We need to change the way we package everything, specially small pieces of useless plastic that is hard to recycle. One time use plastics should be banned.
I think it will be easier to dump plastic directly into the Ocean, by not sending plastic waste to poor country and dump in their Ocean, at least you save some green house gas.
one time use plastics should be recycled if clean or go to the landfill, and thats it. Everyone seems to believe that plastics is not supposed to be in a landfill, but thats the perfect place for it. it sits there and does nothing to the environment, we cover it up and build a park on it. trying to recycle dirty or exotic plastics is nasty and expensive, we should have just sent it to the landfills or burn it (with ash capture) and very little would have ended up in the ocean
The first thing we need to ban is bottled water. It's totally unnecessary and instead there should be drinking water available everywhere and we can carry reusable bottles.
@Medic Engineer no mate it's not a scam. the difference between bottled water and tap water is that in tap water there are chemicals and a lot of lime which is not harmful to the human body but makes it taste different which bottled water doesn't have. it's also great for people that go to contries where the water cleaning is different and might give you bacterial infections and food posioning since you;'re not used to it.
The rest of the world couldn't afford it. The majority of the Earth's population is below the American poverty line, and plastic in all it's ease and cheapness, has given people access to and the ability to buy things they'd never be able to otherwise.
Consumption isn’t as big a problem as production. Consuming the plastic, as long as it’s recycled (both a product made by recycled plastic, and recycled by the consumer), would effectively solve the problem (not perfectly, but substantially). If this was done on a massive scale, the tap would basically be off, though it would almost definitely be a slightly leaky faucet. Ensuring this model is the primary model means that less (new) plastic is being produced, and less plastic is going into the ocean. Idk, if you follow the whole thing through, I think the analogy does actually work. ✌🏼
What you're saying Lincoln is a lot of words with no content. You're a platitude. This TED talk addresses one aspect of the plastic problem with a very good solution. Don't conflate issues.
Lincoln The whole plastic cycle has many aspects of it. Don't throw his idea into the landfill simply because it doesn't address the who plastic cycle. That's just foolish. Many other people, I'm sure, are working furiously on all aspects of the plastic cycle.
you need to know that in order to make "biodegradable" plastics from hemp or any other plant, you need to add chemicals to it that make it totally NON-Organic. So the result of its breakdown is the same methane off-gassing as paper or other organics in landfills but it cannot be collected and reused like organic compost. Also there is a very limited number of uses for these types of bio-plastics because they do not have near the wide range of qualities and uses as olefin-plastics. Plus, I believe we need to focus all of our plant growing technology on making food for people, NOT for packaging! Plastic is perfect in a landfill, and the carbon used to make it is sequestered within it. It does not leach into the soil, and is a stable base for future (park) construction on the site of a decommissioned landfill. Its OK to be human, and it is OK as a human to have some waste. We need to continue to reduce and properly manage the waste, recycle all that we can, and know exactly the limitations of the waste/recycling infrastructure in the areas where we live so we dont send off worthless dirty "recyclates" to third world countries where it is easier for them to just dump it in the river instead of properly processing it like they say they will do. I really like hemp, but plastics has saved my life and affects people more positively than they will ever realize.
It’s easier for them to call bullshit and say it won’t work and go about their tunnel vision lives rather than accept a subtle change in what they buy could possibly slow down the polution of the planet. Thank to denial, they are also immortal!
Yes, making that sort of profit in that sort of business with this sort of "business partners on the collector side IS in deed extremely wrong, but as long as this cynical approach works it's still better than nothing in terms of "closing the tap".
ikr. The only reason the world was so hyped with solar power last year was because they found it got cheaper than coal. "The" coal, the one energy source thats supposed to be dirty but also cheap... and solar beat it in terms of price (at least in the middle east) World doesnt run fueled by goodwill and hippie thoughts. People can hate reality if they want, but reality is that people cannot work for free. Its not even a capitalism thing. Its reality. If you earn nothing, you cant feed yourself, and you cannot top up the energy you spent while doing good deeds, meaning you cannot do the good deeds anymore (because youre dead). Money isnt some kinda "necessary evil". Its a tool. Whether this tool is used for good or evil depends on the user
Yes good point as well. All part of "The Fix" for the global discarded plastic problem. . . to create alternatives. . .then to choose to only use these alternatives. . . will affect the companys producing the "bad" stuff. . it is market forces. . . and will indeed get to the souce.
Sense PLASTICS are Oil based... It's the Big Oil Corporations that are ruining our FUTURE with Toxic Pollution. Plastic made from plant based cellulose is more Earth Friendly.
