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CNN 10
A Traffic Jam in the Suez Canal; An Effort to Reduce Waste From Take-Out Dining; The Music That`s Soothing Savage Beasts at a Zoo. Aired 4- 4:10a ET
Aired March 25, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(MUSIC)
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: First up on CNN 10 this Thursday, a traffic jam in Egypt that`s probably unlike anything you`ve ever seen.
I`m Carl Azuz and we`re starting in the Suez Canal.
This is an artificial waterway in Egypt. It connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea. If a ship wants to travel from Europe to East Africa,
India or Oceania, this is the fastest way to do it -- at least it is when it`s not blocked up.
A massive container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal this week after high winds and a sandstorm reportedly made it difficult to sail. The vessel
which sails under the flag of Panama is called the Ever Given. And to give you a sense of how big it is, it`s almost as long as the Empire State
Building is tall, and it`s just under feet wide.
The cargo ship is stuck diagonally, no large vessels can get around it. Eight tugboats have been working to free the Ever Given. It`s reportedly
damaged. Once the ship is cleared, it`ll probably have to be towed for miles to the nearest port where it`ll be unloaded and repaired.
Meantime, the number of other ships that are waiting is growing. One official says as many as a hundred of them could be lining up at opposite
ends of the canal to get through.
Some of these vessels are carrying oil from Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States. That could disrupt supplies if the Ever Given isn`t
freed soon. How long will that take? An Egyptian official says a couple days at least, a week or more if things don`t go well. And after it`s
moved, it`ll probably take days to get maritime traffic back to its normal flow in the Suez Canal.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
REPORTER: The Suez Canal is one of the world`s most strategic waterways, a vital shipping route for over 150 years, transporting goods between Europe
and Asia. An ambitious plan to modernize the canal brought RJ Kumar Singh (ph) here in 2016.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We should have come to this place about three years back. The place has transformed last three years, in terms of business, in
terms of people, in terms of processes. But everything is revamped.
REPORTER: He runs the only privately managed port in Egypt located just below the southern entrance of the Suez Canal.
From here, RJ has watched the area transformed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What they`ve done is that they have expanded 35 kilometers of Suez Canal that has doubled the ships passing through.
REPORTER: Capitalizing on this increased traffic, a giant economic free zone is taking shape along the canal, attracting manufacturers and
suppliers from all over the world.
This vessel carries 60,000 tons of raw sugar from Brazil. It`s for Savola Group, a Saudi-based industrial company, which refines and packages the
sugar right here at the port. It`s then shipped back through the canal to customers all over the world.
Because everything happens here, Savola costs and saves time.
DP World is expanding the port to accommodate the world`s biggest ships, bringing its total investment here to $1.6 billion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ (voice-over): Ten-second trivia:
The largest percentage of U.S. landfill waste comes from what material?
Plastics, paper products, food or yard trimmings?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, paper and paper products account for more than 23 percent of landfill waste.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AZUZ: And food takes up the second largest slice of the landfill pie, accounting for about 21-1/2 percent. The COVID pandemic changed how
Americans dine out at least temporarily restaurant sales especially in large cities dropped when it came to in-person dining but they rose for
takeout. That means more disposable food containers were floating around.
Republic Services, one of America`s largest trash collection and recycling providers says cardboard drink carriers aluminum cans and plastic
containers labeled number one or two are usually recyclable. What`s not are paper napkins and towels, soiled cardboard like greasy pizza boxes, plastic
utensils, bags and foam containers. That usually goes to the trash unless people compost the paper products.
There are some companies like the one you`re about to see that are working to develop alternatives to throw away food containers. DeliverZero is kind
of like Grubhub, DoorDash or Uber Eats except the new company`s drivers take your old containers away when they drop off the new ones this does
come at an additional cost for restaurants based on the amount of takeout food they sell.
How does this compare with what other delivery services charge?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ordering Spartan combos, spinach pies.
ADAM FARBIARZ, CO-FOUNDER, DELIVERZERO: Like a lot of New Yorkers, I eat a lot of take out. When you get take out after your meal, you have tons and
tons of garbage.
New York City alone goes through billions of single-use disposables just in the restaurant industry and I wanted to solve that problem.
My name is Adam Farbiarz. I`m one of the co-founders of DeliverZero.
DeliverZero is a food ordering service. We provide restaurants with reusable takeout containers.
DeliverZero started in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with five restaurants in late 2019. When you order food through DeliverZero, you get your food in these
reusable containers. The restaurant tells us how many of our DeliverZero boxes are going out and the customer has these boxes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One, two, three, four, five, six containers.
FARBIARZ: The customer then returns them. They could return them to the next delivery courier. They can return them by walking back and DeliverZero
restaurant and handing them in.
If the customer returns them within six weeks, there`s no extra cost for the customer and eventually if they don`t return them after six weeks and a
little bit of a grace period, they`re charged $3.25 per box.
That restaurant will then wash the containers add them to their supply add them to their inventory and reuse them for the next order.
We have about 135 restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan and a little bit in Queens actually.
SPIRO HIOTIS, OWNER, ATHENA MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE: Athena Mediterranean Cuisine, how may I help you?
As a restaurant owner, we save money well we don`t have to use my containers. Seamless and Grubhub, yeah, they take a big chunk, 20 percent,
compared to DeliverZero. They take about 10 percent.
FARBIARZ: Like all those other services, we provide a tablet to the restaurant where the orders show up and say, hey, make this food. The
experience for the restaurant and for the customer is really identical.
In the next 18 months, we`d like to have many, many, many more restaurants in New York. We`re going to bring DeliverZero to Los Angeles. We also have
a partner who`s opening DeliverZero in Amsterdam.
Five years, we view this as a much, much bigger program.
Once you start thinking about single use, you will see single use everywhere. You start asking why isn`t the problem being solved everywhere.
This is the solution to the problem. The solution to the problem is a network. We view this network as encompassing all foods, foods that might
you get at the grocery store or the deli or the food vendor who selling things out of a cart.
Do you just know in your heart of hearts that it is a foolish thing that we`re doing as a society to make all this stuff just to throw it away. It`s
silly and I want my kids to live in a world where that that doesn`t happen anymore.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: It turns out the phrase "music soothes the savage beast" is not an exact quote. That`s how many people know the line which came from a play
written in 1697 by William Congreve. But even though the words in the modern phrase are a little bit different, they apply exactly to what`s been
going on at a zoo in Colombia. So before we go today sit back relax and take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(PLAYING PIANO)
SUBTITLE: That`s the idea behind pianist Mario Fernando Prado`s concerts at a Colombian zoo.
Prado performs an arrangement of famous classical compositions for the animals.
Cali Zoo officials say it has a soothing effect for a wide array of inhabitants.
Primates, llamas, birds, lions, zebras, ostriches, iguanas, and more have enjoyed the shows.
They`re hoping Prado will pave the way for more artist performances in the future.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AZUZ: They may be thinking, please don`t stop the music. It may be Mozartistic music to their ears. But watch out if the lions join in the
roarus and say if music be the food of love, play on, because that could be a sour note that signals treble and you`ll want to jump Bach and keep your
composer. If you`re close to the clef of their enclosure when the savage beasts decide it`s feeding time, you just never know what they`ll zoo.
I know what the students of Axtell High School zoo, they subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel, which is the only place we look for the
shout-out schools we mentioned, like today`s from Axtell Kansas.
I`m Carl Azuz.
END
