18 - The digital side of DRS

 

In this episode of TOMRA Talks Circular, we talk to Pauline Bergan, Senior Business Development Manager at TOMRA, about the trends shaping the future of deposit return systems (DRS), the role of reverse vending machines in the digital ecosystem of DRS, and more.  

Listen to the episode below, or use your favourite platform (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts)

Show Notes

• What is a deposit return scheme or system or DRS for short? [01:47]
• What do you mean by handshakes? [10:37] 
• DRS is by no means an outdated or analog system. [12:27]
• When the governments are not taking a role there, the brands are taking a role. [18:32]
• How to deal with extended producer responsibility as well? [22:17]
• There might be something there as well for helping deal with refillable because we do have refillable containers as part of DRS today. [25:01] 
• A lot of hurdles or challenges to overcome. [31:54] 
• I mean when you try new things, there is always like immaturity at the beginning. [33:54]
• What is the one key take away? [38:10] 
• Final thoughts. [40:14] 
   

Transcript

Mithu: Welcome to Tomra Talks Circular, where we explore how businesses, municipalities and governments are collaborating towards a circular economy. Hello, my name is Mithu Mohren in our 4th and 5th editions of this podcast, we talked about the basics of a well-designed deposit return system, or in some areas it's called a deposit return scheme and then we also talked about an example Lithuania and this case of how that looks in practice. 

The landscape continues to change both here in Europe and globally, and we thought it might be a good idea to revisit the topic and take a look at what those trends are and how the industry is shaping for the future. Joining me today is Pauline Bergan, senior business development manager at Tomra collections. 

In her work on future circular solutions and Pauline, I'm interested to find out what that is, especially on the future of deposit and return schemes. She has over 10 years of experience with digital and data-driven innovation software sales and consulting and enjoys uncovering and shaping new business opportunities. She's absolutely no stranger to all things digital as she started her career at Microsoft, then kept Jim and I invent and worked for many years in the digital transformation of transportation and logistics sector in Norway. Pauline, welcome to the program. 

Pauline: Thank you Mithu very happy to be here. 

Mithu: Just as a recap and for those who are not familiar, what is a deposit return scheme or system or DRS for short? 

Pauline: Yes, Mithu, So a DRS works by adding a deposit on top of the price of beverage such as beverage in terms of plastic and glass bottles or aluminum cans, which is refunded to the consumer when they return their empty drink container for recycling deposit and return system is also known as a container deposit scheme or a bottle bill in some other in some countries and they are typically established through legislation passed by state or national governments. So, adding this financial incentive on top of the item really motivates people to recycle and communicates that the materials also have a value to society as a resource. I would say it's one of the most effective way to reduce littering to avoid the container ends up in nature and in potentially the ocean later on. 

Mithu: So, we're talking about marine litter here, right? 

Pauline: Exactly, so really preventing littering I mean, not just monitoring, but littering in general. It's a very effective way of doing that and in Europe, you can see that the average PT collection rate, PT bottle collection rate in DRS reaches in average 94% so very efficient way of collecting PT bottles and aluminum cans and also glass bottles. It's also a good way for producers and recyclers. You get access to very high-quality material to be able to generate very high-quality recycled content and being able to generate very high yields if you listen to Harald Henrikson last year talking about the Lithuanian success story. 

It's also a very quick way of getting very high rate, very high collection rates of beverage containers in a short time where we can see in the Lithuania that the collection went from 34% to 92% within the second year of the scheme and we can see for one of the recent schemes now in Slovakia that they're following the same the same success. So really, a very important piece of legislation and high performing systems that are currently deployed in many countries. 

Mithu: OK and that doesn't surprise me, to be honest. As you know, I live in Germany and we've had this system in place for, yeah, 20 years or so and I'm actually surprised isn't that the case in most countries, especially in Europe, don't they all kind of have DRS. 

Pauline: So yeah, living in Norway myself, I, you know, it's, I can see it's really part of society there and really ingrained in behaviors of the Norwegian society. But as you know, I'm originally French and we don't have this kind of system in France, for example and these DRS are today in place in 40 different regions globally, including Norway, Germany, Lithuania that we talked about several Australian states also some US states and nearly all of Canada, and we see now that their calls to really increase the number of countries to follow suit. The single use plastic directive from the EU is really, you know, pushing countries to implement this kind of legislation as the targets, for example, for Member States, will be to collect 90% of all plastic bottles by 2029 and experts say that in order to do that, you really need to implement a deposit and return scheme. 

