business has been tough. So that’s been a challenge.
Our customers — they took us at our word that it was safe. They wanted to see what the process for ensuring that it was food-grade PCR was, you know — what were our certifications, what were the certifications of our suppliers, and then how did we trace within loads? Because the last thing you want is food-grade mixing with non-food-grade.
Mitch Ratcliffe (11:18)
You make this point already, and it was a question I wanted to dig into a bit, which is: with PCR, the sources are very mixed. Where does the feedstock come from? Is it from previously used film, or are we talking about other sources as well?
Kevin Kelly (11:33)
No, you’re talking, in the case of food-grade — you’re talking previously sourced film for, you know, plastic wrap around pallets. It’s not the salad bag that’s being brought back to the store and the store drop-off thing.
Mitch Ratcliffe (11:51)
And so this is largely a procurement management issue for you. And do you do a lot of testing of the material you get, or is this something that you take as certified? And is there a certification that you can rely on?
Kevin Kelly (12:04)
Well, I think that’s been one of the problems. You have this sort of nebulous process where a company that is making food-grade PCR — it’s nebulous. It just sounds strange. It’s not what I’m used to. When I’m used to certifications, they go to the FDA, they submit samples, they submit their process, and the FDA will come back and say — give you what’s called a letter of no objection, which hardly sounds like an endorsement, a stamp of approval. It’s like, we got no objection. So I think that process really actually has to be cleaned up.
There has to be some way — the Biodegradable Products Institute, there has to be some way of certifying companies and periodic testing that goes beyond us testing our incoming material. We’re a $90 million company. We have the ability to do some testing, and we do, but really we’re relying on Dow Chemical and Nova Chemicals to do what they say they’re doing, which is sourcing pallet wrap, washing it, washing it again, drying it, repelletizing it, drying it again, to drive out any impurities. So it is a difficult process. We have to have possession from them of the chain going all the way back to the source, but that’s a lot of documentation, and I think that’s where companies have come to rely on mass balance. But mass balance doesn’t tell you anything about food-grade, non-food-grade, and it’s also, of course, been manipulated by companies in ways that have undermined a process that could otherwise be helpful.
Mitch Ratcliffe (13:58)
Thinking about what you just said — is a transparency movement needed in order for PCR materials to be truly understood, both by the manufacturer who’s going to use the material and the consumer in the long run? Do we need that kind of full life cycle accounting to be available to say this plastic has gone through these steps, so people have confidence about the food safety issues?
Kevin Kelly (14:22)
I think so. I’m trying to imagine in my head how we would do that. That’s why there’s people smarter and greater than I involved in these things. But I think some way of tracing back, or some way of testing, or more periodic testing. Or, for instance, you could say, Emerald Packaging, you have to test your material 10, 15 times a year, submit, and it has to be done. You know, actually, that doesn’t work. I’m trying to think of a way you could possibly do it, you know, so that it’s absolutely ironclad. I’m going to say, I don’t quite know how you would do it, but I would frankly prefer that, because I know I’m making all efforts to use food-grade PCR, right? We’re documenting, we’re maintaining all of our documentation, and we’re working only with suppliers that we’ve gone and visited and certified ourselves.
There are other companies, especially at the beginning when we came out, who were saying — you can make a plastic that has three to five layers in it, right? You’re using one plastic on the surface, something in the middle, and another plastic on the surface. And they would say, well, we’re using PCR; it doesn’t have to be food-grade, because we’re putting it in the middle. You know, that protects it. And the company buying — particularly, say, in the produce industry — who aren’t educated in these things might think that that sounds reasonable. It’s not, of course, because whatever you put in the middle migrates to the surface. So if you’ve got contaminants in the damn thing, you know they’re going to get out of the middle eventually and end up on the surface, and then end up on the food.
