I once took a few hundred pounds of PET clamshell food containers to a recycler, along with a bunch of plastic bottles made from PET as well. I sprayed the clamshells with hose water, getting them somewhat clean. The recycler pulled out all of the clamshell food containers and said he could not take them. Most of the items that people put in their recycling bins for the city to pick up, end up in the landfill because they are not in pristine condition. The whole plastic recycling industry needs to be changed so that recyclers have incentives to recycle contaminated plastic. If not, no realistic solution will ever be achieved.
This is something people need to be made aware of. We put all our 'recycling' in the bin each fortnight and watch the 'dustcart' carry it away and think what a good thing we've done. But I suspect most of it just ends up in landfill or on a rubbiush dump out in the far-east. Not only can recyclers only accept certain types of plastic (and clean and non-mixed plastics, even then), they can't afford the staff to manually sort the incoming stream of mixed recycling (most of which cannot be sorted mechanically/automatically). Personally, I take a lot of care with our recycling - bundling up all the alluminium foil, cleaning bottles, making sure non-recycling doesn't get mixed in, etc - but our neighbours just put all packaging (and a great deal else!) in their recycling bin - often in carrier bags! All this is dumped into the same truck when it is collected, and arrives at the depot all mixed up. And I'm pretty sure as a result, that little, or none, of it actually gets recycled.
@@paulhaynes8045 the recyclers don't want to hurt their bottom line by washing the plastic before using it. And it wouldn't be too difficult either- shred it throw it all in a washing machine with detergent, rinse a few times then it's ready. The adhesive left by the label isn't PET yet that doesn't stop them from recycling the plastic drink bottles, so no one could ever convince me that oil contaminated plastic couldn't be cleaned enough to produce a food grade product.
@@paulhaynes8045 You see, this is why common people can't be trusted to be around too much plastic. One should need a liscence to use it at home. My family used to be so ignorant, putting up a fake plant screen in our garden, and pieces of it are blown off and now there's green plastic inside of the soil and grass.
As a chemist who works with one of the presented methods of "splitting" PET into its components, I can add that the process works. The issue is how to get the materials sorted for a good base to work with. If there's a rather low percentage of, e.g., PE contained, this will not be broken down, and other materials also won't. And it can be difficult to clean the products of the reaction. Sorting of materials is actually the major problem for any plastic recycling. If it was possible to separate the materials up to a 99.99% purity, recycling would be much easier. But anything below this purity will either lead to expensive clean-up steps, or will prevent recycling at all. By the way, "bisphenol" is pronounced differently (not bise-phenol, but biss-phenol), and it's unfortunately one potent endocrine disruptor which is under strict limits in most countries.
intresting.... but interoperability is something only governments can enforce... but on the other hand, isn't there already a big opertunity regarding commercial wastes? like restaurants, fishing nets, protective packaging (ie. Styrofoam) or is BPA-PC a minor unpopular plastic? like maybe we need it for PVC or polyester?
@@acasccseea4434 Why does it have to be enforced? And if a govt definitely wants it it can issue a crisis and a related lockdown. We've seen that in the last wto years and numerous lockdowns are looming on the horizon.
Spot on about the preparation. It seems sorting is a starting point with only the "choice cuts" going for splitting. Pop bottles (PET) could be a candidate. One idea from a science fiction magazine (Omni) is to at least separate the waste into types and storing them in deep holes until the technology comes about to use each one. The story was that each sealed tip could become a future goldmine.
@@Pozi_Drive If the process requires a clean input stream, then that cleanliness has to be "enforced" somehow. They could, for example, pay less (or even nothing) for batches that don't meet the standard. Not all enforcement involves "jackbooted thugs".
This guy deserves all the support he can get for bringing the problems we all face into the realm of understandable proportions, and demonstrating that there are solutions available.
He's a Global Warming, CO2-phobic Fake-Green salesman and propagandist buy sometimes he does talk about real major environmental problems (of which plastic and oil spills in the sea are not one).. Plastic's main problem for humanity is the consumption of endocrine system imbalances screwing up our hormone balance. -- This is more to do with tin lining and plastic packaging and food wraps more than anything else, though the water supply is effected too, though mostly from inadequately processing sewage water back into the water supply.. If you believe in Global Warming and the Fake-Green Revolution you are part of the problem. -- The main problems 'caused' by plastics are NOT actually caused by plastics, they're caused by LANDFILLERS who banned INCINERATORS and incinerator development. The guy pushes a lot of exaggerated fake-green doom-mongering HARD SALES PROPAGANDA. CO2 is not the enemy, it is the stuff The Real Green World (The Plant World) is made from, while liberating the O2 for us to breathe. The IPCC is an insult to DECENT SCIENCE.
That introduction was brilliant! You can feel right away that this video is going to go in depth about plastics, unlike the many "inspirational" videos which never go into the important details.
True, but we already have deposits in many places and they’re not working. Although, I think the issue is just that they’re not expensive enough. I got juice from a place one time which had a $4 bottle deposit…you can bet your butt that I returned that bottle!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Yeah that's not how it works in the parts of the UK it's currently implemented, and is likely due to go across all 4 countries of the UK in the coming year. The deposit amount is 20p no matter if it's a small or large plastic bottle, can or tin. It's resulted in a 94% recycle rate of those containers.
@@NeonVisual I think there’s a cultural thing at play though. Cause I’m the US the standard deposit is 0.10 or something and our return rate is atrocious. Increasing it to .20 or .30 has been tossed around I believe, but I’m unsure how much of an effect it will have. The example of $4 that I had was just a single place that had their own system.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet 10c would be about 7p in our money. People probably wouldn't bother here at such a low level either. We also have a tax on high sugar drinks like coke which also helps to drive people away from garbage in plastic bottles. It's about 37 cents in your money per 1ltr on top of the regular price. So in your money a ltr of coke would have about 62c added to the price in total.
A while back, a San Francisco startup had an interesting solution: Shred and wash the plastics, heat till the low melting point contents flow, and press into sheets or extrude into shapes. The results can then become anything from grocery bags to flooring, countertops, or structural beams.
@@PutItAway101 Linoleum is flammable and widely used. Wooden countertops? Laminates? Particleboard? Plywood? Don't look now, but our houses are already flamable. Just stay sober in the kitchen, don't smoke and have a few (properly maintained) fire extinguishers (one on every floor) and you are good to go. And don't forget smoke alarms.
The solution to plastic waste is to attach responsibility for the waste to the use of the product. In other words, if a company wants to use plastic for a consumer application, they must create a plan for dealing with the resulting waste stream, and they must fund their share of the cost of that waste stream. This would result in the cost being added to the calculus of using plastics, and those uses that created the most difficult waste streams would become the most costly. Moreover, by pricing the cost of disposal into the cost of use, consumers would be forced to pay for the full cost of their convenience items. All together, this would push the market towards the most efficient use of plastic, and away from the uses that create the greatest problems. It does not work to try and fix this problem downstream. That's like saying to industry "no matter how big a problem you create, someone else will pay for fixing it.". We don't have to guess how that's going to turn out.
Thanks for sharing these emerging solutions for making plastics more circular. Let's hope they're able to be scaled up quickly as well as companies shifting their mindsets / business models around how plastic is produced.... couldn't agree more that we need to start making less virgin materials and use more that have been "recycled" and in the case, broken down to be rebuilt!
My 9 to 5 is in “continuous improvement” so I’m pretty experienced in what the average company wants to see before they swap to new tech. It’s honestly just profit or savings. So the biggest thing that we can do in the meantime to help speed the switch along is “putting our finger on the scale” so that the new solution = more profit. Until that happens, it will only be a handful of well intentioned companies who make the switch…but nothing of real consequence.
Thanks Dave. I truly hope that this research leads to economically viable processes for plastics recycling, as soon as possible. The last time I took a long sea voyage was in the early 1970's, and even back then, I was shocked by the amount of plastics waste which was floating, all along the shipping lanes. And the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps worse than the Pacific, on average. It'll be far worse now, two generations later.
I worked in the coast guard, spending long periods of time on ships that were docked in various harbours in Canada and the US. I was always disgusted by the litter, mainly plastic, that wound up in a typical harbour after a good rain storm.
An aesthetic/production comment; as I sit here, yet again, on my couch with my iPad propped up on my lap with a pillow (please don't judge me), I've noticed that you are framed a bit off center to the right, from my perspective. So, when I'm watching the TH-cam app (not in full-screen), you are situated in the center of my vision. I'd like to think this is more than random coincident, and more of a thoughtful intent on your part. Love your channel. Keep up the good work!
Now this sounds very promising. I am strongly against changing from plastic. The problem is not the plastic but how we deal with it after use. A sensible recycling method would be perfect.
Thank you Dave, I needed this video. I've been relying on those precious microbes to be even remotely positive about plastic waste. This zinc catalyst + methanol method could be another solution to reduce the vast plastic islands we've built up over the decades.
Has anyone mentioned the terrific series on BBC called Doomwatch. Each episode in the drama showed a team trying to react to a new problem caused by new tech. It covered so many concepts. Anyway, in one episode some group had developed a bacteria that ate nearly every plastic there was. Trouble is it got out and caused havoc. One scene showed the inside of a jet liner as the fittings and electrical insulation turned to mush. I'm not too worried about the bug but I do worry about the people who make sure questions aren't even asked. The sort who pay others to say "Nothing to see here, move along." If only the rich would become a fashionable superfood. In Addition I have to say. Your work is exceptional in so many ways I will not list them in case you swoon. Please, Please keep going at them.
How to reduce plastic use? 1. Water in the faucets-drinking water, 2. Each country-state produce enough food (no problem, when there are no wars, banks finance wars), no import-export of food internationaly 3. Organic food, longer fresh, healthier, 4. Development of small food storys, more manual work, 4. Support small farmers where manual work is main force, 5. Food prices up, quality of food up, food has more nutrients, people willeat less food, lose fat, become more healthier. Etc.
Thanks for the weekly update! As I see it the problem is that we produce too many different types of plastic, and a good recycling-upcycling technology that works for all of them is unlikely to exist. The only two solutions that I see are: 1. Legislation that forbid putting on the market of all but a few plastic types. 2. We simply incinerate all plastic waste and develop technologies to sustainably produce plastic without usin fossil hydrocarbons.
It would be good to have a JHAT episode on incineration as a way of dealing with waste - good or bad?. Our local council built one (against the wishes of its future neighbours!), to avoid using land-fill (when the government made landfill very expensive a few years ago), but I'm fairly certain they no longer use this incinerator (why, I don't know and can't find out).
Easy its bad to burn it go camping and try it Than gi camping and burn it with a propane torch Still bad. Then claim to do electricity with your propane torch Than cool down your propane fire with more garbage and add more propane. Then claim you produce electricity. There easy
@@paulhaynes8045 Yes an episode on waste incineration would be interesting. I've tested the emissions of a few of them in my previous job and they can be fairly clean, but for the sake of profit they don't do enough (imo) for the abatement of dioxins/PCBs/PAHs etc.
Incineration puts all the carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and it is only feasible for certain polymers like PE or PP. As soon as you have chlorinated polymers in the waste like CPE, PVC, PVDC you're likely to get toxic products. But forbidding those would be a big blow as they are actually quite useful materials. Depolymerization ("Splitting") would circumvent such problems. (Which is why this is an interesting video). The truth is that there is no simple solution. Progress can be made but it requires that more people become knowledgeable about all the little devils in all the details. Governments cannot leave that to the polymer industry. They will have to hire polymers people to sort it out independently form the industry. Otherwise they will make really dumb decisions.
Honestly this just in general. Landfills are often a ticking time bomb leak wise, and contain all sorts of materials. Sorting into metals, minerals/aggregate, and RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel), then Pyrolysis and/or Gasification of the RDF (As described ~6:30 in this video) could yield all sorts of products, *as well as* essentially doing environmental remediation work + boosting nearby property values.
Granted they may not always use the best possible pollution control systems / novel processes (they often use fixed/moving bed combustion rather than Fluidized Bed Combustion, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or Pyrolysis processes), but Europe uses few landfills and thus shows this is quite viable.
Thank you for another informative video. I see cyclical systems as all important when we talk about sustainability. The earth is that type of systems and we are a part of the earth.
Agreed. A book I was reading recently kept pointing out how none of our current economic systems account for needing raw materials and disposing of waste. Hence, half the issues that we’re facing today.
@@matthewsaxe6383 donut economics. I bought it after hearing the lady give a Ted talk and be a guest on the Freakonomics podcast. I wouldn’t recommend it though because I think it’s targeted at Econ majors so 60% of it went over my head. But if you’re interested then I’d highly recommend the “is economic growth the wrong goal” episode of Freakonomics. Seem like really great theories though so I hope it catches on.