We buy it, so they sell it. If we won't give them money, they have to change. But it takes effort and thinking on our parts, and a willingness to deal without certain conveniences. It would be easier for us if they change first. But it's easier for them to just keep doing what makes them money and is easiest on them. Vicious circle.
Your metaphor is flawed. Recycling is not equivalent to turning off the tap. It's more like bailing one side of the overflowing sink into the other side so less water (plastic) hits the floor (ocean). It may slow the rate of plastic entering the ocean, but the core problem remains. Until we ban the creation and distribution of single-use plastic bags, containers, utensils, etc., the plastic "tap" will remain open, and the ocean will remain at risk.
KungFuBlitzKrieg his metaphor connects the main source of plastic in our oceans is impoverished communities who have no choice but to live in squalor- so they are turning off the “tap” of the main source- by turning that trash that has no place but in the streets in those communities into a currency and a way improve their life.
exactly. according to analogy- plastic is the water, production and consumption industry of plastic is the water pressure, and the sink/kitchen is planet earth enter he he sees people with no supplies. He then began talking about how he was going to source the supplies for life to people who didnt have any, as long as they began using eye droppers to clean the overflowing sink in the kithen. droppings are to be collected in a bowl I transform their droppings into bowl of baby jesus tears of infinite value. I give their lives meaning and worth as people pay exorbitant amounts to pick droplets from my jusus tears of infinite value *applause*
Now, two years later in 2020, some of those poor countries are refusing to take first world’s recycling garbage and they’re sending it back to whence it came.
What ignorant virtue signaling dribble. Most of the garbage in the ocean comes from 3rd world countries that have major rivers flowing through them. 90% comes from the major rivers flowing through 3rd world countries. Look it up. I’m all for helping those countries provide sanitation services to the poor villages and help those cultures have a shift in habits... as long as it doesn’t involve European or US politicians who will try to make it into a game of “I’m better than this guy. Vote for me to help you feel better about yourself and better than all of the people that vote for my opponent .” That crap gets us no where but to division.
@@ericksonjustinAK Couldn't agree more. They pollute the ocean, so what better an opportunity for them but to clean up their mess whilst making a living out of it? I'd say they should be very thankful, and we should too.
the fundamental problem remains the current economic system, as in a monetary-market economy there is no profit in being eco-friendly (in fact taking care of sustainability might even have some extra costs), and in general there's no profit in taking care of health and well-being (on social, environmental and individual levels). if there is no profit in doing something, industries won't do it: either because they can't afford it (due to economic competition with other industries) or because they have become addicted to profit /power (which is an understandable symptom /consequence of living in a unhealthy economic system, which also correlates with the quality /health of society and culture). programmes like the one proposed in this video can alleviate plastic waste and the respective pollution, but if we wanna "turn off the tap", as he said at the beginning of the video, if we wanna address the root cause of the problem (which also happens to be the root cause of many big problems and of much sickness and suffering in our societies) then the "tap" is the current economic system. pollution (like the other problems i mentioned) is not a technical or technological problem: we do have the tools to clean the oceans and to produce goods and in general to live, as societies, in a completely ecologically-sustainable way. the problem is economic. another example is how eco-friendly alternatives are often suppressed by big industries as, otherwise, their profits and possibly their economic survival would be threatened. there are alternatives which would technically be feasible if enough people were willing to stand for them, or which might eventually be taken into consideration by governments anyway as the current system gets closer and closer to collapse, due to ecological crises and technological unemployment (due to automation); if u wanna learn more on this whole topic, the starting point id currently recommend is www.nlrbe.org (which stands for "natural law resource-based economy"), as at the bottom of that page u will also find 2 links that will bring u to the 2 main projects that i know of on this topic; i also recommend their most viewed videos (which are their main documentaries) on their respective youtube channels
Was so excited when he started off with "the solution to stopping the flood is turning off the faucet", aka stopping the plastic problem at the source....... but then he just talked about dealing with the end result aka pollution, which won't solve the overall problem.........
Elizabeth Danielle agreed. I think that this needs to happen simultaneously but as he said, when people are that poor it's hard to worry about recycling. So this way they are dealing with one part of the problem. We need to lobby governments around the world to ban single use plastics alongside this initiative.
no one thing solves the overall problem. The "overall" solution is, in fact, a mesh of smaller solutions that have the same goals in mind act on different angles.