And so we had to do a lot of customer education about what they had to get from their supplier in order for them to be reasonably certain that they were using food-grade PCR versus just any old derelict PCR that came from materials that are fine in a garbage bag, but not fine touching food. That education process largely then fell on us. I think we’re so early in this — I, you know, frankly, haven’t been able to find another bag or package in the store that says it uses food-grade PCR. We’re sort of like the canary in the coal mine. A lot of what one might hope would be coming from an industry organization, or the FDA, or a California certifying government body, or a government body that would be checking, you know, whether things were food-grade or not — randomly off the store shelf — all that’s fallen on us.
Mitch Ratcliffe (17:18)
That’s a huge undertaking, and I can understand now why it’s three or four times more expensive to use this material. How did you make the case to Wada Farms or D’Arrigo that this was a good choice? Was it a sustainable, moral suasion argument, or was it a consumers-are-going-to-love-you-for-this? How did you bring them on board?
Kevin Kelly (17:39)
For me, it starts with: this is a great way to make your packaging more sustainable. It starts with the moral argument that I always begin with — that, because that’s where I come from. I know one should be thinking about these things as huge marketing opportunities, and they are, I suppose. But for me, it’s really about: what can packaging do to move the needle on becoming more environmentally friendly? You know, I guess that just comes out of familial commitment, having to look your kids in the eye and tell them you’re actually doing something versus not. And so I always begin the conversation there.
And then I go to the marketing question — consumers will love it. And, oh, by the way, you know, Walmart has a program — that they’ve revised somewhat — but they have a program really emphasizing post-consumer resin in Walmart brand. And so this is something that will please Walmart, especially if the upcharge is very small or there’s no upcharge at all. And in the case of Wada Farms, that’s the sale they really took to Walmart. And whoever the purchasing person at Walmart on the other end was knew about the Walmart program, was committed to the Walmart program, and so jumped on the opportunity. That doesn’t always happen, but they did, and they saw it both, I think, as an internal possibility to fulfill an internal commitment to the environment, but also a way to market potatoes to consumers using packaging that was more environmentally friendly.
Mitch Ratcliffe (19:27)
If we don’t make this transition, what’s the outcome for the economy in the long term? Do we essentially choke ourselves on our waste? How do you envision the benefits of the sustainable packaging movement alleviating the crisis that we’re entering?
Kevin Kelly (19:45)
I think that the crisis operates on many different levels, right? So let’s sort of back up a little bit. You have the greenhouse gas crisis, you have the waste crisis, and they intersect, obviously, but they’re two distinct things.
And so in the case of some packaging, I believe there’s an argument to be made that it actually does reduce food waste and therefore greenhouse gas. The State of Oregon looked at that question in 2017 in a little-known study that came back and said, in the balance, produce packaging, for instance, reduces greenhouse gas through reduction of food waste, food preservation, shelf life extension, more than it actually contributes to greenhouse gas in the production thereof. So there’s this single study floating out there that says that. It’s not true in the case of every kind of packaging.
You can certainly ask yourself — and I’m not going to get into this debate — whether we need Ho Hos and Twinkies or not, and whether we need them wrapped, therefore, to get them. So, you know, there is this question on the store shelves of where is packaging beneficial and where it isn’t.
I think PCR moves the needle a little. I think it tells you where we are in this process. When one turn of this is close to being circular, right? Maybe we’ve, like, rounded the bend — one of the hundreds of bends to go to actually form a complete circle. But it’s a start. I mean, which is the way, I guess, we sort of have to look at it.
If you’re over in my world, the thing about sustainable packaging, and I think this has been true for the last 20 years, is that the technologies exist today to take the entire packaging world into compostable packaging. We’d then be choking on compostable packaging. But, you know, we’d need a lot of home compost, obviously, to deal with billions of pounds of compostable packaging. I mean, the infrastructure doesn’t exist, so on and so forth. The point I’m making here is the technology has been there. The question throughout has been, who’s going to pay for it?
Mitch Ratcliffe (22:22)
I think this is an absolutely critical question, and one we hear about with the green premium. I want to dig into this, but we’re going to take a quick commercial break, folks. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned.