I think it's time for governments to step in and start to regulate use of new plastics - perhaps by something similar to carbon taxes. The more recycled or upcycled plastics the manufacturers can use, the less taxes they should pay. And we, as consumers, will very quickly recognize the true value of recycling then - recycled products will be cheaper than new ones. And I bet suddenly a lot of manufacturers will discover the beauties of non-plastic packaging options... We've tried for decades now to do it nicely and "not harm the industries". Time to change the tone of the music.
Governments are bought off by the oil industry. People have to choose NOT to buy plastic, starting with single use stuff , like baggies and bottles. It isn’t hard- it’s a choice.
In 1978 I invented a way to recycle landfill plastics of the thermo-plastic variety vs the thermo-setting kind. The racially invidious professor gave me a terrible grade. Years later I saw my technique being employed to make park benches. Many roads degrade over time as the sun cooks the tar of which roads are made which makes them crumble. Combining recycled plastic with recycled glass would make much more durable roads than by using the current slurry of tar and rock aggregate. In fact a strategic use of such composite roads could be made into solar energy producers of EMF and/or batteries and/or electric roadways.
I hope to see those innovative new processes brought to a significant scale soon. In the meantime individuals can reduce their plastic consumption by buying food items in bulk sizes which reduces the ratio of plastic to product mass.
One small scale simple idea is to bring your own bags to the grocery store. That way you reuse the bags multiple times. I do that, and the staff adjusted quickly to the idea. They don't a t like it's wierd...or that you are wierd.
@@julieheath6335 - In my area most businesses are open to customers bringing their own bag, or they encourage it. It is understandable that some businesses might be hesitant since such use can be seen as a potential for hiding and stealing merchandise.
I'd better buy a bigger plastic refrigerator, and more plastic storage boxes and bags, so that the extra provisions can be stored. Oh, and I'll have to use a car for carrying the goods home from the shops, in bigger plastic carrying bags. I'm being ironic, but these things do happen. Larger quantities often involve using thicker-walled plastic packaging, so it's not as linear a process as many people think.My wife discovered that, when she tried to buy 'biologically degradable' cleaning products, there were several downsides. Here are a few: They arrived in plastic packaging. They cost more. They were less effective at cleaning, requiring larger quantities of hot water, to prevent hygiene from suffering. They had to be bought from countries far away from home, via the internet, because local stores could not / would not sell them. The cleaning items were much less durable and had to be discarded sooner. All of the waste went into landfill, because the local authorities could not recycle most of it.
Manufacturers aren’t helping his ratio by downsizing their packages to disguise the fact they’re raising the unit (mL or g) cost by keeping the package price static and giving you less product. This also increases the plastic:product ratio, increasing plastic use. For example, juice cartons went from 64 fluid ounces to 59 and are now 52. Ice cream tubs are worse - many went from 64 floz to 48. Oddly, milk cartons are often still 64 floz.
We clearly have a long way to go but this is so encouraging. Our current grass roots "recycling" in the UK varies widely from region to region and is desperately in need of overhaul and central coordination. These newly discovered systems will hopefully revolutionise our reprocessing of certain types of plastics but public awareness/engagement driving interest in resolving this colossal problem, will be crucial in the changes in legislation necessary to reconfigure commercial / economic dependency on plastics which cannot yet be recycled and drive packaging in particular in the direction of those which can. A process we are beginning to see in shops with more people electing to refuse products in packs which cannot be recycled ( here in Pembrokeshire, recyclable black and brown plastics are refused by the local authority collections as it is uneconomic in the sale of waste - grrrrr!).
The things that I rely on and have been designed to fail so that I go buy a replacement are the ones that horrify me. Cause I’m forced to keep polluting just so a company can meet their quarterly profit goals.
There is nothing wrong with long-term use plastics. The problem is all the plastic packaging and other single-use things that are only plastic because plastic is cheap.
Same thoughts here.. it's inescapable - but we have gotten used to carrying our own shopping bags into stores and recycling everything that our city will recycle, which unfortuneately are just 1s and 2s. How is your curbside recycling set up?
Looks great on paper! I'm hoping this is rapidly commercialised and industrialised. I reckon it'd help if plastic manufacturers were tariffed with recycling costs. As the producers, they are obligated to deal with the clean up.
Since a large quantity of plastics originate as packaging of products from.China. A tariff is not going to do anything to a foreign company. Consumers end up paying ALL tariffs.
Even imported products can be forced to account for recycling costs. Many items just would not/could not be sold if they had to include recycling costs. Many times, an otherwise excellent product could not be sold if it had to include recycling cost. That would mean that decisions about parts and packaging would be part of the product cycle, automatically paying for the recycling cost. It also would behoove major manufacturers to help pay for sophisticated recycling facilities to reduce their costs of production.
Quite an excellent presentation -- technical but not difficult to grasp in one viewing. I love the idea of "upcycling," whereby the essential chemicals of a given type of plastic can be continuously broken down and either repurposed or rejoined, virtually eliminating waste. There are three big issues to confront, however. 1) Oil industry resistance, since there are more profits in manufacturing new plastics; 2) Consumer ignorance and bad habits, such as buying cheep polyester materials or discarding rather than recycling; and 3) the poorly organized, confusing, and inadequate recycling industry, which needs to be guided by national and even global standards and laws.
Thank you for giving me a glimmer of hope. We could speed up this evolution by taxing the hell out of plastics made from virgin materials. But that would require a functional democracy.
Agreed. I actually call and email my politicians once a month on this exact subject. Sure, it kind of feels like screaming into a void, but I guess it’s better than sitting on my butt doing nothing.
I remember a video whereby they said "You need to *make Virgin plastic more expensive* That way it will give companies incentive to use recycable plastics - - -then all that waste will be a valuable resource!"
I live in rural eastern Australia on a large property, on a regular basis we find spent balloons, plastic tarps, building insulation, complete umbrellas that have fallen out of the sky? In the last three weeks we have been gifted two umbrellas, one next the house on a day with very little wind.. from the plastic sky gods? We are miles away from the nearest neighbor, further from a town, an hours drive from a city, just imagine what is floating around up there? Not really related but anyway. Anyone else experienced this?
I'm wondering how close you live to a road that is regularly traversed by lorries carrying an unsecured load. Perhaps on the way to a landfill site or something.
Thankyou for telling us about some very positive steps forwards in really tackling plastic recycling. Despite decades of plastic use, plastic companies and governments STILL have not adapted the chemical composition of these plastics so they can be recycled or enzymatically broken down more easily. Isn't it easier to alter the design of plastics so they can be broken down easily (by a bespoke catalyst), rather than trying to create an enzyme to break down these long-lasting plastics (which are so difficult to breakdown by nature), after the fact at the recycling stage? Am I the only one who feels like plastic manufacturing companies aren't really trying to help all that much here? That said, circular manufacturing and recycling is clearly a necessary process for sustainable practices, but one which many manufacturing companies are reluctant to target. It's a shame because many industries can make money by designing recycling capability into their products... but even if they can't, governments should instil painfully heavy fines for industries like plastic manufacturing, where their products are so difficult to recycle.
We've recently switched to having our milk delivered in glass bottles. A very small change, but rather inconvenient (larger plastic bottles are a much more efficient way of storing the milk in the fridge, and we have developed 'order anxiety' - a condition that causes stress the day before every delivery as we try to work out if we've got enough milk left to get us through to the next morning!). And it's also rather expensive (a 2 pint plastic bottle of organic milk from Sainsbury's costs £1.20, whereas a delivered pint of organic milk costs 88p - 47% more!). But at least that's a little less plastic being 'recycled' (I have strong doubts as to whether it really is recycled), and 12 kilos less that I have to carry up the hill each week. We are lucky that we're well enough off to do this - I suspect that most people, especially those with cars or who have their shopping delivered, would think we were daft. I mention this, not to get a pat on the back for being green (or told that I am daft!), but to illustrate just how difficult it is to give up just a small amount of the plastic we use. We are fairly careful with what we buy and go out of our way to not buy plastic (in as much as we can), and we recycle and compost everything we can. But our non-recycling bin (collected every two weeks) is still pretty full each time it is collected, and it is almost entirely full of plastic packaging. But at least it's light to carry up the cellar steps!
It’s great that you try your best but why still consuming cows milk and I assume other animal products? If I may ask, as avoiding these products is one of the most impactful choices we can make as individuals to help the environment and the climate crisis.
@@ab-td7gq It's a fair question. If there were more plant-based products that were tasty and readily avialable it would make the choice much easier. But a cold glass of milk is a hard thing the substitute, isn't it?
You're doing your part and i salute you for that. We all have our part. Some of us small and others cause it's within their powers to do a lot more. If we all contributed as much as we can the world would be a happier, greener and cleaner place.. ... But you never know who you might inspire and how far your influence might go.
@@TheBricetune There are great alternatives these days and delicious plant based recipes on line. Its easier than ever before. Taste buds take only a few weeks to adapt to new foods. Milk is full of pus, blood, feces, hormones and often antibiotics so for me personally it wasn’t that hard to switch to soy milk.
@@ab-td7gq I much prefer oat milk. It’s also stable in hot drinks, whereas soy milk will curdle. I use the cartons cut in half as plant pots for my veg seeds.
interesting username.... By almost any metric humanity _is_ the problem with living on this planet. Much like cancer, it keeps replicating out of control and hijacking all the resources available in the ecosystem.
@@thesilentone4024 that would be great, when the interiors of durable goods like refrigerators and vehicles get dissolved into some disgusting biofilm edit: not to mention all the pipes in sanitation and insulation used for power distribution
The usefulness of plastics isn't just convenient bottles and plastic bags. Through circumstances in my life I worked in the medical industry and I can tell you that without plastics, our medical abilities would be degraded to the point that many people would die everyday than they do now. Just the amount of plastics used during a single kidney Dialysis session would fill a 5 gallon bucket of waste. And the average Dialysis patient needs 3 session per week. The cost and the function of Dialysis machines would skyrocket as well as the cost of each session without plastics. The same for pretty much any modern medical procedure.
THIS I have no experience in the area so can’t speak to that, but seeing pre-plastics medical devices (in museums/period pieces etc) is kind of eerie; all the latex tubing, leather, etc That and everything tended to be much bulkier and required autoclave for reuses, even for the most simple of things! Even things like tape for gauze/stabilizing a needle are often plastics, so a simple bandage for a cut/after you donate blood benefits from plastics!
2:28 8 billion tons is nowhere near the total biomass on the planet. That'd be around 550 billion tons of carbon alone. With the water content, take several times that.
I thought this too. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he misspoke and meant to reference the animal biomass. (I don't actually know that this is true either, but sounds more plausible)
@@sammason2300 There is about 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon in animal biomass on earth, total animal biomass should be around 5 times more, so it's in the ballpark, but still not quite correct. I also really respect him, so I'd say the mistake was probably made by someone else and he didn't check it enough.
Enjoyable educational and thought-provoking. Thank you. I am sure the biochem people and the genetic engineering groups are heavily studying those natural bacterial enzymatic activity, this might be a good way to recycle and besides being fascinating for us who study bacterial life.
I’m excited for this, but I don’t expect it to take off until we seriously pull back on our fossil fuel production. Until then, virgin plastic is insanely cheap because it’s coming from the excess of another process so it’ll be near impossible for anything to compete. But this sure would be amazing…having a circular plastic system and no fossil fuel drilling? Where do I sign up for that future!
We need more bribe money to keep the money system going, if the hippies win everyone will be dead from the factories shutting down leading to global total dying. Or as we know it, GTD, as refered to in the Bible: marc chapter 4 page 40 verse 5
@@matthewsaxe6383 yup I’m all for it. I actually call and email my reps once a month in order to remind them that I want a carbon tax put in place. Slowly but surely we seem to be getting there.
@Tommy Taffy normally I’m all for subsidies, but this case is different for me. We already subsidize the fossil fuel industry which becomes evidenced when I compare the gas that my wife uses for her commute as a percentage of our budge vs a percentage of our carbon footprint. The gas makes up a messily 1% of our budgeted expenses, but accounts for about 12% of our carbon footprint. So that’s why I’m in favor of increasing the cost of oil based products. I don’t mind if you call it a tax or a removal of subsidies or something else, the price needs to reflect the environmental impact.
I LOVE this idea. We need to move to a closed-loop economy overall, and plastics is a great place to start. In fact, if the breakdown of plastics becomes profitable - there's a gold mine off the coast of California waiting to be harvested!
After seeing your video I began to wonder: would it be possible to modify the MANUFACTURING process of particular plastics to include compounds that will aid in the recycling or industrial composting processes? Like mold the catalyst right into the part. Then when it’s tossed into a recycling reactor, it instantly breaks down.