In addition, as you probably are very well aware of the eyes of everyone these days is on Uruguay now, with the start of the international negotiations on the global treaty to end plastic pollution. So, there is really a global push to really do something about that and we can see a new wave of DRS coming and that by 2026 within the next four years, there is going to be 20 new regions that are going to launch their DRS making this field very exciting globally. Yeah, not just in, in the EU so not just driven by the single use plastic directive, but really, really driven by a global push to implement meaningful legislation to deal with the very pressing problem of plastic pollution. So, it's a very exciting and dynamic field to be working in right now. There are many trends that are relating to each other and what we're seeing with this unprecedented amount of new DRS markets is that is bringing also innovation when you have within the next four years, so many new people who are going to have access to this kind of systems, it's going to bring change. 

So that's why we're very careful on discussing how the future will look like and I'm really pushing all of us to keep an open mind and of course build on experience and history, but also embrace new perspective and learn from what is going to happen in new markets because changes are happening in society in policy and in technology these days, and we will benefit all of us from taking advantage of them. 

Mithu: OK yeah, that sounds very exciting. So, you just mentioned the future and we've both mentioned the upcoming trends and what you actually see as an expert in the field and we're talking, I'm guessing, about changes in technology more than anything else. And I've heard about this digital DRS or smart DRS lately does that mean that the existing DRS, the one that you and I are familiar with, are they, is it sort of out of date in a way or analog, it's not digital or what does that mean exactly? 

Pauline: Thank you for asking this question, Mithu. it's a very good one and I'm sure you know existing scheme operators will be interested in hearing that their system is analog or out of date. It's really not the case, I personally believe that this terminology of using digital DRS or Smart DRS is quite misleading, because deposit and return schemes are already multi stakeholder digital systems. I don't know how familiar you are on how DRS are set up but. 

Mithu: Take me through it, just because I'm sure a lot of our listeners are also not aware. 

Pauline: So the beverage industry is encouraged to come together to create a centralized System Administrator that has responsibilities under a non-profit entity and these stakeholders coming together, so usually producers but also retailers. So those who are responsible for putting products to market are designing a very effective system to reach the legislated collection targets of the country and their focus is really building a cost-efficient system, but also very strong trust-based system where all the processes are in place to ensure transparent management, data-driven clearinghouse all based on reliable collection technology and you really have to picture that all the business logic for the money flow, the payments of the deposit to the consumers, the payment of the handling fees to retailer. There's also the payment of the EPR fees related to the DRS. Everything is digital today and it's also the case of the material and the logistics flow. 

Everything is managed by a comprehensive IT platform, which means that DRS are highly digital today, data-driven systems and all of this monitoring really allows for full view on the scheme at the country level and make sure that you have low fraud levels at every step of the scheme with all the right policies and procedures in place, especially when it comes, for example, to the handshakes between all the different players that are handling and transporting the collected material. 

Mithu: What do you mean by handshakes? 

Pauline: So between the for example the so the retailers and the logistics players that are going to pick up the material, yeah, you have all these digital handshakes where the logistics player is gonna confirm, for example, by scanning the barcodes on the bag that the retailer has collected through a reverse vending machine to confirm that they have collected the material, for example. 

Mithu: Oh, it's so, It's all very, very connected. It's very digitally connected through the whole process. 

Pauline: Yes, and as a scheme operator, you really have full visibility on what's going on. Again, because the goal is to ensure accurate and transparent money flow and transportation flow happening and you know when we talk about our RVMS is not just a piece of hardware, not just a hole in the wall. 

It's really a key component of this digital ecosystem of the DRS. It's collecting and sharing data, helping the points of collection to do their jobs and to operate the machines and helping us with our maintenance tasks to ensure customer satisfaction and last but not least, of course, the whole recognition technology is connected to the database of the scheme operator and also developed with a lot of intelligence and algorithms and you really have also many different ways of doing software integration through application programming interfaces, APIs, providing consumers with digital payouts allowing consumers to have the money directly on their bank account. 

If you want integrate it to your loyalty program. So yeah, DRS is by no means an outdated or analog system and anyways, we're always talking about handling a very physical material, so you will always need a physical part to the system. So that we can really guarantee that the material is collected for high quality recycling. So that's really the goal. 