Mitch Ratcliffe (22:37)
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. Let’s continue talking with Kevin Kelly. He is the CEO of Emerald Packaging in Union City, California, and we’re talking about the company’s investments in developing more sustainable food packaging options. Kevin, you mentioned that the flexible packaging recycling infrastructure in the United States is, let’s just say, still very limited. Most curbside programs don’t accept it. As you look at the material flow in your industry, are there new business opportunities in collection and processing that you see people missing, that they should be stepping into?
Kevin Kelly (23:12)
Well, I think you’re being generous when you say it’s limited. It’s virtually nonexistent, right? I mean, let’s be — the store drop-back, drop-off program is a nice — I don’t know, it’s nice, but imagine if everybody took their bags back to the store and Safeway became a solid waste dump. You know, it’d be a wake-up call to everybody.
But at any rate, I think there’s a big business opportunity in recycling, period. The issue has been on that end of things — the end markets. Okay? So you have recycled material. Where does it go? In a free market economy, you’re dealing with virgin material that’s cheaper than its recycled cousin. How do you create markets — not just create markets so that you attract capital into the recycling business, especially now where so many recyclers are going belly up because the end markets don’t exist and there’s too much competition for materials that can actually be used and resold? Which is true in the food-grade PCR business as well. I mean, how many loads of pallet wrap can you get out of a Walmart distribution center? There’s a lot of competition for what are called clean bales. They’re super expensive, and then you have to be able to turn around and sell that at a profit.
The perfect example is Circulus, which was a company that was created to make PCR, including food-grade PCR. They put a gorgeous facility in the Central Valley — some of the most sophisticated machinery I’ve ever seen in my life. And I love manufacturing lines. They put another one in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and they were going to put one in Georgia that I think they’re finally going ahead with. Was backed by venture capital — backed by a group out of Texas. And I think they looked at it as, wow, look at these EPR programs. There’s going to be a real opportunity here. And I’d say three years ago, I would have thought the same. They lasted about 18 months. And venture capital, private equity — which would be one source of capital in order to build out, you know, a private recycling system — recognized that they weren’t going to make any money soon. I always said I wanted to be the second or third owner of Circulus, because I was convinced, you know, within a few months of getting to know the market, that they were going to not make it, and that the private equity, which wants to see instantaneous returns, wasn’t going to be able to put up with the ups and downs of the current recycling system.
So they ended up selling out to Dow Chemical. You know, Dow Chemical has kept the operation going. They’ve put some money into it. They closed — I should say they closed the facility in central California. They kept the Ardmore facility going. They’re building the facility in Georgia. How much money will Dow put in to expand it? You know, they haven’t shown a great appetite to do so. The resin company that has probably put the most money in is Nova Chemicals, up in Canada, which sort of makes sense, because you have well-developed EPR programs in Canada, right? You have mandates around recycled material use in some provinces, and so Nova’s got a pretty good market just there in order to be able to sell the material.
Again, I think — you know, businesses sometimes don’t like to hear this, but the word “mandate” is going to be probably the savior of recycling in the United States, because governments mandating post-consumer resin use will drive a market and a viable one, because companies will have to actually use the material in order to hit the mandate.
Mitch Ratcliffe (27:35)
So with EPR laws taking off across the country — but particularly California’s SB 54, that requires a 65% reduction in single-use plastic waste by 2032 (so six years from now), and it has minimum recycled content thresholds in law as well. How has that changed the game? Are we moving in the right direction? Do you see that policy starting to come into place to put the weight behind the spear?
Kevin Kelly (28:02)
Good question. I think that SB 54 might actually do the opposite. Why? Because, in the original regulations, if a company used PCR, they were given a pound-for-pound credit against their fees. That got wiped out. And now, the overall program — if you get the mandate — is to reduce plastic use by 10%, the use of virgin plastic, by a certain date. I think it’s 2028. The low-hanging fruit there is, say, agricultural film, or something that is using a lot of plastic where you can use non-food-grade material all day long, and it doesn’t have to be widely used across the supply chain. 8% or 10% is an easy number to hit.
The fees themselves are small enough — believe it or not, even at, say, 60 cents a pound or 80 cents a pound for the worst sort of materials, mixed materials — that it doesn’t make sense to switch to food-grade PCR, which is still, you know — the differential before we went into the war was around $1.30 a pound between it and virgin material.