The problem with including the catalyst for the breakdown of the product in the product itself is that it will do what it is supposed to do way before you want it to, basically, cutting down on the amount of time that the plastic could be used, since the catalyst would be slowly helping break it down from the minute it is introduced. Not to mention that, odds are, it would make the plastic less structurally stable, which is particularly bad if the plastic part is supposed to withstand any amount of force. In general, it is not that hard to have a reactor with the catalyst inside, allowing for a continuous process. The issue is with substrate purity. A lot of effort goes into sorting plastic waste so you can have mostly pure educts, which is necessary for a high quality product. And high quality products out of recycling are crucial if we want to make a circular economy financially feasible and have the products keep standards of quality.
That sounds great. As you say, our modern society is very reliant on all sorts of plastics. And they are not all that bad. Material science is a rapidly evolving field and a lot of modern materials are actually solving more problems than that they create. There's a reason plastics are popular: they are cheap to produce and handle during production and have all sorts of nice properties. The problems with plastics have in my view mainly to do with what happens after their useful life. While there are problems with sourcing materials (oil mainly) and production as well, these seem like they could be solved and those processes could become a lot more sustainable long term. I also don't see landfills as a bad thing necessarily. If the waste stays in one place, it's not very different from natural oil deposits. Nasty stuff if it spills during transport but not really doing a lot of harm as long as it just sits there. And potentially a resource we might rely on in the future. Otherwise, landfills are just a way of capturing the carbon that should be fine as long as we can prevent toxins leaking away. Instead of dumping things in landfills, burning plastic is also very common. A bit wasteful and it dumps CO2 in the atmosphere. But otherwise not that harmful if we can filter out the toxic stuff. And we can use the energy of course. But maybe landfills are a better solution until we figure out carbon neutrality. Energy intensive production processes are only problematic as long as that energy is sourced from fossil fuels. But we have plenty of renewable ways to source that energy now. So that's not necessarily that problematic either long term. Producing plastic using renewable energy might actually be cheaper even. All that coal, oil and gas that gets burned costs a lot of money. The source material for plastic is of course oil. That is a problem because oil deposits are not renewable and whether plastics degrade naturally, with some help, or whether we burn them: it all adds to our carbon footprint. However. if we find a way to synthesize oils using renewable energy to produce plastics that after a useful life end up being incinerated, it's not necessarily that much of a problem. So, you could probably make an argument for sustainable plastics long term. I don't see any fundamental reason that that would be impossible. Though short term it's probably prohibitively expensive. But that's a nice engineering problem for people to work on. Recycling plastics is a great way to reduce the overall carbon footprint. Perhaps the biggest issue with plastics are those varieties that get into the environment that are toxic or don't degrade. Particularly micro plastics and our oceans filling up with all sorts of plastics is a problem. The plastic in your coffee machine is unlikely to end up in the ocean. However, the plastic in an ice cream wrapper on the beach is bigger problem. Also the micro beads in your tooth paste or shampoo flush out to the oceans. And tires under your car that you have to replace after the wear out basically are another big source of microplastics. We need solutions for these products that are less problematic. If it has a high chance of ending up in our waterways, it should be biodegradable. One time use packaging is not actually that convenient to begin with (i don't mind paper or cardboard) and only nice for producers as long as we allow them to get away with it cheaply. Easy solution: lets tax and legislate that stuff out of existence. Call companies out on their packaging. A lot of that stuff is just so unnecessary. It's just in recent decades that that stuff actually became normal and it should stop being normal.
Unfortunately with PLA, you have to have very specific conditions within the compost its in so that it can start degrading. And with 3d printing modfying the polymer for better durability, weather resistance etc, they chuck in more problematic chemicals into the compost that it would land in.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Maybe in terms of usefullness against plastic trash yeah, we just found a way to generate plastic if we run out of fosssil fuel lol
The conditions aren’t too difficult commercially, the main issue is lack of investment in the Municipal Solid Waste Management side, as well as lack of sorting/clear labeling.
@@DRakeTRofKBam Granted - Electrolysis (For Hydrogen->Plastics/More Likely Use in Hydrotreating Parts of the Other Pathways Below etc) - Gasification (For Syngas->Plastics) - Pyrolysis (for Pyrolysis Oil as a replacement for Crude Oil / Some Fractions of Crude Oil) Can all work as well as Non-Conventional Method Bioplastics (Like PLA etc), and the latter two can be done both with biomass, as well as with unsorted/degraded plastics as well as any other fractions in what is called “Refuse Derived Fuel” or RDF AND All of the plastics made with these processes would use existing facilities (helping with the “Just Transition” to a decarbonized economy), and be a “Drop In Replacement” (ie be Nylon, or ABS, or Acetal, not something “nylon like” etc)
It breaks my heart when I see in an ice cream shop server sick a plastic neon coloured spoon into the ice cream cone, or here where i live they sell cooked corn in the park, but serve it in a cup with a plastic spoon... or when I see my family use plastic single use earbuds, we've become so numb and careless...
Speaking of ice cream shops: it also kills me when I see them using plastic spoons for samples. So they literally use the spoon for one tiny bite and then discard it!
I just noticed for the first time that you have "Capital", from Piketti, in your background. What was your opinion of it? It's great to have been following you. You started as a channel more about technology and science, and incorporated more and more climate videos, and alluding now a little bit to social issues stemming from our political and economic context (Capitalism). This mirrors my own progress on those issues, and it led me to learn a lot on the history of Labor, the struggles for Socialism and Anarchims, and involve myself politically on that front. Anyway, it's not a political channel, but you seem to have a good perspective, it would be great to know more about your political views. Especially if it can be framed in the need to go beyond Capitalims to save our burning planet. I think you did a video that touched on it, but I don't remember that it was very developped on how we could achieve this (depends on your political affiliation, the tactics you prefer). If you'd like books that explore this, I'm currently reading "Toward a New Socialism", by the economist Paul Cockshott, and it's very good. "The people's Republic of Wal-Mart" showed how we could plan our economy (crucial for a coordinated green transition). The book "Less is More", by Jason Hickel, alluded to some of the things we need to do, which goes into a Socialist direction, but could be implemented within a Capitalist framework (it does admonish the notion that we can continue with "Green Growth"). Basically, it was: - No more planned obsolescence (could reduce our production needs by a lot). - No more induced demand (ads). People would be happier too, less consumerism. - Restoration of the commons. Land trusts. Public transport. Walkable urban landscape. - Things should be repairable. Uniform standards. Easily swappable components. Made to be recycled or re-used (end-of-lifecycle in mind). A circular economy. ... there was a lot more, it was a bit too reformist for my taste, but I'd add: - Planned directly democratic production. Because I don't see how to tackle climate change unless our economy is geared to satisfy our needs, not for profit by exploiting ourselves, creating externalities. This imply the end of Capitalism, and the method on how to get there vary. But the important part is the need for direct democracy. Anyway, I could explain a lot more, but I was curious to hear from your perspective.
That's just my two cents. Thanks for bringing up these ideas though, and sharing those books. By the way, besides those book recommendations, do you follow any TH-cam channel that do cover these topics? I'm assuming you follow this content already, and I'm interested to check it out.
Hi DeathToMockingBirds. Thanks for your feedback. In fact if you go right back to video #1 about four years ago, you'll see that the channel was actually started specifically to focus on the climate emergency and has developed more technical videos along the way. The strapline of the channel is "The Climate and Sustainable Energy Channel". As for my politics, I would say I am a pragmatic socialist. I thought 'Capital' was extremely technical and very hard going. I only got about half way through and gave up. In general terms, I recognise that we need the three legs of the stool - Government, Commerce and the Public to make a success of climate mitigation.
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you for your answer. I also stopped Capital halfway, both from Piketty and Marx. Ultimately it boils down to keeping Capitalism or not, with direct democracy in the workplace or not. To me, I have trouble imagining the green transition we need while Capitalist incentives keep driving decisions regarding the production of goods (which is the main contributor to climate change). Your channel is the main one I recommend when it comes to available solutions, it's a matter of having a system in place that has an active interest in the well-being of all, not one built on exploitation.
Thanks for this update - much appreciated. For plastic recycling, the technology developed by the Dutch Urban Mining Corporation is worth checking out. They can do amazing things. ALSO... it's worth pointing out that the plastic waste problem is actually exagerrated. Yes, you read that right. Chris Dearmitt, an independent scientist and consultant, has worked hard to show the real extent of what is going on. See "plastic paradox" if, like me, you care about the facts.
I got about 20 min into looking at Chris Dearmitt, and I am already very skeptical. The first website I came across read like a "one weird trick" scam. Next I started watching 'the great plastics distraction pt2' and immediately recognized tired old propaganda techniques. Once I saw that comments were turned off on the video, I stopped watching. Pretty sure this guy is a scam.
If the manufacturer's made diffent plastics in set colours according to the type of plastic used, sorting would be very simple. That could be used for the single use versions at least.
Sorting is not the problem, the problem is contaminants that get into the structure of the molecule, you can't easily sort that out without chemically processing the plastic. It doesn't really matter much what type of plastic it is, they all suffer this same problem.
The single use plastic industry and plastic industry as a whole needs to be held accountable. Implement strick EPR and gradually stop/ban the use of Single Use Plastic as food & beverage container while implementing worldwide Zero Waste Sustainable Economy (Refuse, Reuse, Repair, Refill, Repurpose, Rot, etc)
Talk to the Philippines about not dumping their trash in rivers. This one small country is responsible for more than a third of all the plastic in the oceans.
@@incognitotorpedo42 It's not that they're intentionally dumping trash into the rivers. They lack a waste disposal infrastructure in general, so trash ends up on the ground, in the street, and eventually gets rained on and washed away. The effect is the same, just sayin'
@@incognitotorpedo42 are you that blind, most sachet and other single use plastic packaging are MADE AND USE BY BIG WESTERN COMPANY !!!! When they could be implementing Refill, you know LIKE THEY USED TO. But ever since oil price cheap n more drilling single use plastic becomes their choices that leads to todays situation. People become addicted and dependent of single use packaging because of their decision to cut corner and make more money. Btw many grassroot in SAE country have been fighting againts the single use plastic by western multinational companies. And base on research by Jambek et al China is first then Indonesia second biggest plastic polluters that goes to the rivers and ocean. Your opinion are exactly what the Big Polluter have been doing --> Shifting the Blame to the Consumer !
The next thing is to make waste plastic worth something so in poorer countries you get people either recycling or just going out and collecting it because it gives them a wage. That would go a lot if not mostly all the way to stop it entering the oceans.
incinerating it for heat energy would reduce our need to extract oil, and eliminate the waste. landfills seem like a lazy way of dealing with waste...the idea is just "out of sight, out of mind".
Incinerator is probably harder to make a profit unless there's exception to safety regulation like not needing to filter smoke stack (for toxin) or not needing to care for garbage truck traffic into the neighbourhood (waste sludge). The incinerator will be great if it can operate like coal power plant and have nothing to care.
Landfilling plastic keeps it out of the ocean and sequesters carbon. If the landfill is properly designed, leaching of substances from the plastic should not be a problem.
@@xponen Europe operates manly on a model where they have strict (Although in my opinion not struct enough) emission control regulations and thus are fine short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. You can read up on their policy as well as existing “Incineration” and/or “Waste to Energy” (incineration with steam boiler+turbine) plants. The main issue that needs to be solved in the Incineration model is Processing of Ash, as of now it is disposed of in landfills. Granted it isn’t as toxic as Coal Ash, especially if the Refuse Derived Fuel / Feedstock is sorted accordingly, but a problem we should avoid nonetheless. Various Newer Combustion / Gasification methods can produce “slag” rather than ash which is essentially igneous rock which can be used as concrete or earthworks aggregate etc (i need to look into any potential leaching hazards more, but from what i have encountered they are supposedly inert) Also ash reprocessing (done frequently with “Fly Ash” to make Cement, less common with “Bottom Ash”) could also solve the problem by “sorting” the ash into hazardous materials (any Mercury etc, although this should be FAR less than coal) and useful chemicals. Main issue is cost/complexity, but this may be solvable? I haven’t looked into the literature on this as much as other methods described here. Also, at least if I remember correctly, pyrolysis produces no ash, only “Pyrolysis Oil” and “Char/Petcoke” (some char is retained in the pyrolysis oil forming a somewhat significant issue if used as a “drop in” replacement for crude oil, although this is addressable if I remember correctly. Pyrolysis can allow for chemical recycling as mentioned ~6:30 which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in theory at least, this comment doesn’t have citations etc so refer to a proper paper for that) since plastic/chemicals are extracted rather than burned. Also it can save energy in a similar manner. Doing a “Power-to-X” / “Power-to-Chemicals” process, as well as Gasification to an extent, would require more steps and energy to get to some hydrocarbon feedstock from hydrogen and/or syngas. With pyrolysis oil it is just a simple filtering/distillation away. **IN CONCLUSION TO THIS WORDWALL:** As of now there can be a Low Landfill Processes (bits of ash in a landfill, rather than barely compacted mixed MSW), and in the near term there can be *No Landfill, Low/No GHG Emissions Processes* (All Char/Fly Ash Cement/Slag Aggregate/Pyrolysis Oil/Process Derived Chemicals)
@@incognitotorpedo42 It is less of an issue of “if” it will leak and contaminate groundwater, but “when”. Liners will fail eventually. Also due to the lack of sorting, and processing they contain toxic Leachate/Solid Materials. Processing + Incineration/Gasification etc can reduce this l, *but in the end a pit of unsorted waste is a pit of unsorted waste, no matter how fancy*
@@incognitotorpedo42 On the note of carbon sequestration, i think burying near pure carbon, “washed” char/coke/petcoke/carbon black etc, in a deep stable area (as opposed to surface level biochar which has unclear stability due to various processes) in a sort of “reverse coal/graphite mining” could be a really neat and stable way of Carbon Sequestration, so i do agree on that note i guess! Also just “Carbon Sequestration in Building Materials” (using bioplastics/carbon fiber/other carbon materials in permanent structures) can work too.