Mithu: OK, so to me everything you just explained kind of says the DRS that you and I both know being in Norway and Germany and other countries is already smart, it's already digital. So what is the main difference between DRS that you and I know and that we use effectively, and you have the so-called, I guess smart DRS or what's been called now the smart DRS. 

 

Pauline: The main difference, if you really look at it in detail, is the introduction of serialization. So, serialization is the assignment of unique, traceable numbers to individual sellable units, and this is really enabled by having unique codes. So, in practice having unique codes on packaging in the form of a 2d code, for example a QR code or a data matrix most often and connect it to a code database that will allow for quick object identification, and you have a lot of players that are delivering technology to do this today. 

Mithu: Pauline, you know, I'm not necessarily technically affine. Can you explain what 2d coding is? 

Pauline: Yes, of course. So, a 2d code 2d stands for two-dimensional barcode. It's a graphical image where you have the information for it both horizontally. So, like 2 days one-dimensional codes. The information is stored horizontally but also vertically this ability to have more yeah, space to store information. So, it's really way to have even more space to encode more information. So, if you look at today's 1d barcodes, they contain mainly what is called the get in. So global trade item number. 

The power of the 2d barcode is that you can bring in additional data that can be used not just at the point of sale at your cashier, but also can be encoded with digital links and being used for other purposes. For example, opening a channel to your consumers as a brand, I just want also to be specific about the fact that 2d codes does not necessarily mean that you have serialization. So, you have today already on some products and also on beverage containers, sometimes you have a QR code for example, and I would say it's a simple QR code, so not serialized, it's not unique. 

Maybe it's just related to a SKU, so product identity and it's used for marketing, let's say consumer interaction for you as a consumer to scan and to get more information on your product. But yes, the 2d code is really about having more space for encoding more information, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's serialized. I hope it helps you understand. 

Mithu: Maybe a little bit. I think I have to listen to this part A few times but that's OK, so you keep mentioning it to your serialization and it sounds like it's a big topic. What are the drivers of the unique? Yeah, I guess it is. If it's unique, it's serialization, right? So, what are the drivers that are behind this? 

Pauline: This trend is not new, so this concept of having unique codes on objects is not new and you can see it driven by mainly 3 reasons. So, the first one is usually driven by governments and really about ensuring that tax is collected in an accurate manner. So here typical product categories tobacco, wine, beer, spirits and the highest serialized volume of object by far in the world is in tobacco alone and here the estimations is like around 200, three 100 billion tobacco packages are serialized today. So, you really have to imagine that meaning you have serious code on it, but you also have the database to manage all of these product identities, right? And historically this has been, if you remember, used with a paper with some security features, but now most countries are opting for what is called the digital tax stamps solutions, where you can see for example, the EU implementing direct marketing with unique ID and track and trace to prevent illicit trade of the types of goods I talked about. 

The second driver is counterfeit, so preventing the unauthorized distribution of products, a tax stamp is a good way of doing that. But still the estimation is that 7% of goods that are sold globally are still counterfeit, which is a number hard to believe. Some people buy these products knowing they're counterfeit, but the problem is when you buy the product, and you didn't know it was not real product. Especially a problem for pharmaceutical products or for let's say car parts for example as we're seeing. 

Mithu: And things that really impact the safe health and safety of the general public, right? 

Pauline: Exactly, yeah, can be a danger for society so stopping counterfeiting is really important topic and when the governments are not taking a role there, the brands are taking a role because it really impacting also their credibility on the market. In EU, in the US, and soon also in all other countries, you can see that, yeah, there is a push to putting measures in place to prevent falsified medicine because it's really a big problem. So today you have 15 to 50 billion pharmaceutical products that also are serialized. 

Mithu: So as you said, this is really not new, it's already being used. 

Pauline: Yes, yes. 

Mithu: It's just a potential new application or not. 

Pauline: Yes, and you know, it has a business value for brands as well. So of course allowing Product Safety, recall, handling your claims and the warranty, but also giving you as a producer the visibility of where your products are across the supply chain is very good benefit inventory management and like I touched upon just a bit earlier, this possibility of opening a new channel towards your consumers having new data, new interaction way of interacting with your consumers, maybe having traceability as part of your brand message, allowing for incentives, loyalty points and really. Yeah, bringing in new ways for brands to interact with the consumers. So, there is also a business value in having serialized products. 

Mithu: OK. I've heard about the digital product passport in the EU. Could you kind of walk us through what that means? Very briefly, just very briefly and then I'd like to understand because it sounds like that might help to achieve this particular goal, if you can call it that. But first I'd like to understand what that is. 