And so I think the regulation writers have to be more cognizant about the economics and the financial incentives that are being set, both within the fees and within the regulations themselves, in terms of using PCR or compostables as an offset. And one of the problems there — I think you get to the crux of this — is that there’s not a lot of conversation between all parties. The regulators aren’t talking — we’re just now starting, and, you know, it’s shame on both parties. We’re just now starting to talk to CAA, and we’re just now starting to talk to CalRecycle, and we’re really just now beginning to explain the economics of PCR within the structure of an EPR system. And I wish we had had these conversations a year, a year or two ago. It’s hard for CalRecycle to find us. It’s hard for us to find them in the mix. We’re small. I think we’ve come to more prominence because of the food-grade PCR use, and the fact that we’re one of the few doing it, and so folks have begun approaching us.
But in general, you know, having conversation with the packaging industry has been not that fruitful for regulators for decades, and so it isn’t a conversation that most have sought out. You know, even if there’s one or two of us out there who would like to genuinely have it and like to genuinely engage, it’s hard to find us in the mix of “nos” that the American Chemistry Council throws out there for every proposal for reform. So that’s a — I don’t know if the answer is discombobulated or not, but I’m finding that there’s not an easy answer to any of these questions. There has to be a thoughtful answer. To be thoughtful, you have to understand the packaging and the market and the prices within the market, and folks are very often unwilling to talk about prices and where they are today, and where they might be if we actually scale a proper recycling system, with proper PCR manufacturing, and then a proper end market. Those are the kind of conversations I think that need to be had in every state across the country that’s developing an EPR program.
Mitch Ratcliffe (32:07)
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I’m surprised to hear that those conversations didn’t happen as we were preparing for SB 54 to go through the legislative process. But let me ask this: if, in fact, all the pieces fall into place — regulatory, there’s demand, and so forth — can you get past 30% PCR in this packaging? Is this a technical limit or a supply limit at this point?
Kevin Kelly (32:34)
It’s a technical limit.
Mitch Ratcliffe (32:36)
It’s a technical limit. So where can we go?
Kevin Kelly (32:39)
Right now, we’ve pushed to 50%. So we’re not at 100, and that’ll take, you know, some time. I think that would take several years, just given variations inside loads. But I think 50% is possible. It’s not the best-looking plastic on Earth, you know, but it’s certainly a reduction in virgin resin, and it is technically possible with the right company producing low-variation, high-grade PCR. And there are some out there who do that. So we found you can push it along.
I wouldn’t want to stake a claim and say all my packaging is going to be 50% PCR today, because I don’t think we could find enough consistent material, you know, to come up with 20 million pounds of PCR capable of creating 50% PCR packaging. I just wouldn’t want to do it. I think 30% is comfortable, and frankly, above what most companies are willing to attempt, which is around 20.
Mitch Ratcliffe (33:52)
Why is that?
Kevin Kelly (33:54)
It’s — I think this is where we get into, as a smaller, family-owned business, we can de-emphasize profit a little bit and say, okay, we’re going to push this to the technical limit that we’re comfortable with, and we’re going to accept more downtime for cleaning and dealing with loads that might require a lot more babysitting through the production process. We’re willing to do that. I think a lot of companies — once you, you know, if you’re owned by private equity, if you’re publicly owned, it’s a different calculus than the calculus we make. And I think that’s one of the benefits of smaller family-owned businesses. You know, if the family has a sense of social responsibility.
Mitch Ratcliffe (34:44)
Do you think that, in the private equity-dominated world that we’re in right now, we lack the sufficient patient capital to achieve a circular economy in the long term? Or are enough sources of capital starting to migrate toward this in response to things like the war and onshoring our supply chains and so forth, to get us there sometime within our lifetimes —
Kevin Kelly (35:08)
Yours and mine?
Mitch Ratcliffe (35:09)
Yeah, recognizing we’re both of a certain age.
Kevin Kelly (35:12)
My children’s, sure. You know, I’m 65. I don’t see it, unfortunately, happening in my lifetime. Now, I didn’t think I’d see an American Pope in my lifetime either, so there are surprises in the world.
