Van Jones' Talk at TED

Check out this link to Van Jones’ talk on the increasing impacts that plastic has on poor communities. Jones is an environmental advocate and attorney who spent the early part of his career fighting for equal rights for people of color, particularly African Americans.

In 2007 he founded an organization called Green for All, dedicated to building an environmentally friendly economy that would lift people out of poverty.  He also briefly served in President Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality.

In this clip, Jones describes how the production, use and disposal of plastics disproportionately harms poor people. Poverty in and of itself limits choices, making it difficult for people who are poor to purchase “safe” plastics, and making them more vulnerable to unsafe practices in jobs manufacturing plastics.

Mark Gold attended the TED conference at which Jones gave this speech, and you can read more about his impressions in the Spouting Off blog.

Watch Van Jones’ inspiring, and quite thoughtful, speech at ted.com.