Pauline: So digital product passport or DPP for short, it's a regulation the EU is currently preparing as part of the European Green Deal, which would make transparent to EU citizens and information on origin, composition, environmental data, how to repair, how to disassemble your products and how to handle the end of life of products really about making the empowering the EU citizens to make informed, sustainable choices when they Consume and buy products. 

So yeah, in a way, stabilization could be an enabler of making DPP happen, and we can see that the plan for now is to roll out digital product passports on different product categories between 2025 and 2030 with what is called delegated acts. The plan is to have 16 acts and some examples of the products it would be used on are batteries, car tires, textiles, toys, furniture. This kind of object and if we can give an example. So, in January 2026 this will be introduced for EV electric vehicle battery with the electronic file that really follows the battery as a battery passport linked to the characteristics of the battery and also how to deal with it at the end of life, which is really an interesting approach to how to deal with extended producer responsibility as well? 

Mithu: OK, so a lot of transparency would be afforded with such a system, OK. 

Pauline: Yeah, very helpful and if we just look at the food and the beverage industry for now, it's not very detailed and according to the information that I have today, when we record this podcast again, this is a dynamic field. It doesn't seem like there is gonna be really specific delegated act for this industry, and if there will be, it will be part of the eco-design for sustainable products regulation and we don't really know yet how detailed the DPP requirements will be if it will be at brand level or SKU level or individual product level. So yeah, it's a moving target right now and there are other regulations that might also force the industry to bring more transparency. 

For example, the developments of the packaging and the Packaging Waste Directive, which we're hoping will be published by the end of November. The draft regulation published by the end of November and as we know, the EU regulation, is usually a precursor of international regulation, so it's going to be very interesting area to follow, very good, very interesting development. 

Mithu: Yeah, very interesting indeed and thanks for sharing all of that. So, let's go back to our original topic, I guess, how do these interesting developments, how is it going to change the deposit return systems or schemes? 

Pauline: So, we're really looking at how this could open up improvements of scheme design it's interesting, could be something to look at for everyone working on scheme design to improve manual collection or have even more refined tracking of the collected material and it makes a lot of sense for high end material, which is why you see this in use for pharmaceutical for, you know, expensive products, luxury goods and it could be potentially beneficial for other types of schemes than DRS. 

For example, for a reuse scheme or for a textile recycling and collection and recycling scheme that we're currently working on at like I mentioned earlier, for batteries is very interesting closer to the field of DRS. There might be something there as well for helping deal with refillable because we do have refillable containers as part of DRS today. It's not just for recycling, but the reality is that. You know, for one way drinks packaging. We're dealing with the relatively low-end type of material, and it makes it difficult to justify the business case of introducing serialization for the sake of collection and recycling of one way contain. So, we really need to do collectively, carefully assess the cost benefits of this. When schemes are already quite digital today, and when you know on the RVM side for us. 

The machines are ready for potential evolutions of marking, so we're able to read to decodes on the body of containers already today. So, let's not forget that DRS is highly digital, and a lot would be possible today based on the existing technology, existing type of markers GS1, for example, the standard organization GS one is working on the transition from 1d barcode to 2d barcodes. So we can, you know, we can work with that, but today you know there is already a lot to be could be done with existing data that we have in a DRS and in the end it's all about cost benefit DRS is a quite cost efficient system which is established by all the players that have a strong interest to keep it as efficient and you know, not too costly from the beginning, so it doesn't prevent us to look at it and to discuss it and to actively consider it and to prepare a future with serialization. But right now, it might be a bit of overkill. 

Mithu: OK, I got it. There's already a lot that's possible with the technology already in place, but who knows what. What would you say that it would be required for serialization to actually happen in the beverage industry? 

Pauline: So, it would require so first quite some heavy investments you have to picture all the producers and the bottlers and the canners having to adapt their production and feeding lines for the sole requirements of DRS which would potentially be difficult for small producers manufacturers might not want to invest in a system that only works for one country context and this will probably require the whole industry to shift to digital printing. So, this transition is already happening today. 

But yeah, you will have to accelerate it and to really have digital printing in all the production and filling lines applied to one specific country that would decide to do serialization for example. The second requirement, I mean what it demands from the beverage industry would be to agree across the whole sector on how this is going to happen and today there are very different views on how this could happen could be done no one really agrees where the printing should happen or where the activation or the deactivation of the code should happen. 