Mitch Ratcliffe (35:30)
Miracles do happen.
Kevin Kelly (35:31)
They do. So I think, all things being possible, I would feel very comfortable saying my 25-year-old kids will live in a very, very different economy than the one I do today. And, you know, I think we do have to get past the private equity mindset. In fact, you know, the problem with where the social goals of society have gone, and where private equity has gone, has really shifted things far more, as you allude to, you know — getting returns within five years and flipping the company and, you know, doing this and doing this and doing this. It’s not worried, really at all, about social responsibility. So that’s where state mandates, I think, come into play, because you impose those upon companies that might not otherwise wish to engage them.
Mitch Ratcliffe (36:27)
When you imagine a grocery shopper picking up a bag of potatoes or romaine hearts, and they see that it’s made with PCR — what do you want them to understand about what that actually means to them and their health and the environment?
Kevin Kelly (36:42)
Well, I want them to know that it doesn’t affect their health in any particularly bad way. So we want them to feel comfortable that the recycled material is, in fact, food-grade, and what’s touching the food isn’t going to somehow, you know, introduce cadmium into their bodies, something like that. So you’d certainly want that — the bare minimum.
Then, I think, you next want them to know that this is a nice step along the road to a better, environmentally friendly packaging world, and that by buying this packaging and not that packaging, they’re choosing to support it. You see that most clearly in the experiment that Taylor Farms is doing at certain grocery stores with the fiber tray, fiber clamshell. You can choose the all-plastic one, or you can pay 10 cents more and actually get a little bit less spinach. Which one are you going to choose? And the consumer actually has been going for that fiber tray.
Mitch Ratcliffe (37:50)
All the data says that the consumers want those kinds of things.
Kevin Kelly (37:54)
They’re willing to pay a little bit more, or they’re willing to take a little bit less for themselves to participate, right? I mean, they feel like, okay, I’m shopping, but I’m actually making a statement in buying this and not that. So I think that allowing consumers to participate in building the world that they would like to build is important messaging that companies should be creating and making, in terms of marketing, what they’re trying to sell. Because you do want consumers to feel good about what they’re buying, but you want them also to be supporting the world they want, and the world we’d all like to see — which is a far more environmentally friendly one than the one we’re in today.
Mitch Ratcliffe (38:42)
Well, we can hope and we can work. As Jane Goodall said, hope is an active verb. It’s not something you sit back and wait for the results of.
Kevin Kelly (38:49)
That’s good.
Mitch Ratcliffe (38:51)
How can our listeners follow Emerald Packaging’s progress? Where should they tune in?
Kevin Kelly (38:56)
Well, I think we keep updates going on our website. I do a lot of interviews, and as we make progress, I tend to write about it or talk about it. Most of the articles about us, or information about us, eventually turns up in our news, the news part of our website. Or I started to use LinkedIn — we’re not a big company, so we’re not, you know, doing advertising on social media, or advertising on television, or anything like that. But we do try to get the word out there about what we’re doing and what we see as possible, both when it comes to PCR, when it comes to EPR laws, and when it comes to compostable materials.
Mitch Ratcliffe (39:43)
Well, Kevin, I hope that talking today helped spread the story, and I really appreciate it. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Thanks very much.
Kevin Kelly (39:50)
Oh, I thank you, and thanks for putting up with the complexities of the conversation. I think we captured that pretty well.
Mitch Ratcliffe (40:02)
Welcome back to Sustainability In Your Ear. You’ve been listening to my conversation with Kevin Kelly, CEO of Emerald Packaging, the largest supplier of flexible packaging to the U.S. produce industry, and the company that has now replaced more than 1 million pounds of virgin polyethylene with post-consumer recycled material, or PCR, in food contact bags that you can buy at Walmart through Wada Farms, and Andy Boy romaine hearts packages. You can learn more about Emerald and Kevin’s work at empack.com — that’s all one word, no space, no dash. Emeraldpackaging.com.