As you correctly say, use of plastics is not going to go away in the foreseeable future, if ever, no matter how much many people would like it. I firmly believe that massively more money needs to be pumped into the recycling industry to develop technologies such as you described here with the aim of making it cheaper to dig up landfill sites to reclaim the discarded plastics as well as other materials than it is to make them from scratch. The recycling industry also needs to deal with this "clean and dry" your recycled waste materials so that all we need to do is put it into the green bin. After all, as a species, we are a lazy bunch and for many, dare I say most people, this clean and dry thing is too much bother. Quite frankly, recycling from the everyday person point of view should be food waste into one bin and everything else into the green bin with everything in the green bin being recycled. An impossible dream? I hope not.
I agree with all your points, but would like to point out one additional issue we have. As long as we continue to drill for oil, virgin material will always be cheaper than recycled once you account for the processing issues that are encountered. So we can do everything you mention and do it amazingly, but it’ll never truly flourish until we stop the flow of oil and virgin material.
That's all great news and what an interesing video. I think another way to reduce plastic waste is to use as little of it as possible. For example, bananas have a pretty sophisticated skin and don't need to be wrapped in plastic. Think of other things, such as chocolate bars, each of which is individually wrapped in plastic and then sold in supermarkets as a job lot wrapped in yet another layer of plastic. Completely unnecessary. Of course, the supermarkets do this to ensure that, for example, you buy four apples at a time rather than just the one you might fancy at the time (whereby the rest will probably end up brown and moldy and eventually be thrown out - another problem in its own right).
I don't understand much of this, but it sounds encouraging - like maybe the nerds will save us - again - if we can figure out how to shut up and stay out of their way. It would be interesting to hear how upcycling of plastics could fit with - or help drive - a Closed Loop Manufacturing scheme.
Thank you for this fundamentally optimistic video! While it's true that we desperately need to reduce the amount of plastic we use on a global basis, just ending the discussion with "we need to use less plastic" doesn't solve anything. It's about as useful as telling people to go and sin no more. As you show in your video, plastic is just too useful in too many ways to completely suppress its use, particularly in a world of nations with radically different environmental regulations. Plastic upcycling sounds far more useful, since it could provide an economic reason to recycle existing plastic waste and reduce the amount of new plastic produced. If these different processes could be made efficient enough (perhaps with robots doing the sorting) it might be possible to get to a point where it no longer makes economic sense to produce new plastic. If there's still four billion tons of old plastic out there, the ideal solution would be to endlessly recycle that material as cheaply as possible. Regulation could help with this, if it only allowed the production of new plastics from biodegradable materials. Whether it's exotic zinc-based catalysts, genetically engineered bacteria or who knows what, any method that can break down plastic into it's constituent materials more cheaply and help us get to that circular economy is a win for the planet.
I thoroughly enjoy your videos, interesting and so well explained( I hope they are used as education in schools ) as for Plastics( especially Packaging), I believe with more education and Government implemented regulation ( in a lot of cases a total ban)a lot of improvement / reduction can be achieved.Thank you.
Always happy to see improvements in the plastics industry but we really need to look for alternative materials, whether green-plastics or something new entirely. This is because, no matter what, some plastic will always get into the environment, and more research is coming out to show how dangerous plastic is as microplastics as well as food container plastics both accumulating and leaching toxins.
Agreed. Better recycling products are great for the application where we truly need plastics…but it won’t coverup the rampant overuse of plastics which we currently do.
Thanks for the video. I wish you had started the video with your topic, though, rather than taking almost 7 minutes to get to it ... you almost lost me along the way but I hung in there. Topic starts here 6:48
We should definitely be using more 'Glass' for food packaging, not to mention it's easier to recycle and cheaper in the long run. As for plastics, people need to know that this product must 'NEVER' be microwaved, regardless of type. Reusing plastic water bottles, must be kept cool, out of sunlight, cleaned often and the correct type. I agree with composting mixture plastics will be very beneficial, and help the environment. I'm glad scientists are finally waking up to keep their health, and others around them. We have great ideas, so lets start getting things in order. Cheers, Blessings!
In Japan they separate all types of waste into five or more pickups and the Japanese are careful to clean each piece of plastic before disposing of it. The way the USA manages it is lazy and self defeating as just a small amount of amount of dirty plastic, or plastic with foreign material prevents the recycling process from either working or from being efficient. Plus too many waste disposal municipalities buy the wrong equipment for their customers and then proceed to not recycle because the cost of changing again is too great after making the mistake of buying the wrong equipment in the first place.
How much energy and water is spent on the cleaning process performed in all these households? It might really be better for the environment for these plastics and the carbon they contain to be permanently sequestered in a landfill, thus being returned to the ground where they previously existed for millions of years in the form of oil or gas. This would keep them out of the oceans where they would turn to microplastic.
Great to hear about the positive progress in tackling this massive issue. I do worry that much of this upcycle tech will have to be mandated on companies, as it will probably not be in their short term interests for quite a long time. That sort of regulative policy is really tough to enforce worldwide
I'm not some green new deal pipe dream believer. But I rationally understand the real pollution problem in the world. This gentleman bring great viable ideas to the table. We won't save the world with solar panels and wind farms. It's not practical. People don't think critically and think we can just throw trillions of dollars at a problem and then they won't get told they'll die in 12 years....every 20 years lol. Brilliant ideas here that give me hope for real solutions that even the most hard core GND activist has never heard of.
2:24 Hold on, i believe 8 billion tons of plastic is still far less than the total biomass on earth, right? If i'm not mistaken there is ~450 billion tons of carbon stored in all plants. But it might be comparable to the biomass of all animals, which would be the same order of magnitude if i remember correctly. And of course that's still a dizzying amount of plastic, don't get me wrong...
I won several blue ribbons at an art festival in 1977 for an essay I wrote in 9th grade about a sampling of technological achievements made in the preceding 25 years. The clincher sentence was to the effect that it was both ironic and pathetic that we hadn’t yet devised ways to conserve and recycle the very materials of which such marvels were made.
You said it again, " now we need to get the cost of the process low enough...." At the end of the day you can't escape the economic fact of life, that businesses cannot compete using a more expensive process. The solution to this imbalance is not to despair at ever making these good guy solutions cheaper, but to put more effort into making the bad stuff more expensive. The economic playing field will then slope in favour of the environmental solutions. The money then flows like water downhill into perfecting these technologies. How do we make the bad stuff more expensive? Tax it at source, -as the oil or gas or coal comes out of the ground. The trouble is that too many governments are very deeply in the pockets of the oil giants, they cannot legislate against their masters.
I always wondered how producers of plastics were permitted to produce plastics at large scale without knowing how to properly dispose them. But I guess they just thought "someone will figure out in the future" and no one really cared as it weren't an immediate issue.
That’s actually why we have a recycling program in America. It wasn’t made to work…it was made just to convince the citizens that a problem didn’t exist so that they would feel ok purchasing more plastics.
Interesting as always. With respect to biodegradable anything I’m often concerned about the timescales required and whether there are volume limits or unintended consequences. But I suppose it has to be balanced with the current alternative ie physical degradation over centuries.
I think a most important part of this process is the reduction then elimination of the production of semi or non recyclable materials that are only made that way to increase shareholder value at the expense of our environment. "Externalities"
I once took a few hundred pounds of PET clamshell food containers to a recycler, along with a bunch of plastic bottles made from PET as well. I sprayed the clamshells with hose water, getting them somewhat clean. The recycler pulled out all of the clamshell food containers and said he could not take them. Most of the items that people put in their recycling bins for the city to pick up, end up in the landfill because they are not in pristine condition. The whole plastic recycling industry needs to be changed so that recyclers have incentives to recycle contaminated plastic. If not, no realistic solution will ever be achieved.
This is something people need to be made aware of. We put all our 'recycling' in the bin each fortnight and watch the 'dustcart' carry it away and think what a good thing we've done. But I suspect most of it just ends up in landfill or on a rubbiush dump out in the far-east. Not only can recyclers only accept certain types of plastic (and clean and non-mixed plastics, even then), they can't afford the staff to manually sort the incoming stream of mixed recycling (most of which cannot be sorted mechanically/automatically). Personally, I take a lot of care with our recycling - bundling up all the alluminium foil, cleaning bottles, making sure non-recycling doesn't get mixed in, etc - but our neighbours just put all packaging (and a great deal else!) in their recycling bin - often in carrier bags! All this is dumped into the same truck when it is collected, and arrives at the depot all mixed up. And I'm pretty sure as a result, that little, or none, of it actually gets recycled.
@@paulhaynes8045 the recyclers don't want to hurt their bottom line by washing the plastic before using it. And it wouldn't be too difficult either- shred it throw it all in a washing machine with detergent, rinse a few times then it's ready. The adhesive left by the label isn't PET yet that doesn't stop them from recycling the plastic drink bottles, so no one could ever convince me that oil contaminated plastic couldn't be cleaned enough to produce a food grade product.
I wonder how much biological contamination (like from food stains) these zinc based catalysts can handle.
@@paulhaynes8045 - where I live, aluminum foil is not supposed to be put into the recycling container, only aluminum cans.
@@paulhaynes8045 You see, this is why common people can't be trusted to be around too much plastic. One should need a liscence to use it at home. My family used to be so ignorant, putting up a fake plant screen in our garden, and pieces of it are blown off and now there's green plastic inside of the soil and grass.
As a chemist who works with one of the presented methods of "splitting" PET into its components, I can add that the process works. The issue is how to get the materials sorted for a good base to work with. If there's a rather low percentage of, e.g., PE contained, this will not be broken down, and other materials also won't. And it can be difficult to clean the products of the reaction.
Sorting of materials is actually the major problem for any plastic recycling. If it was possible to separate the materials up to a 99.99% purity, recycling would be much easier. But anything below this purity will either lead to expensive clean-up steps, or will prevent recycling at all.
By the way, "bisphenol" is pronounced differently (not bise-phenol, but biss-phenol), and it's unfortunately one potent endocrine disruptor which is under strict limits in most countries.
intresting.... but interoperability is something only governments can enforce...
but on the other hand, isn't there already a big opertunity regarding commercial wastes? like restaurants, fishing nets, protective packaging (ie. Styrofoam)
or is BPA-PC a minor unpopular plastic? like maybe we need it for PVC or polyester?
@@acasccseea4434 Why does it have to be enforced? And if a govt definitely wants it it can issue a crisis and a related lockdown. We've seen that in the last wto years and numerous lockdowns are looming on the horizon.
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Spot on about the preparation. It seems sorting is a starting point with only the "choice cuts" going for splitting. Pop bottles (PET) could be a candidate. One idea from a science fiction magazine (Omni) is to at least separate the waste into types and storing them in deep holes until the technology comes about to use each one. The story was that each sealed tip could become a future goldmine.
@@Pozi_Drive If the process requires a clean input stream, then that cleanliness has to be "enforced" somehow. They could, for example, pay less (or even nothing) for batches that don't meet the standard. Not all enforcement involves "jackbooted thugs".