So just agreeing on that and on the standards that would be used is not an easy task, I would say and agreeing on the type of product marking to be used, are we going to be using 2d codes or maybe digital watermarks or UV markers? Or maybe RFID and in addition the 1d barcode are not gonna go away. OK, so, the transition in the transition period, you're going to have 1d QR codes and data matrix codes potentially coexisting together, which also pose some challenges on how you integrate with the retailer technology. So the point of sales systems, so it's quite complex and if you look at how the pharmaceutical industry manage to do this at EU level where you have, you know government database for managing all the pharmaceutical products that are connected to all the different countries and connected to all the different producers. 

In order for the whole industry to agree to do this, it took the distillation and a lot of time. So, all of this takes time, and in the meantime, maybe other technologies could become more relevant and, in the end, we're always going back to who is going to pay for that. We're kind of cost benefit, do we see? So you know at Tomra, we're not really convinced that the DRS will be driving this evolution. There are other drivers that could lead the arrest to evolve once changes happen due to other drivers and there are other types of markers that we believe also could enable circularity of packaging and other ways of encoding information on packaging and stylization that could already today bring a lot of value. 

Mithu: OK, just to just to recap from my understanding, if I understood correctly, you said what's required is investment. So yeah, quite a bit of investment in the whole infrastructure then agreement in the whole sector, which is difficult to achieve because you have to bring all the parties together and there's already issues. There and yeah, basically the IT systems need to be in place and all of these things, as you just said, take time, whereas we have a DRS system already in place in many regions that is working, and time is one thing. 

Actually, Pauline, I don't think we have, yeah, so perhaps it's an interesting option, but we need to continue to work with the technology we have now. 

Pauline: Yeah, and it doesn't prevent you. I mean as a legislator or as a technology supplier to be to future proof your legislation and your technology. So, to be able to adapt to new requirements or new opportunities that will open up. But it shouldn't prevent us collectively to deal with the pressing problem that we have to deal with, right? 

Mithu: Yeah, yeah, exactly and this as a technology expert, so yeah. 

Pauline: And I'm really, you know, I have a tendency to be over excited by new technology. So, I always have to, you know, control myself there and not to be too excited because yeah, we need to bring some realism in the in the picture as well. 

Mithu: OK, and it sounds like there are a lot of hurdles or challenges to overcome for serialization of beverage containers to actually happen, and you've mentioned some of them. So, let's imagine you have a unique code on your beverage container, whether it's a plastic bottle or can or glass, whatever could it make, could this serialization make it possible to collect material or collect DRS material curbside? 

Pauline: Yeah, as I highlighted, uh, it's going to be unsure how the industry is going to evolve and how the standards are gonna are going to be chosen, so provided that the future is serialization with 2D codes or maybe UV markers. Provided that this happens and the industry embraces this new way of marking packaging, doing DRS from curbside might be possible. In the long term and you can see that some trials are happening. I would say maybe Wales has come furthest and I would mention, for example, the work that Pollytag has been doing, which is very interesting to look at and also knowing that the digital DRS alliance is going to do a trial is planning a trial for next year as well. 

You can see that these trials bring households together and give them material with unique codes to see how much is deposited through an app. In the home household collection bins and recovered at Murph's. So, it's interesting to look at what's happening and to understand, but. Yeah, these concepts are a bit immature today, which is normal. I mean when you try new things, there is always like immaturity at the beginning and it's putting a lot of trust on consumers and requiring a lot of manual work from the consumer and also at Merc to make this happening and there are some loopholes or let's say questions that we still need to look at when we look at these concepts is how do you prevent litter, so how do you really make sure? 

That the containers the redeemed items are secured in to have recycling outcome to be really recycled, right and it's difficult really to provide the same security level that you have through RVM, based theirs through curbside today. 

Mithu: RVM reverse vending machines? 

Pauline: Reverse vending machines, yes, correct. 

Mithu: OK. 

Pauline: That really provides a very high system integrity and trust levels again for the sake of all the stakeholders involved in a DRS that care about high trust level and high control over what's happening to the material. So yeah, it's an interesting, but a bit immature concept. It's very stimulating, stimulating, creative thinking and the reality is that in order to enable this concept, the maturity of the technology is still pretty low and again, like you said, we have significant pressure from policy, from brand owners from other stakeholders to increase the level of circularity at scale already today and due to the potential for losses or lower qualities of material collected through curbside. 