The headline here isn’t that million pounds, even though that’s an encouraging piece of news. The headline is that Kevin started having this conversation in 2000, when the California Integrated Waste Management Board first measured plastic in landfills and asked the American Chemistry Council whether the industry might participate in a recycling system. And of course, the answer from the industry was no. Now, 26 years later, Kevin’s family-owned bag maker has become, in his own words, the canary in the coal mine for food-grade PCR — because no industry body, no FDA process beyond that letter of no objection we heard about, and no California regulator has built the certification, testing, or chain-of-custody infrastructure this circular economy needs to scale.
Emerald is doing the customer education itself, walking produce companies through the difference between food-grade PCR and what Kevin colorfully called “any old derelict PCR,” which can be kind of gray. You’ve seen this in some Coke bottles, for instance. That gap between what is technically possible and corporate aspirations is the real story behind the million pounds of diverted plastic waste.
Emerald Packaging’s home state, California, can teach the rest of the country. You may remember my recent conversation with Zena Harris of Green Spark Group, in which California’s climate disclosure law is forcing a digital nervous system into being across Hollywood’s supply chain — and that regulation is doing what regulation is supposed to do. But, as Kevin said, SB 54 may do the opposite. The law mandates a 65% reduction in single-use plastic waste by 2032 and sets a minimum PCR threshold. But Kevin pointed out that a pound-for-pound PCR credit, which would have encouraged people to replace virgin polyethylene with PCR, was wiped out of the rulemaking, so the fees are low enough that companies can hit early reduction targets through agricultural film collection and other low-hanging fruit, without actually addressing food-grade PCR. And yet, several years after the law was passed, conversations are just starting between CalRecycle, the California Air Resources Board, and packaging makers.
A mandate without the right price levers doesn’t drive the necessary transition. It delivers the cheapest path to compliance. And that’s a useful warning for every other state currently writing extended producer responsibility laws — including California, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota — where the design choices are being made right now that will determine whether or not food-grade PCR ever becomes economical at scale, or stays stuck in the boutique end of the market.
And a third point is the one that I’m going to be pondering after this conversation, and that is about Circulus. It’s a PCR plant in California’s Central Valley that was backed by Texas private equity and was supposed to be the supply-side answer to food-grade PCR, and it lasted only 18 months before Dow Chemical bought what remained, closed the California facility, while keeping an Oklahoma one running and moving slowly on a third site in Georgia. Kevin’s argument is that family-owned manufacturers, who can de-emphasize quarterly profit, are doing more to push PCR forward today than the capital pools that are theoretically supposed to fund our energy and sustainability transition.
That maps closely to the lessons from my recent conversation with Disney Petit at LiquiDonate — circular infrastructure works when there is an immediate economic pull, as her platform creates by saving retailers money the day they sign up, and it stalls when investors are asked to wait for a market that requires a mandate, a law, to exist. So the case for patient capital is also a case for mandates designed well enough to create the demand that patience requires.
The billions of pounds of produce packaging that are shipped each year is not a problem one bag maker, one retailer, or one state can solve. And the 25-year arc of Kevin’s career argues that we’ve been waiting for the wrong thing. The technology has existed. It does exist now. The willing operators have existed — a few of them. But what’s been missing is the policy architecture, the certification backbone, and the capital structure that would let these operators do at scale what one family-owned company has now proven is possible at 30% PCR levels in produce packaging. The next legislative cycle in every EPR state is where that may be decided, and we’ll be tracking it on the show.
So stay tuned, folks. And if this conversation moved you, could you do one thing for the show this week? Pick a single episode from the archive of more than 550 interviews and send it to just one person who hasn’t heard us yet. A short review on your favorite podcast platform is the other way to help, because folks, you’re the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create less waste. So please tell your friends, your family, your co-workers, the people you meet on the street, that they can find Sustainability In Your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of podcast goodness they prefer.
Thank you for your support. I’m Mitch Ratcliffe. This is Sustainability In Your Ear, and we’ll be back with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself, take care of one another, and let’s all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a Green Day.