This guy deserves all the support he can get for bringing the problems we all face into the realm of understandable proportions, and demonstrating that there are solutions available.
yes indeed perhaps he should get a yacht that is his very own
He's a Global Warming, CO2-phobic Fake-Green salesman and propagandist buy sometimes he does talk about real major environmental problems (of which plastic and oil spills in the sea are not one).. Plastic's main problem for humanity is the consumption of endocrine system imbalances screwing up our hormone balance.
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This is more to do with tin lining and plastic packaging and food wraps more than anything else, though the water supply is effected too, though mostly from inadequately processing sewage water back into the water supply.. If you believe in Global Warming and the Fake-Green Revolution you are part of the problem.
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The main problems 'caused' by plastics are NOT actually caused by plastics, they're caused by LANDFILLERS who banned INCINERATORS and incinerator development. The guy pushes a lot of exaggerated fake-green doom-mongering HARD SALES PROPAGANDA. CO2 is not the enemy, it is the stuff The Real Green World (The Plant World) is made from, while liberating the O2 for us to breathe. The IPCC is an insult to DECENT SCIENCE.
That introduction was brilliant! You can feel right away that this video is going to go in depth about plastics, unlike the many "inspirational" videos which never go into the important details.
I think deposit return on plastics is the way to go. Then instead of becoming a waste product they have a value. Litter pickers could make a fortune.
True, but we already have deposits in many places and they’re not working. Although, I think the issue is just that they’re not expensive enough.
I got juice from a place one time which had a $4 bottle deposit…you can bet your butt that I returned that bottle!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Yeah that's not how it works in the parts of the UK it's currently implemented, and is likely due to go across all 4 countries of the UK in the coming year. The deposit amount is 20p no matter if it's a small or large plastic bottle, can or tin. It's resulted in a 94% recycle rate of those containers.
@@NeonVisual I think there’s a cultural thing at play though. Cause I’m the US the standard deposit is 0.10 or something and our return rate is atrocious. Increasing it to .20 or .30 has been tossed around I believe, but I’m unsure how much of an effect it will have.
The example of $4 that I had was just a single place that had their own system.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet 10c would be about 7p in our money. People probably wouldn't bother here at such a low level either. We also have a tax on high sugar drinks like coke which also helps to drive people away from garbage in plastic bottles. It's about 37 cents in your money per 1ltr on top of the regular price. So in your money a ltr of coke would have about 62c added to the price in total.
This would be a help, just unfortunate that there always has to be a monetary motivation to get people to care.
A while back, a San Francisco startup had an interesting solution: Shred and wash the plastics, heat till the low melting point contents flow, and press into sheets or extrude into shapes. The results can then become anything from grocery bags to flooring, countertops, or structural beams.
That idea originated by a woman in Africa. She made paving "stones" and bricks.
@@spacelemur7955 likely thousands of people have tried variations.
Not sure I'd want an extemely flammable countertop, doesn't seem like a good place to use plastic! Or floors, for that matter.
@@PutItAway101 Linoleum is flammable and widely used. Wooden countertops? Laminates? Particleboard? Plywood?
Don't look now, but our houses are already flamable.
Just stay sober in the kitchen, don't smoke and have a few (properly maintained) fire extinguishers (one on every floor) and you are good to go. And don't forget smoke alarms.
@@PutItAway101 so, you’re deathly afraid of cars, water bottles, synthetic clothing, scrub brushes, toys, …
The solution to plastic waste is to attach responsibility for the waste to the use of the product. In other words, if a company wants to use plastic for a consumer application, they must create a plan for dealing with the resulting waste stream, and they must fund their share of the cost of that waste stream.
This would result in the cost being added to the calculus of using plastics, and those uses that created the most difficult waste streams would become the most costly. Moreover, by pricing the cost of disposal into the cost of use, consumers would be forced to pay for the full cost of their convenience items. All together, this would push the market towards the most efficient use of plastic, and away from the uses that create the greatest problems.
It does not work to try and fix this problem downstream. That's like saying to industry "no matter how big a problem you create, someone else will pay for fixing it.". We don't have to guess how that's going to turn out.
Agreed. We need to stop socializing the damage from these companies while privatizing the profits.
Maybe a tax o. Vergin plastic. Used cans for soda. Go back to returnable glass, like Coca Cola use too do.
Thanks for sharing these emerging solutions for making plastics more circular. Let's hope they're able to be scaled up quickly as well as companies shifting their mindsets / business models around how plastic is produced.... couldn't agree more that we need to start making less virgin materials and use more that have been "recycled" and in the case, broken down to be rebuilt!
My 9 to 5 is in “continuous improvement” so I’m pretty experienced in what the average company wants to see before they swap to new tech. It’s honestly just profit or savings.
So the biggest thing that we can do in the meantime to help speed the switch along is “putting our finger on the scale” so that the new solution = more profit.
Until that happens, it will only be a handful of well intentioned companies who make the switch…but nothing of real consequence.
Good news, thanks. The more work done at room temperature the better
I have no particular plastic insights-
...Just wanted to say thank you for another well researched, well reasoned episode.
Thanks Dave. I truly hope that this research leads to economically viable processes for plastics recycling, as soon as possible. The last time I took a long sea voyage was in the early 1970's, and even back then, I was shocked by the amount of plastics waste which was floating, all along the shipping lanes. And the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps worse than the Pacific, on average. It'll be far worse now, two generations later.
I worked in the coast guard, spending long periods of time on ships that were docked in various harbours in Canada and the US. I was always disgusted by the litter, mainly plastic, that wound up in a typical harbour after a good rain storm.
An aesthetic/production comment; as I sit here, yet again, on my couch with my iPad propped up on my lap with a pillow (please don't judge me), I've noticed that you are framed a bit off center to the right, from my perspective. So, when I'm watching the TH-cam app (not in full-screen), you are situated in the center of my vision. I'd like to think this is more than random coincident, and more of a thoughtful intent on your part. Love your channel. Keep up the good work!
Hi Steve. It is a random coincidence I'm afraid. I'm not that clever! :-)
Great post my friend. I always enjoy hearing about forward progress on the plastic dilemma. It is surely a sore subject.
Glad you enjoyed it
Now this sounds very promising. I am strongly against changing from plastic. The problem is not the plastic but how we deal with it after use. A sensible recycling method would be perfect.
Thank you Dave, I needed this video. I've been relying on those precious microbes to be even remotely positive about plastic waste. This zinc catalyst + methanol method could be another solution to reduce the vast plastic islands we've built up over the decades.
Cheers Andy. I'm glad it was OK.
If someone can figure out how to profit big from it, it will happen.
Has anyone mentioned the terrific series on BBC called Doomwatch. Each episode in the drama showed a team trying to react to a new problem caused by new tech. It covered so many concepts. Anyway, in one episode some group had developed a bacteria that ate nearly every plastic there was. Trouble is it got out and caused havoc. One scene showed the inside of a jet liner as the fittings and electrical insulation turned to mush.
I'm not too worried about the bug but I do worry about the people who make sure questions aren't even asked. The sort who pay others to say "Nothing to see here, move along." If only the rich would become a fashionable superfood.
In Addition I have to say. Your work is exceptional in so many ways I will not list them in case you swoon. Please, Please keep going at them.
I always remember having to order some of those chemicals when I worked in a school. They were used as solvents for gluing acrylic.
How to reduce plastic use?
1. Water in the faucets-drinking water,
2. Each country-state produce enough food (no problem, when there are no wars, banks finance wars), no import-export of food internationaly
3. Organic food, longer fresh, healthier,
4. Development of small food storys, more manual work,
4. Support small farmers where manual work is main force,
5. Food prices up, quality of food up, food has more nutrients, people willeat less food, lose fat, become more healthier.
Etc.
Thanks for the weekly update!
As I see it the problem is that we produce too many different types of plastic, and a good recycling-upcycling technology that works for all of them is unlikely to exist.
The only two solutions that I see are:
1. Legislation that forbid putting on the market of all but a few plastic types.
2. We simply incinerate all plastic waste and develop technologies to sustainably produce plastic without usin fossil hydrocarbons.
It would be good to have a JHAT episode on incineration as a way of dealing with waste - good or bad?. Our local council built one (against the wishes of its future neighbours!), to avoid using land-fill (when the government made landfill very expensive a few years ago), but I'm fairly certain they no longer use this incinerator (why, I don't know and can't find out).
Easy its bad to burn it go camping and try it
Than gi camping and burn it with a propane torch Still bad.
Then claim to do electricity with your propane torch
Than cool down your propane fire with more garbage and add more propane. Then claim you produce electricity.
There easy
@@paulhaynes8045 Yes an episode on waste incineration would be interesting.
I've tested the emissions of a few of them in my previous job and they can be fairly clean, but for the sake of profit they don't do enough (imo) for the abatement of dioxins/PCBs/PAHs etc.
Incineration puts all the carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and it is only feasible for certain polymers like PE or PP. As soon as you have chlorinated polymers in the waste like CPE, PVC, PVDC you're likely to get toxic products. But forbidding those would be a big blow as they are actually quite useful materials. Depolymerization ("Splitting") would circumvent such problems. (Which is why this is an interesting video).
The truth is that there is no simple solution. Progress can be made but it requires that more people become knowledgeable about all the little devils in all the details. Governments cannot leave that to the polymer industry. They will have to hire polymers people to sort it out independently form the industry. Otherwise they will make really dumb decisions.
One day we might be digging up old dumps to mine plastic for recycling, if the microbes haven't gotten there first.
I think it might happen for precious metals from e-waste first.
Honestly this just in general. Landfills are often a ticking time bomb leak wise, and contain all sorts of materials.
Sorting into metals, minerals/aggregate, and RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel), then Pyrolysis and/or Gasification of the RDF (As described ~6:30 in this video) could yield all sorts of products, *as well as* essentially doing environmental remediation work + boosting nearby property values.
Granted they may not always use the best possible pollution control systems / novel processes (they often use fixed/moving bed combustion rather than Fluidized Bed Combustion, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or Pyrolysis processes), but Europe uses few landfills and thus shows this is quite viable.
@Just Have A Think By the way I’d love a video on Landfill Mining / No-Landfill Municipal Solid Waste Workflows if you can ever get around to it!
I like the new logo!
Also yeah, recycling not being as high quality as virgin plastic is a big problem that needs solved.
Thank you for another informative video. I see cyclical systems as all important when we talk about sustainability. The earth is that type of systems and we are a part of the earth.
Agreed. A book I was reading recently kept pointing out how none of our current economic systems account for needing raw materials and disposing of waste. Hence, half the issues that we’re facing today.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet can I ask what book
@@matthewsaxe6383 donut economics. I bought it after hearing the lady give a Ted talk and be a guest on the Freakonomics podcast.
I wouldn’t recommend it though because I think it’s targeted at Econ majors so 60% of it went over my head. But if you’re interested then I’d highly recommend the “is economic growth the wrong goal” episode of Freakonomics.
Seem like really great theories though so I hope it catches on.
I think it's time for governments to step in and start to regulate use of new plastics - perhaps by something similar to carbon taxes. The more recycled or upcycled plastics the manufacturers can use, the less taxes they should pay. And we, as consumers, will very quickly recognize the true value of recycling then - recycled products will be cheaper than new ones. And I bet suddenly a lot of manufacturers will discover the beauties of non-plastic packaging options... We've tried for decades now to do it nicely and "not harm the industries". Time to change the tone of the music.
Governments are bought off by the oil industry. People have to choose NOT to buy plastic, starting with single use stuff , like baggies and bottles. It isn’t hard- it’s a choice.
As always, great content. You deserve more subs. Keep it up!
In 1978 I invented a way to recycle landfill plastics of the thermo-plastic variety vs the thermo-setting kind. The racially invidious professor gave me a terrible grade. Years later I saw my technique being employed to make park benches. Many roads degrade over time as the sun cooks the tar of which roads are made which makes them crumble. Combining recycled plastic with recycled glass would make much more durable roads than by using the current slurry of tar and rock aggregate. In fact a strategic use of such composite roads could be made into solar energy producers of EMF and/or batteries and/or electric roadways.
And driving on those roads further breaks down the plastic into nano plastic that is washed into out waterways.
Racially invidious?
Great idea!
@@incognitotorpedo42 Terms chosen especially for you.
Life’s fantastic, when your plastic, is under control, whoa oh. (An enthusiastic follower)
I hope to see those innovative new processes brought to a significant scale soon.
In the meantime individuals can reduce their plastic consumption by buying food items in bulk sizes which reduces the ratio of plastic to product mass.
One small scale simple idea is to bring your own bags to the grocery store. That way you reuse the bags multiple times. I do that, and the staff adjusted quickly to the idea. They don't a t like it's wierd...or that you are wierd.
Bulk consumption is cheaper, too!
@@julieheath6335 - In my area most businesses are open to customers bringing their own bag, or they encourage it. It is understandable that some businesses might be hesitant since such use can be seen as a potential for hiding and stealing merchandise.