This would introduce a level of risk that you know is probably where we want to go after when we have high functioning DRS as an option today and the majority of curbside systems today are not really able to guarantee the same level of collection rate. The access to material and the transparency in data reporting and consistency and the quality of input to recycling, again bearing in mind that this is a very, it's a field in constant evolution. So, we have to keep an open mind and to be interested and to be part of this discussion. But yeah, the maturity level is not very high today. 

Mithu: Yeah, and that's the main point, it's not ready to go, so to speak and the and the time is ticking so we need to use systems that are, yeah, at least for now that are in place and continue as you keep saying and then I agree with you keep mind your mind open and look for developments, but yeah, let's use what's work. We try and minimize what we what we need to minimize in terms of plastic waste. 

Pauline: Yeah, and uh, and if I may, I mean, you can see that when we talk about this concept, this might be relevant in countries where you have a recycling infrastructure that is pretty advanced and modernized, but still the majority of the mismanaged plastic waste is coming from the parts of the world where maybe the maturity of the waste treatment, infrastructure and the recycling infrastructure is not very high and where we could see other types of alternative collection systems be relevant. It's like it's the case in India, for example or you can see the work of recycling or the “Kabadi Wala” for example, which are just showing how another potential future could be so yes, a lot of things are happening and again, so we're looking at the maturity level of the technology. The recycling infrastructure and the cost benefit and all of this, ensuring that the litter reduction effect of DRS is not jeopardized and not delaying regulation. 

Mithu: OK, Pauline, this has been a fantastic discussion, very interesting and this is one of our longer podcasts, but there's a lot of information and it's a hot topic, so thank you with all of the information that you've provided. What is the one key take away, is there one key take away that you would like our listeners to walk away with? 

Pauline: I would really like to remind everyone that DRS is by no means outdated, completely analog there is a lot of intelligence in existing systems, very digital DRS are modern multi stakeholder systems with strong integrity and very data driven. There might be some potential to be even more data-driven, which is something that we're eager to continue working with and I'm personally very passionate about and future evolutions like serialization have a lot of value to bring for some types of schemes maybe not DRS in the first place and definitely something that we should all prepare for but should not prevent us from collectively delivering, you know, concrete, real high performing solutions to a very present and pressing problem. 

Mithu: I couldn't agree more on a final note after a couple of other global crises that we're all unfortunately very much aware of, it looks like, thankfully, that climate is back on the agenda worldwide not everything is moving in the right direction. On the one hand, we've just finished a rather disappointing Cup 27 that we all know about. 

On the other hand, stakeholders across the value chain are continuing to work towards eliminating plastic waste, for example, with the upcoming meeting of the United Nations Environment Program in Uruguay, which you've also mentioned. But we know, Pauline, that each of us, each and every individual, we all have a role to play in climate change. So Pauline, a question to you, what are you doing to change your behavior or maybe you've been doing it all along? 

Pauline: Hmm, what a great question. I haven't been doing it all along and I think really what changed the things for me is having kids, so we're lucky in no way we have long maternity leaves. So, I was sort of taking out of the, let's say, corporate grinds and I had time to reflect, and I was also protecting myself, facing my children. You know, when they are 10 years old and are being aware of the problems that the planet is facing and turning back to me and asking me but you knew all of this. What did you do? And I was sort of, you know, facing myself and thinking I was a consultant in ninety. What do you mean? 

So, I mean, my having kids really drove me to join Tomra and to bring to really work on bringing concrete solutions to problems and not just talk about things or make nice slides, but actually do things I had to deal with pressing problems of the planet and on a personal level so joining tomorrow is very important things important thing for me and I've been trying to be as vegetarian as I can or for many years. 

Now, it's not always easy, especially when you're outside, but reduction of meat consumption is something that I've been really particular about, and I'm also trying to convince all my friends and all my family to follow me. But it's not super easy with the punch. But yeah, as you can imagine, cheese is gonna be a hard one to give up. But, but yeah, at least no more meat and very little fish as well so it's been something I've been doing. 

Mithu: Thank you, I think we're all trying to follow and figure out what we can each do so for a French person with a very high food culture, I'm impressed, thank you very much, Pauline. 

Thank you for joining all of your insights. It sounds like with everything that's going on, we'll be having you back on the program. 

Pauline: Thank you, Mithu. 

Mithu: Thanks very much again. 

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