SINGAPORE: Ever since remote work became more common, instant messaging platforms like MS Teams have become a major part of workplace communication, but along with the convenience of quick chats and replies, some employees are now wondering if there are also unspoken etiquette rules that need to be followed online.
Recently, a young worker in Singapore took to social media to ask others about workplace etiquette on MS Teams after being criticised over what colleagues described as “rude replies.”
SINGAPORE: Ever since remote work became more common, instant messaging platforms like MS Teams have become a major part of workplace communication, but along with the convenience of quick chats and replies, some employees are now wondering if there are also unspoken etiquette rules that need to be followed online.
Recently, a young worker in Singapore took to social media to ask others about workplace etiquette on MS Teams after being criticised over what colleagues described as “rude replies.”
The worker explained that they did not initially realise anything was wrong with the way they responded to messages until they were called out over it.
As an example, they shared this exchange:
CxO: Hi XX, is this thing done yet?
Me: Yeah, it’s done.
According to the worker, they were later told that replying without greeting the sender back came across as impolite.
“Not sure if it’s an MNC thing, C-suite thing, or generational thing, but I got called out for not saying ‘hi’ back in my response,” they wrote.
The worker added that they were not intentionally trying to sound cold or disrespectful.
“I was told it lacks courtesy, but I genuinely just zoomed into the question and didn’t even realise I was doing that until I got called out, but I do say ‘hi’ if I initiate the text first, so it’s really just a responsive tic.”
They also shared that a friend suggested it could be linked to workplace hierarchy or generational expectations, where some bosses may dislike communication styles that feel overly casual or too direct.
On top of that, the worker said they were also told that replying with just a “?” whenever they were confused about something could come across as rude as well.
“I guess I can sort of see why that might be the case,” they admitted, before asking others, “How do y’all text your bosses, MNC or otherwise?”
“I think the bosses won’t like it”
The post quickly drew responses from other Singaporeans, many of whom agreed that replying with only “?” or failing to return a greeting, especially when speaking to senior management, could easily be perceived as impolite in professional settings.
One user wrote, “I agree that texting or replying ‘?’ is rude and lazy. It suggests that you can’t really be bothered to be specific about what is unclear or what you would like to clarify. Which is not the way you want to come off to superiors. They aren’t your friends.”
Another commented, “Text kills tone, but yes, I think the bosses won’t like it. I usually just include their name as a sign of respect, like ‘Hey Bryan, I need help with the…’ or ‘Yes Bryan, done already’ The ‘?’ alone, in my opinion, is a bit rude, la. I don’t think it’s very hard to include a few more words…”
A third added, “Like the others, I would say ‘?’ alone is rude unless you are close with your boss. The hi-bye doesn’t feel as big an issue so long as you get the job done along with relevant queries.”
Still, not everyone felt that failing to reply with “hi” was necessarily disrespectful.
One remarked, “I don’t always say hi back either. I don’t think it’s rude when someone does it to me. What I don’t like is when someone sends a message with just ‘Hi’ or ‘Hi bro’ and then don’t say anything else and just waits for a response.”
Another shared, “I work in a German MNC. I don’t say hi or hello back. Unless the person greets me like ‘Good morning/afternoon,’ then I’ll greet back. To me, Teams is a messaging platform meant to be informal.”
In other news, a 30-year-old woman who is currently supporting her parents has turned to social media for advice after a scam wiped out her entire savings, leaving her in deep financial and emotional distress.
Posting anonymously on the NUSWhispers Facebook page, she shared the full extent of her family’s situation. She explained that she has long been the main source of financial support for her parents, who, according to her, have “very little savings” of their own.
After my dad passed away a couple of years ago, I inherited his Nikon F and FTn cameras which jump started a resurgence for the love of photography in me. Now with a binder full of negatives (and positives) and an SSD of scans, it felt weird just leaving them there. That's not where photos belong.
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After my dad passed away a couple of years ago, I inherited his Nikon F and FTn cameras which jump started a resurgence for the love of photography in me. Now with a binder full of negatives (and positives) and an SSD of scans, it felt weird just leaving them there. That's not where photos belong.
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