I'd better buy a bigger plastic refrigerator, and more plastic storage boxes and bags, so that the extra provisions can be stored. Oh, and I'll have to use a car for carrying the goods home from the shops, in bigger plastic carrying bags. I'm being ironic, but these things do happen. Larger quantities often involve using thicker-walled plastic packaging, so it's not as linear a process as many people think.My wife discovered that, when she tried to buy 'biologically degradable' cleaning products, there were several downsides. Here are a few: They arrived in plastic packaging. They cost more. They were less effective at cleaning, requiring larger quantities of hot water, to prevent hygiene from suffering. They had to be bought from countries far away from home, via the internet, because local stores could not / would not sell them. The cleaning items were much less durable and had to be discarded sooner. All of the waste went into landfill, because the local authorities could not recycle most of it.
Manufacturers aren’t helping his ratio by downsizing their packages to disguise the fact they’re raising the unit (mL or g) cost by keeping the package price static and giving you less product. This also increases the plastic:product ratio, increasing plastic use.
For example, juice cartons went from 64 fluid ounces to 59 and are now 52. Ice cream tubs are worse - many went from 64 floz to 48. Oddly, milk cartons are often still 64 floz.
We clearly have a long way to go but this is so encouraging. Our current grass roots "recycling" in the UK varies widely from region to region and is desperately in need of overhaul and central coordination.
These newly discovered systems will hopefully revolutionise our reprocessing of certain types of plastics but public awareness/engagement driving interest in resolving this colossal problem, will be crucial in the changes in legislation necessary to reconfigure commercial / economic dependency on plastics which cannot yet be recycled and drive packaging in particular in the direction of those which can. A process we are beginning to see in shops with more people electing to refuse products in packs which cannot be recycled ( here in Pembrokeshire, recyclable black and brown plastics are refused by the local authority collections as it is uneconomic in the sale of waste - grrrrr!).
I’ve always been mildly horrified at how reliant I am on plastic on a daily basis, seemingly no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
The things that I rely on and have been designed to fail so that I go buy a replacement are the ones that horrify me. Cause I’m forced to keep polluting just so a company can meet their quarterly profit goals.
i know right storing things in cardboard is nasty tasting and yet all fish we eat are full of microplastics unless they where made in a aquaponics
There is nothing wrong with long-term use plastics. The problem is all the plastic packaging and other single-use things that are only plastic because plastic is cheap.
You’re not horrified enough, have a mental breakdown and then I’ll consider your proposal for extra garage space.
Same thoughts here.. it's inescapable - but we have gotten used to carrying our own shopping bags into stores and recycling everything that our city will recycle, which unfortuneately are just 1s and 2s. How is your curbside recycling set up?
This is the most euphoric channel, like an advert.
Looks great on paper! I'm hoping this is rapidly commercialised and industrialised. I reckon it'd help if plastic manufacturers were tariffed with recycling costs. As the producers, they are obligated to deal with the clean up.
Agreed. We need to stop letting companies side responsibility for downstream effects of their products.
Since a large quantity of plastics originate as packaging of products from.China.
A tariff is not going to do anything to a foreign company.
Consumers end up paying ALL tariffs.
Even imported products can be forced to account for recycling costs. Many items just would not/could not be sold if they had to include recycling costs. Many times, an otherwise excellent product could not be sold if it had to include recycling cost. That would mean that decisions about parts and packaging would be part of the product cycle, automatically paying for the recycling cost. It also would behoove major manufacturers to help pay for sophisticated recycling facilities to reduce their costs of production.
Quite an excellent presentation -- technical but not difficult to grasp in one viewing. I love the idea of "upcycling," whereby the essential chemicals of a given type of plastic can be continuously broken down and either repurposed or rejoined, virtually eliminating waste. There are three big issues to confront, however. 1) Oil industry resistance, since there are more profits in manufacturing new plastics; 2) Consumer ignorance and bad habits, such as buying cheep polyester materials or discarding rather than recycling; and 3) the poorly organized, confusing, and inadequate recycling industry, which needs to be guided by national and even global standards and laws.
Thank you for giving me a glimmer of hope. We could speed up this evolution by taxing the hell out of plastics made from virgin materials. But that would require a functional democracy.
Agreed. I actually call and email my politicians once a month on this exact subject.
Sure, it kind of feels like screaming into a void, but I guess it’s better than sitting on my butt doing nothing.
I remember a video whereby they said "You need to *make Virgin plastic more expensive* That way it will give companies incentive to use recycable plastics - - -then all that waste will be a valuable resource!"
I live in rural eastern Australia on a large property, on a regular basis we find spent balloons, plastic tarps, building insulation, complete umbrellas that have fallen out of the sky? In the last three weeks we have been gifted two umbrellas, one next the house on a day with very little wind.. from the plastic sky gods?
We are miles away from the nearest neighbor, further from a town, an hours drive from a city, just imagine what is floating around up there? Not really related but anyway. Anyone else experienced this?
I'm wondering how close you live to a road that is regularly traversed by lorries carrying an unsecured load. Perhaps on the way to a landfill site or something.
Thankyou for telling us about some very positive steps forwards in really tackling plastic recycling. Despite decades of plastic use, plastic companies and governments STILL have not adapted the chemical composition of these plastics so they can be recycled or enzymatically broken down more easily. Isn't it easier to alter the design of plastics so they can be broken down easily (by a bespoke catalyst), rather than trying to create an enzyme to break down these long-lasting plastics (which are so difficult to breakdown by nature), after the fact at the recycling stage?
Am I the only one who feels like plastic manufacturing companies aren't really trying to help all that much here? That said, circular manufacturing and recycling is clearly a necessary process for sustainable practices, but one which many manufacturing companies are reluctant to target. It's a shame because many industries can make money by designing recycling capability into their products... but even if they can't, governments should instil painfully heavy fines for industries like plastic manufacturing, where their products are so difficult to recycle.
We've recently switched to having our milk delivered in glass bottles. A very small change, but rather inconvenient (larger plastic bottles are a much more efficient way of storing the milk in the fridge, and we have developed 'order anxiety' - a condition that causes stress the day before every delivery as we try to work out if we've got enough milk left to get us through to the next morning!). And it's also rather expensive (a 2 pint plastic bottle of organic milk from Sainsbury's costs £1.20, whereas a delivered pint of organic milk costs 88p - 47% more!). But at least that's a little less plastic being 'recycled' (I have strong doubts as to whether it really is recycled), and 12 kilos less that I have to carry up the hill each week. We are lucky that we're well enough off to do this - I suspect that most people, especially those with cars or who have their shopping delivered, would think we were daft.
I mention this, not to get a pat on the back for being green (or told that I am daft!), but to illustrate just how difficult it is to give up just a small amount of the plastic we use. We are fairly careful with what we buy and go out of our way to not buy plastic (in as much as we can), and we recycle and compost everything we can. But our non-recycling bin (collected every two weeks) is still pretty full each time it is collected, and it is almost entirely full of plastic packaging. But at least it's light to carry up the cellar steps!
It’s great that you try your best but why still consuming cows milk and I assume other animal products? If I may ask, as avoiding these products is one of the most impactful choices we can make as individuals to help the environment and the climate crisis.
@@ab-td7gq It's a fair question. If there were more plant-based products that were tasty and readily avialable it would make the choice much easier. But a cold glass of milk is a hard thing the substitute, isn't it?
You're doing your part and i salute you for that. We all have our part. Some of us small and others cause it's within their powers to do a lot more. If we all contributed as much as we can the world would be a happier, greener and cleaner place.. ... But you never know who you might inspire and how far your influence might go.
@@TheBricetune There are great alternatives these days and delicious plant based recipes on line. Its easier than ever before. Taste buds take only a few weeks to adapt to new foods. Milk is full of pus, blood, feces, hormones and often antibiotics so for me personally it wasn’t that hard to switch to soy milk.
@@ab-td7gq I much prefer oat milk. It’s also stable in hot drinks, whereas soy milk will curdle. I use the cartons cut in half as plant pots for my veg seeds.
Wow. This gives hope that humanity will live on this planet a little longer.
Thx Dave.
interesting username....
By almost any metric humanity _is_ the problem with living on this planet.
Much like cancer, it keeps replicating out of control and hijacking all the resources available in the ecosystem.
Cheers :-)
Hopefully they dont boost the micro organisms too much and they start eating all of our plastic things lol. Some good ideas.
I would be ok with that boost because then we can go back to are old ways glass.
And natural rubber.
@@thesilentone4024 that would be great, when the interiors of durable goods like refrigerators and vehicles get dissolved into some disgusting biofilm
edit: not to mention all the pipes in sanitation and insulation used for power distribution
Invasive species much
I hope they do
The micropocalpse
The usefulness of plastics isn't just convenient bottles and plastic bags. Through circumstances in my life I worked in the medical industry and I can tell you that without plastics, our medical abilities would be degraded to the point that many people would die everyday than they do now. Just the amount of plastics used during a single kidney Dialysis session would fill a 5 gallon bucket of waste. And the average Dialysis patient needs 3 session per week. The cost and the function of Dialysis machines would skyrocket as well as the cost of each session without plastics. The same for pretty much any modern medical procedure.
THIS
I have no experience in the area so can’t speak to that, but seeing pre-plastics medical devices (in museums/period pieces etc) is kind of eerie; all the latex tubing, leather, etc
That and everything tended to be much bulkier and required autoclave for reuses, even for the most simple of things!
Even things like tape for gauze/stabilizing a needle are often plastics, so a simple bandage for a cut/after you donate blood benefits from plastics!
2:23 Eight billion tons is NOT more than the total mass of all living biomass on the planet.
It appears total biomass is likely ~500 billion tonnes.
It's nice getting a bit of good news!
2:28 8 billion tons is nowhere near the total biomass on the planet. That'd be around 550 billion tons of carbon alone. With the water content, take several times that.
I thought this too. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he misspoke and meant to reference the animal biomass. (I don't actually know that this is true either, but sounds more plausible)
@@sammason2300 There is about 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon in animal biomass on earth, total animal biomass should be around 5 times more, so it's in the ballpark, but still not quite correct.
I also really respect him, so I'd say the mistake was probably made by someone else and he didn't check it enough.
Enjoyable educational and thought-provoking. Thank you. I am sure the biochem people and the genetic engineering groups are heavily studying those natural bacterial enzymatic activity, this might be a good way to recycle and besides being fascinating for us who study bacterial life.
I’m excited for this, but I don’t expect it to take off until we seriously pull back on our fossil fuel production.
Until then, virgin plastic is insanely cheap because it’s coming from the excess of another process so it’ll be near impossible for anything to compete.
But this sure would be amazing…having a circular plastic system and no fossil fuel drilling? Where do I sign up for that future!
That's where government regulation could help.
We need more bribe money to keep the money system going, if the hippies win everyone will be dead from the factories shutting down leading to global total dying. Or as we know it, GTD, as refered to in the Bible: marc chapter 4 page 40 verse 5
@@matthewsaxe6383 yup I’m all for it. I actually call and email my reps once a month in order to remind them that I want a carbon tax put in place. Slowly but surely we seem to be getting there.
@Tommy Taffy That's economic nonsense. One person's subsidies are another person's taxes. Where do you think the money for the subsidies comes from?
@Tommy Taffy normally I’m all for subsidies, but this case is different for me. We already subsidize the fossil fuel industry which becomes evidenced when I compare the gas that my wife uses for her commute as a percentage of our budge vs a percentage of our carbon footprint.
The gas makes up a messily 1% of our budgeted expenses, but accounts for about 12% of our carbon footprint. So that’s why I’m in favor of increasing the cost of oil based products. I don’t mind if you call it a tax or a removal of subsidies or something else, the price needs to reflect the environmental impact.
Lovely balanced presentation, I will share with colleagues and students.
Just recently microplastics were found in human blood for the first time.
@Dave? Posted but youtube deleted it
@Dave? Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood, Environment International, 2022.
not to mention that we've found them on the ocean floor, mountaintops, placentas, and mother's milk. it's everywhere. we've all been poisoned by it.
I LOVE this idea. We need to move to a closed-loop economy overall, and plastics is a great place to start. In fact, if the breakdown of plastics becomes profitable - there's a gold mine off the coast of California waiting to be harvested!
After seeing your video I began to wonder: would it be possible to modify the MANUFACTURING process of particular plastics to include compounds that will aid in the recycling or industrial composting processes? Like mold the catalyst right into the part. Then when it’s tossed into a recycling reactor, it instantly breaks down.
