The War on Plastic, Deepfakes, and VC Data Mining

Here’s What You Need To Know

First with bags and now straws, a full war on plastic is sweeping the nation and the globe. The current media storm is warning people to “stop sucking,” and cities and companies are listening and making plans to, or have already banned, plastic straws. Even celebrities like Calvin Harris and Tom Brady have inserted themselves in the debate, making this movement not only mainstream, but trendy. With plastic under threat, do the facts match the rhetoric? Before resigning yourself to that paper straw, here is what you need to know:

  • How Did We Get Here? Viral social media memes about “trash islands” in the Pacific Ocean being tied to plastic use, upsetting video of a plastic straw harming wildlife, and last year’s #StopSucking campaign were all notable components of bringing this issue to prominence. Further, Starbucks’ recent announcement that it will eliminate all plastic straws in its stores worldwide by 2020 is only the latest factor fueling this narrative targeting plastic straws. In fact, Starbucks’ decision came right after Seattle banned plastic straws and other single-use plastics citywide, a trend that has garnered support across the U.S. and the world.
  • What Do The Facts Say? As we wrote in a previous edition of TL;DR, outlets such as The New York Times, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal cite the statistic that Americans use 500 million straws a day to substantiate anti-plastic policies, yet the source of this statistic was a nine-year-old elementary school student’s unconfirmed phone study. In that edition, we wrote that “a more credible estimate … of the amount of straws Americans throw away is 172 million each day.” When considering that plastic straws make up only 4% of plastic trash by piece, and only “2,000 tons of the nearly 9 million tons of plastic waste that yearly hits the waters,” the focus on straws appears misplaced. Additionally, despite the urgency paid to banning plastic straws in the U.S., a more effective place to begin to reduce plastic pollution may be overseas, as five Asian countries dump more plastic into the ocean than all other nations combined.
  • Are There Unintended Consequences From These Bans? Fast-moving policy debates driven by a viral narrative tend to ignore not only the facts, but the unintended consequences of hastily-implemented policies. Regarding single-use plastic straws, bans are drawing fire from advocates for Americans with disabilities, who depend on plastic straws to be able to eat and drink safely, without compromising privacy and dignity. Also, in the case of Starbucks’ ban of plastic straws, the lids the company plans to replace them with would actually increase the amount of plastic used. The company has responded by pointing out that the new lids are recyclable unlike the straws, yet this is cold comfort because most recycled refuse still ends up in a landfill. Lastly, with proposed alternatives like paper straws costing “maybe 10 times” more than plastic straws and proving ineffective, higher costs will likely be passed on to customers.
  • How Could Plastic Pollution Actually Be Addressed? A good first step would be to stop with the hysteria, and instead focus on the concrete policy steps that can actually address the end goal: less plastic pollution. With coastal countries in southeast Asia the origin of the vast majority of plastic pollution because of a combination of a growing consumer class and poor waste management systems, helping those countries create effective garbage collection and disposal systems could go a long way toward this goal. Other tactics to reduce plastic pollution include efforts in Asia to increase the usage of water-filtration units to cut down on bottled water consumption, or simply limit providing plastic straws to customers if they ask. Ultimately, the most immediate and effective way to positively impact the amount of plastic pollution may be simple: don’t be a litterbug.

Activists have called straws a “gateway plastic,” and indeed, are setting their sights on companies and governments to continue to push their agenda – facts be damned. In the words of one straw ban supporter, who does not “want the corporations to feel like they’re getting off easily just by eliminating plastic straws,” this is only the beginning. To stay ahead of the curve, those under fire in the public arena will need to leverage the facts of this issue to overcome their public affairs challenges.

News You Can Use

CORPORATIONS VS. THE DEEPFAKE

Subscribe to Receive Insights

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

With impressive advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) continuing at a rapid pace, politicians and political campaigns are not the only ones who need to be wary of the threats from fake videos and recordings; the corporate world should take note, too. In a viral video where he imitated former President Barack Obama, comedian Jordan Peele demonstrated how AI can create fake videos that make the subjects in those videos appear to say or do something they have not.

These so-called “deepfakes” are a threat to politicians and campaigns, as opponents could weaponize fake videos to obfuscate the truth and undermine their target. However, the private sector should proactively prepare for the political and reputational risks stemming from this AI threat as well, since nefarious actors could utilize deepfakes to oust an executive, devalue a stock’s price, or damage a company’s reputation in the public arena.

MORE ELECTRICITY, PLEASE

Largely due to the expected adoption of electric vehicles over the next three decades, a new study by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) finds that electricity demand could increase by as much as 38% by 2050. Considering that the United States already had the world’s largest decline in carbon emissions in 2017, such a development points toward an encouraging trend that can be lauded by both free-market enthusiasts and conservationists alike, particularly as America’s natural gas boom continues to decrease coal usage to meet this demand.

As the policy discussion turns to improving existing utility infrastructure, environmentalist opposition to fossil fuels – the largest sources of energy for generating electricity in the U.S. – could potentially lead to disruptions and delays that ironically hinder the future for which they advocate.

ALL FOR KAVA-NAUGHT?

Well, this is awkward. Twenty-one newspapers across the country were “duped,” publishing identical letters signed by different individuals bashing Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and asking the American people “to take the for-sale sign off our democracy.” Interest groups opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination have denied responsibility, which is understandable given that admitting to being the mastermind of this spectacular AstroTurf campaign fail would be embarrassing.

For the rest of us, we received a near-flawless case study in how not to achieve your public affairs objectives. In the event your opposition is a worthier adversary, you can call Delve to help expose the strategies and tactics of any influence campaign arrayed against your interests.

ADVENTURES IN VENTURE CAPITAL 

Finally, some light will be shed on a discrete industry largely unknown to the public. We are not talking about competitive intelligence for public affairs however, but venture capital (VC). Stanford University’s Venture Capital Initiative has been “steadily amassing a deep and unprecedented database to figure out how VC really works,” which will not only provide insights as to how these firms make decisions, but also some of the best practices they have used to successfully fund and grow startups – notable given the record $23 billion invested by VCs in the second quarter of 2018.

Stanford’s data set includes tens of thousands of contracts between VC firms and the companies they invest in, with less than 1,000 of those having actually been analyzed for insights because they have “to build a whole infrastructure with lawyers, data scientists, and dozens of research assistants who help … read them.” This suggests that more insights are forthcoming as these documents are evaluated, and also demonstrates something the analysts in the Delve research bullpen know well: collection is easy; analysis is hard.