The problem with including the catalyst for the breakdown of the product in the product itself is that it will do what it is supposed to do way before you want it to, basically, cutting down on the amount of time that the plastic could be used, since the catalyst would be slowly helping break it down from the minute it is introduced. Not to mention that, odds are, it would make the plastic less structurally stable, which is particularly bad if the plastic part is supposed to withstand any amount of force.
In general, it is not that hard to have a reactor with the catalyst inside, allowing for a continuous process. The issue is with substrate purity. A lot of effort goes into sorting plastic waste so you can have mostly pure educts, which is necessary for a high quality product. And high quality products out of recycling are crucial if we want to make a circular economy financially feasible and have the products keep standards of quality.
That sounds great. As you say, our modern society is very reliant on all sorts of plastics. And they are not all that bad. Material science is a rapidly evolving field and a lot of modern materials are actually solving more problems than that they create.
There's a reason plastics are popular: they are cheap to produce and handle during production and have all sorts of nice properties. The problems with plastics have in my view mainly to do with what happens after their useful life. While there are problems with sourcing materials (oil mainly) and production as well, these seem like they could be solved and those processes could become a lot more sustainable long term.
I also don't see landfills as a bad thing necessarily. If the waste stays in one place, it's not very different from natural oil deposits. Nasty stuff if it spills during transport but not really doing a lot of harm as long as it just sits there. And potentially a resource we might rely on in the future. Otherwise, landfills are just a way of capturing the carbon that should be fine as long as we can prevent toxins leaking away.
Instead of dumping things in landfills, burning plastic is also very common. A bit wasteful and it dumps CO2 in the atmosphere. But otherwise not that harmful if we can filter out the toxic stuff. And we can use the energy of course. But maybe landfills are a better solution until we figure out carbon neutrality.
Energy intensive production processes are only problematic as long as that energy is sourced from fossil fuels. But we have plenty of renewable ways to source that energy now. So that's not necessarily that problematic either long term. Producing plastic using renewable energy might actually be cheaper even. All that coal, oil and gas that gets burned costs a lot of money.
The source material for plastic is of course oil. That is a problem because oil deposits are not renewable and whether plastics degrade naturally, with some help, or whether we burn them: it all adds to our carbon footprint. However. if we find a way to synthesize oils using renewable energy to produce plastics that after a useful life end up being incinerated, it's not necessarily that much of a problem. So, you could probably make an argument for sustainable plastics long term. I don't see any fundamental reason that that would be impossible. Though short term it's probably prohibitively expensive. But that's a nice engineering problem for people to work on. Recycling plastics is a great way to reduce the overall carbon footprint.
Perhaps the biggest issue with plastics are those varieties that get into the environment that are toxic or don't degrade. Particularly micro plastics and our oceans filling up with all sorts of plastics is a problem. The plastic in your coffee machine is unlikely to end up in the ocean. However, the plastic in an ice cream wrapper on the beach is bigger problem. Also the micro beads in your tooth paste or shampoo flush out to the oceans. And tires under your car that you have to replace after the wear out basically are another big source of microplastics. We need solutions for these products that are less problematic. If it has a high chance of ending up in our waterways, it should be biodegradable.
One time use packaging is not actually that convenient to begin with (i don't mind paper or cardboard) and only nice for producers as long as we allow them to get away with it cheaply. Easy solution: lets tax and legislate that stuff out of existence. Call companies out on their packaging. A lot of that stuff is just so unnecessary. It's just in recent decades that that stuff actually became normal and it should stop being normal.
Unfortunately with PLA, you have to have very specific conditions within the compost its in so that it can start degrading. And with 3d printing modfying the polymer for better durability, weather resistance etc, they chuck in more problematic chemicals into the compost that it would land in.
PLA is a dead end.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Maybe in terms of usefullness against plastic trash yeah, we just found a way to generate plastic if we run out of fosssil fuel lol
The conditions aren’t too difficult commercially, the main issue is lack of investment in the Municipal Solid Waste Management side, as well as lack of sorting/clear labeling.
@@DRakeTRofKBam Granted
- Electrolysis (For Hydrogen->Plastics/More Likely Use in Hydrotreating Parts of the Other Pathways Below etc)
- Gasification (For Syngas->Plastics)
- Pyrolysis (for Pyrolysis Oil as a replacement for Crude Oil / Some Fractions of Crude Oil)
Can all work as well as Non-Conventional Method Bioplastics (Like PLA etc), and the latter two can be done both with biomass, as well as with unsorted/degraded plastics as well as any other fractions in what is called “Refuse Derived Fuel” or RDF
AND All of the plastics made with these processes would use existing facilities (helping with the “Just Transition” to a decarbonized economy), and be a “Drop In Replacement” (ie be Nylon, or ABS, or Acetal, not something “nylon like” etc)
Thank you so much for researching these vital topics and spreading the good news in layman’s terms.
It breaks my heart when I see in an ice cream shop server sick a plastic neon coloured spoon into the ice cream cone, or here where i live they sell cooked corn in the park, but serve it in a cup with a plastic spoon... or when I see my family use plastic single use earbuds, we've become so numb and careless...
Speaking of ice cream shops: it also kills me when I see them using plastic spoons for samples. So they literally use the spoon for one tiny bite and then discard it!
Always looking forward to sunday mornings for your video. It calms my mind. Thank you
Cheers John. Much appreciated :-)
I just noticed for the first time that you have "Capital", from Piketti, in your background. What was your opinion of it?
It's great to have been following you. You started as a channel more about technology and science, and incorporated more and more climate videos, and alluding now a little bit to social issues stemming from our political and economic context (Capitalism). This mirrors my own progress on those issues, and it led me to learn a lot on the history of Labor, the struggles for Socialism and Anarchims, and involve myself politically on that front.
Anyway, it's not a political channel, but you seem to have a good perspective, it would be great to know more about your political views.
Especially if it can be framed in the need to go beyond Capitalims to save our burning planet. I think you did a video that touched on it, but I don't remember that it was very developped on how we could achieve this (depends on your political affiliation, the tactics you prefer).
If you'd like books that explore this, I'm currently reading "Toward a New Socialism", by the economist Paul Cockshott, and it's very good. "The people's Republic of Wal-Mart" showed how we could plan our economy (crucial for a coordinated green transition). The book "Less is More", by Jason Hickel, alluded to some of the things we need to do, which goes into a Socialist direction, but could be implemented within a Capitalist framework (it does admonish the notion that we can continue with "Green Growth"). Basically, it was:
- No more planned obsolescence (could reduce our production needs by a lot).
- No more induced demand (ads). People would be happier too, less consumerism.
- Restoration of the commons. Land trusts. Public transport. Walkable urban landscape.
- Things should be repairable. Uniform standards. Easily swappable components. Made to be recycled or re-used (end-of-lifecycle in mind). A circular economy.
... there was a lot more, it was a bit too reformist for my taste, but I'd add:
- Planned directly democratic production. Because I don't see how to tackle climate change unless our economy is geared to satisfy our needs, not for profit by exploiting ourselves, creating externalities. This imply the end of Capitalism, and the method on how to get there vary. But the important part is the need for direct democracy.
Anyway, I could explain a lot more, but I was curious to hear from your perspective.
I would love to have more productive discussions on politics but I feel this wouldn't be the right channel for it.
That's just my two cents. Thanks for bringing up these ideas though, and sharing those books.
By the way, besides those book recommendations, do you follow any TH-cam channel that do cover these topics? I'm assuming you follow this content already, and I'm interested to check it out.
Hi DeathToMockingBirds. Thanks for your feedback. In fact if you go right back to video #1 about four years ago, you'll see that the channel was actually started specifically to focus on the climate emergency and has developed more technical videos along the way. The strapline of the channel is "The Climate and Sustainable Energy Channel". As for my politics, I would say I am a pragmatic socialist. I thought 'Capital' was extremely technical and very hard going. I only got about half way through and gave up. In general terms, I recognise that we need the three legs of the stool - Government, Commerce and the Public to make a success of climate mitigation.
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you for your answer. I also stopped Capital halfway, both from Piketty and Marx. Ultimately it boils down to keeping Capitalism or not, with direct democracy in the workplace or not. To me, I have trouble imagining the green transition we need while Capitalist incentives keep driving decisions regarding the production of goods (which is the main contributor to climate change).
Your channel is the main one I recommend when it comes to available solutions, it's a matter of having a system in place that has an active interest in the well-being of all, not one built on exploitation.
@@bhcs I follow way too many political channel, but here's a few that influenced me:
- Second Thought: th-cam.com/video/H787Dj4oMWU/w-d-xo.html
- Democracy at Work: th-cam.com/video/Pp06rcwYNdg/w-d-xo.html
- WhatIsPolitics: th-cam.com/video/2UlCw3cvatQ/w-d-xo.html
- Anark: th-cam.com/video/uTwxpTyGUOI/w-d-xo.html
- GravelInstitute: th-cam.com/video/2mI_RMQEulw/w-d-xo.html
- Viki1999: th-cam.com/video/KOttlyRHD8k/w-d-xo.html
- Re-Education): th-cam.com/video/KU_Ppjol0Tc/w-d-xo.html
- Mexie: th-cam.com/video/u_Z0Srfpd2s/w-d-xo.html
- Radical Reivewer: th-cam.com/video/WW7toetAkYI/w-d-xo.html
- ThatDangDad: th-cam.com/video/WoMRzx3o31I/w-d-xo.html
- SomeMoreNews: th-cam.com/video/UZhW1k_m7OY/w-d-xo.html
- MarxistPaul: th-cam.com/video/7Z8yTTkDLuk/w-d-xo.html
- Thought Slime: th-cam.com/video/z6njzAq7ttA/w-d-xo.html
- Saint Andrewism: th-cam.com/video/-1ZK2-viyAo/w-d-xo.html
- Vaush: th-cam.com/video/ksoYsz5JS0M/w-d-xo.html
- Hakim: th-cam.com/video/vk2yCePYs90/w-d-xo.html
- Shaun: th-cam.com/video/UBc7qBS1Ujo/w-d-xo.html
- 1Dime: th-cam.com/video/Hd_HIGMMKDA/w-d-xo.html
Economists/philosophers:
- Richard Wolff: th-cam.com/video/IkNNQihOrNA/w-d-xo.html
- Michael Albert: th-cam.com/video/WfuEqLI5wLc/w-d-xo.html
- Paul Cockshott: th-cam.com/video/kTl4b0w6mpk/w-d-xo.html
- Slavoj Zizek and Yanis Varoufakis: th-cam.com/video/Ghx0sq_gXK4/w-d-xo.html
Podcasts:
- Revolution Now: th-cam.com/video/fTNzUvIusEQ/w-d-xo.html
- World to win: th-cam.com/video/ZOhQSB7VXuc/w-d-xo.html
- Fight Like an Animal: www.againsttheinternet.com/post/1-the-biology-of-the-right-left-divide-pt-1-why-political-arguments-don-t-change-people-s-minds
Thank you. Very hopeful!
Thanks for this update - much appreciated.
For plastic recycling, the technology developed by the Dutch Urban Mining Corporation is worth checking out. They can do amazing things.
ALSO... it's worth pointing out that the plastic waste problem is actually exagerrated. Yes, you read that right. Chris Dearmitt, an independent scientist and consultant, has worked hard to show the real extent of what is going on. See "plastic paradox" if, like me, you care about the facts.
Nature has now evolved to eat plastics. It happened far faster than they thought.
I got about 20 min into looking at Chris Dearmitt, and I am already very skeptical. The first website I came across read like a "one weird trick" scam. Next I started watching 'the great plastics distraction pt2' and immediately recognized tired old propaganda techniques. Once I saw that comments were turned off on the video, I stopped watching. Pretty sure this guy is a scam.
Absolutely great News. Great Episode.
Thank you :-)
If the manufacturer's made diffent plastics in set colours according to the type of plastic used, sorting would be very simple. That could be used for the single use versions at least.
Sorting is not the problem, the problem is contaminants that get into the structure of the molecule, you can't easily sort that out without chemically processing the plastic. It doesn't really matter much what type of plastic it is, they all suffer this same problem.
Appreciate the update. Great channel.
The single use plastic industry and plastic industry as a whole needs to be held accountable. Implement strick EPR and gradually stop/ban the use of Single Use Plastic as food & beverage container while implementing worldwide Zero Waste Sustainable Economy (Refuse, Reuse, Repair, Refill, Repurpose, Rot, etc)
Talk to the Philippines about not dumping their trash in rivers. This one small country is responsible for more than a third of all the plastic in the oceans.
@@incognitotorpedo42 It's not that they're intentionally dumping trash into the rivers. They lack a waste disposal infrastructure in general, so trash ends up on the ground, in the street, and eventually gets rained on and washed away. The effect is the same, just sayin'
@@incognitotorpedo42 are you that blind, most sachet and other single use plastic packaging are MADE AND USE BY BIG WESTERN COMPANY !!!! When they could be implementing Refill, you know LIKE THEY USED TO. But ever since oil price cheap n more drilling single use plastic becomes their choices that leads to todays situation. People become addicted and dependent of single use packaging because of their decision to cut corner and make more money.
Btw many grassroot in SAE country have been fighting againts the single use plastic by western multinational companies. And base on research by Jambek et al China is first then Indonesia second biggest plastic polluters that goes to the rivers and ocean.
Your opinion are exactly what the Big Polluter have been doing --> Shifting the Blame to the Consumer !
Wow amazing work! Very thoughtful.
The next thing is to make waste plastic worth something so in poorer countries you get people either recycling or just going out and collecting it because it gives them a wage. That would go a lot if not mostly all the way to stop it entering the oceans.
Hopeful news. Its nice to hear for a change.
incinerating it for heat energy would reduce our need to extract oil, and eliminate the waste. landfills seem like a lazy way of dealing with waste...the idea is just "out of sight, out of mind".
Incinerator is probably harder to make a profit unless there's exception to safety regulation like not needing to filter smoke stack (for toxin) or not needing to care for garbage truck traffic into the neighbourhood (waste sludge). The incinerator will be great if it can operate like coal power plant and have nothing to care.
Landfilling plastic keeps it out of the ocean and sequesters carbon. If the landfill is properly designed, leaching of substances from the plastic should not be a problem.
@@xponen Europe operates manly on a model where they have strict (Although in my opinion not struct enough) emission control regulations and thus are fine short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. You can read up on their policy as well as existing “Incineration” and/or “Waste to Energy” (incineration with steam boiler+turbine) plants.
The main issue that needs to be solved in the Incineration model is Processing of Ash, as of now it is disposed of in landfills. Granted it isn’t as toxic as Coal Ash, especially if the Refuse Derived Fuel / Feedstock is sorted accordingly, but a problem we should avoid nonetheless.
Various Newer Combustion / Gasification methods can produce “slag” rather than ash which is essentially igneous rock which can be used as concrete or earthworks aggregate etc (i need to look into any potential leaching hazards more, but from what i have encountered they are supposedly inert)
Also ash reprocessing (done frequently with “Fly Ash” to make Cement, less common with “Bottom Ash”) could also solve the problem by “sorting” the ash into hazardous materials (any Mercury etc, although this should be FAR less than coal) and useful chemicals. Main issue is cost/complexity, but this may be solvable? I haven’t looked into the literature on this as much as other methods described here.
Also, at least if I remember correctly, pyrolysis produces no ash, only “Pyrolysis Oil” and “Char/Petcoke” (some char is retained in the pyrolysis oil forming a somewhat significant issue if used as a “drop in” replacement for crude oil, although this is addressable if I remember correctly.
Pyrolysis can allow for chemical recycling as mentioned ~6:30 which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in theory at least, this comment doesn’t have citations etc so refer to a proper paper for that) since plastic/chemicals are extracted rather than burned.
Also it can save energy in a similar manner. Doing a “Power-to-X” / “Power-to-Chemicals” process, as well as Gasification to an extent, would require more steps and energy to get to some hydrocarbon feedstock from hydrogen and/or syngas. With pyrolysis oil it is just a simple filtering/distillation away.
**IN CONCLUSION TO THIS WORDWALL:**
As of now there can be a Low Landfill Processes (bits of ash in a landfill, rather than barely compacted mixed MSW), and in the near term there can be *No Landfill, Low/No GHG Emissions Processes*
(All Char/Fly Ash Cement/Slag Aggregate/Pyrolysis Oil/Process Derived Chemicals)
@@incognitotorpedo42 It is less of an issue of “if” it will leak and contaminate groundwater, but “when”. Liners will fail eventually.
Also due to the lack of sorting, and processing they contain toxic Leachate/Solid Materials. Processing + Incineration/Gasification etc can reduce this l, *but in the end a pit of unsorted waste is a pit of unsorted waste, no matter how fancy*
@@incognitotorpedo42 On the note of carbon sequestration, i think burying near pure carbon, “washed” char/coke/petcoke/carbon black etc, in a deep stable area (as opposed to surface level biochar which has unclear stability due to various processes) in a sort of “reverse coal/graphite mining” could be a really neat and stable way of Carbon Sequestration, so i do agree on that note i guess!
Also just “Carbon Sequestration in Building Materials” (using bioplastics/carbon fiber/other carbon materials in permanent structures) can work too.
Very exciting, thanks for bringing this to my attention
As you correctly say, use of plastics is not going to go away in the foreseeable future, if ever, no matter how much many people would like it. I firmly believe that massively more money needs to be pumped into the recycling industry to develop technologies such as you described here with the aim of making it cheaper to dig up landfill sites to reclaim the discarded plastics as well as other materials than it is to make them from scratch.
The recycling industry also needs to deal with this "clean and dry" your recycled waste materials so that all we need to do is put it into the green bin. After all, as a species, we are a lazy bunch and for many, dare I say most people, this clean and dry thing is too much bother.
Quite frankly, recycling from the everyday person point of view should be food waste into one bin and everything else into the green bin with everything in the green bin being recycled.
An impossible dream?
I hope not.
I agree with all your points, but would like to point out one additional issue we have. As long as we continue to drill for oil, virgin material will always be cheaper than recycled once you account for the processing issues that are encountered.
So we can do everything you mention and do it amazingly, but it’ll never truly flourish until we stop the flow of oil and virgin material.
Man your stuff is top shelf. Just excellent. Cheers
Thank you! Cheers!
That's all great news and what an interesing video. I think another way to reduce plastic waste is to use as little of it as possible. For example, bananas have a pretty sophisticated skin and don't need to be wrapped in plastic. Think of other things, such as chocolate bars, each of which is individually wrapped in plastic and then sold in supermarkets as a job lot wrapped in yet another layer of plastic. Completely unnecessary. Of course, the supermarkets do this to ensure that, for example, you buy four apples at a time rather than just the one you might fancy at the time (whereby the rest will probably end up brown and moldy and eventually be thrown out - another problem in its own right).
Excellent as always. Thanks
Excellent! There is some hope then. Thank you.
Love the new intro!
Fantastic news. Thank you. Canada
I don't understand much of this, but it sounds encouraging - like maybe the nerds will save us - again - if we can figure out how to shut up and stay out of their way.
It would be interesting to hear how upcycling of plastics could fit with - or help drive - a Closed Loop Manufacturing scheme.
Thank you for this fundamentally optimistic video! While it's true that we desperately need to reduce the amount of plastic we use on a global basis, just ending the discussion with "we need to use less plastic" doesn't solve anything. It's about as useful as telling people to go and sin no more. As you show in your video, plastic is just too useful in too many ways to completely suppress its use, particularly in a world of nations with radically different environmental regulations.
Plastic upcycling sounds far more useful, since it could provide an economic reason to recycle existing plastic waste and reduce the amount of new plastic produced. If these different processes could be made efficient enough (perhaps with robots doing the sorting) it might be possible to get to a point where it no longer makes economic sense to produce new plastic. If there's still four billion tons of old plastic out there, the ideal solution would be to endlessly recycle that material as cheaply as possible. Regulation could help with this, if it only allowed the production of new plastics from biodegradable materials.
Whether it's exotic zinc-based catalysts, genetically engineered bacteria or who knows what, any method that can break down plastic into it's constituent materials more cheaply and help us get to that circular economy is a win for the planet.
I thoroughly enjoy your videos, interesting and so well explained( I hope they are used as education in schools ) as for Plastics( especially Packaging), I believe with more education and Government implemented regulation ( in a lot of cases a total ban)a lot of improvement / reduction can be achieved.Thank you.
Always happy to see improvements in the plastics industry but we really need to look for alternative materials, whether green-plastics or something new entirely. This is because, no matter what, some plastic will always get into the environment, and more research is coming out to show how dangerous plastic is as microplastics as well as food container plastics both accumulating and leaching toxins.
Agreed. Better recycling products are great for the application where we truly need plastics…but it won’t coverup the rampant overuse of plastics which we currently do.
Thanks for the video. I wish you had started the video with your topic, though, rather than taking almost 7 minutes to get to it ... you almost lost me along the way but I hung in there. Topic starts here 6:48
Great video as always!!
We should definitely be using more 'Glass' for food packaging, not to mention it's easier to recycle and cheaper in the long run. As for plastics, people need to know that this product must 'NEVER' be microwaved, regardless of type. Reusing plastic water bottles, must be kept cool, out of sunlight, cleaned often and the correct type. I agree with composting mixture plastics will be very beneficial, and help the environment. I'm glad scientists are finally waking up to keep their health, and others around them. We have great ideas, so lets start getting things in order. Cheers, Blessings!
In Japan they separate all types of waste into five or more pickups and the Japanese are careful to clean each piece of plastic before disposing of it. The way the USA manages it is lazy and self defeating as just a small amount of amount of dirty plastic, or plastic with foreign material prevents the recycling process from either working or from being efficient. Plus too many waste disposal municipalities buy the wrong equipment for their customers and then proceed to not recycle because the cost of changing again is too great after making the mistake of buying the wrong equipment in the first place.
How much energy and water is spent on the cleaning process performed in all these households? It might really be better for the environment for these plastics and the carbon they contain to be permanently sequestered in a landfill, thus being returned to the ground where they previously existed for millions of years in the form of oil or gas. This would keep them out of the oceans where they would turn to microplastic.
Great to hear about the positive progress in tackling this massive issue.
I do worry that much of this upcycle tech will have to be mandated on companies, as it will probably not be in their short term interests for quite a long time. That sort of regulative policy is really tough to enforce worldwide
I'm not some green new deal pipe dream believer. But I rationally understand the real pollution problem in the world. This gentleman bring great viable ideas to the table. We won't save the world with solar panels and wind farms. It's not practical. People don't think critically and think we can just throw trillions of dollars at a problem and then they won't get told they'll die in 12 years....every 20 years lol. Brilliant ideas here that give me hope for real solutions that even the most hard core GND activist has never heard of.
Another boss video Dave, bravo 👏👏👏
Cheers William. Glad you enjoyed it :-)
Great vid, thanks!
Valuable content once again. Thank you!
Ooooo like the rebrand, mate
Another great video. Thanks Dave!
Glad you enjoyed it
2:24 Hold on, i believe 8 billion tons of plastic is still far less than the total biomass on earth, right? If i'm not mistaken there is ~450 billion tons of carbon stored in all plants. But it might be comparable to the biomass of all animals, which would be the same order of magnitude if i remember correctly.
And of course that's still a dizzying amount of plastic, don't get me wrong...
I won several blue ribbons at an art festival in 1977 for an essay I wrote in 9th grade about a sampling of technological achievements made in the preceding 25 years. The clincher sentence was to the effect that it was both ironic and pathetic that we hadn’t yet devised ways to conserve and recycle the very materials of which such marvels were made.
I hope the study considers the contaminated plastics too. These are the major contents of landfil or export to other countries.
You said it again, " now we need to get the cost of the process low enough...." At the end of the day you can't escape the economic fact of life, that businesses cannot compete using a more expensive process. The solution to this imbalance is not to despair at ever making these good guy solutions cheaper, but to put more effort into making the bad stuff more expensive. The economic playing field will then slope in favour of the environmental solutions. The money then flows like water downhill into perfecting these technologies. How do we make the bad stuff more expensive? Tax it at source, -as the oil or gas or coal comes out of the ground. The trouble is that too many governments are very deeply in the pockets of the oil giants, they cannot legislate against their masters.
Excellent video. Thank you!
Good work - much appreciated - thanks
I always wondered how producers of plastics were permitted to produce plastics at large scale without knowing how to properly dispose them. But I guess they just thought "someone will figure out in the future" and no one really cared as it weren't an immediate issue.
That’s actually why we have a recycling program in America. It wasn’t made to work…it was made just to convince the citizens that a problem didn’t exist so that they would feel ok purchasing more plastics.
Interesting as always. With respect to biodegradable anything I’m often concerned about the timescales required and whether there are volume limits or unintended consequences. But I suppose it has to be balanced with the current alternative ie physical degradation over centuries.
I think a most important part of this process is the reduction then elimination of the production of semi or non recyclable materials that are only made that way to increase shareholder value at the expense of our environment. "Externalities"
When you started talking about microbes that break down plastics it brought to mine the movie from 1971 The Andromeda Strain
We do have an experimental facility Called Loop Industries here in Terrebonne Quebec Canada. Thanks for your very pertinent channel.
Sir good work for society.and mankind..