This sounds intresting...Collect the plastic and feed your family. The homless in my area would thrive from this idea. Making plastic a kind of currency seems like a perfect set up.
@@eclipse5393 and that is why this is not a solution, it would cause gentrification of the third world, which is good, but after that the citizens of the newly third world countries would produce more garbage and they won't need to recycle it.
How about requiring many welfare families to collect a certain amount. I know many able bodied people on welfare who can’t be bothered to work but have time to watch a lot of TV and go to bars.
Tell that to the Asians, South Americans and Africans. My country has curbed plastic waste to 30% of what it used to be and we're a small country to begin with.
The concept proposed here is by no mean a rational solution to this practical problem. We need to move to a BETTER technology (evaporatable silicone? dissovable wax?) to replace plastic. People will stop being supplied plastic on their packaging and will therefore stop throwing/wasting it in the ocean/soil. It takes a long-term vision and requires investments, thinking and engineering; not just "social justice warriorism". Plastic banks are just another way to collect the plastic one one side before it reaches the ocean. Meanwhile, somewhere else, people keep dumping... :p
I too believe this is flawed . Odwalla has made a responsible plastic why cannot other companies ? Their plastic bottles are made mostly from plants and will recycle much more quickly and do far less harm to our environment . We can rake the ocean and in also use pressure machines that force plastic up to be racked out of the ocean . There is also a computerized way to do this also The computer can collate where the plastic is and make machines at a fathom that is practical and do the same as above. Sound simple no it isn't and would take a few years to just produce . However it does Not leave the world in dire straits as this person is saying and could offer hope. If all of us were not so dauntingly guilty and afraid of being things could at least be more positive and believe me in myself too. Let's look outside of this and see the psychological reality we are afraid of being vulnerable and vulnerably honest as well . This is our as he says our negative down fall if we take it then we have ourselves to blame . As always we are the children ( of God?)
Do not listen to your critics. Your contributions to saving the world will become your legacy. It’s people like you who give hope to the hopeless. Well done my friend.
its still important to clean the ocean, to say otherwise is to be grossly ignorant . the plastic is going into the food chain and affects everyone weather you eat seafood or not. but yes it important to encourage people to recycle before it enters the oceans.
Trevor Van Zuydam Unfortunately we all know many people who recycle nothing and places where you can’t find a place to recycle, which is why I often carry plastics and aluminum cans in my car until I can find a place.
Wonderful idea!!! This and the great ocean cleanup project launched at the pacific garbage patch recently are part of the sweeping fixes taking place to make a world of difference.
Yes recycling is a good options as a midway plan while we don't ban plastic from our society as a spread material all over use. We need plastic, we may very well always need it, and if so will also always need to recicle it, but we need to rethink it's use and meanwhile have to clean up the mess we already made. Ocean cleanup is until now the best practical, economically viable and down earth executable way to do it. Anyway we need all the good ideas possible to help acting against this cancer, so in the end it's a good idea also.
So in order for there to be incentive to collect plastic, plastic has to be produced correct? It's a good idea, but not a long term solution as long as plastic is being produced, which hopefully won't be much longer.
Ben Unfortunately we won’t have anything to replace it for at least another 30 to 50 years What this man is doing, and what Boyan Slat is doing over at his company, are two examples of viable solutions to some of the bigger part of the problem. No waiting around for the death knell of micro-organisms in our oceans, which most government bureaucracies don’t pay any mind to
This whole video is explaining that these businesses are creating a feel good marketing campaign to charge consumers more, while creating a dependency on the charity in the form of company scripts (which was forbidden in the USA). Giving her the job of picking up plastic is giving her a sense worth? Any idiot can pick up trash, it's not a useful or beneficial skill for employment. So giving them a pittance (or others donating their recycling) is NOT a beneficial long term solution to these ultra poor people. I was laughing so hard when you compared mountains of plastic trash to acres of diamonds, if that were the case, you should be able to pay her a lot more than her kid's school tuition and uniforms, or are you just throwing her the bone scraps while eating the steak? You're not preventing ocean plastic when it's already there and the same pieces there today will still be there when your great grandchildren have kids.
Don't like this. The dude sounds like he's being told the script on the fly and he's trying to make it look natural. This 'Plastic Bank' or 'Social Plastic' sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme. Plus, one of the most important points is "Cleaning the oceans is a temp fix but not a proper one, we need to tackle it at the source. Stop plastic going into the ocean", and to me that's just as good (Or bad). Yeah it's not reaching the ocean, but you're still not tackling plastic at it's actual source which is the production process. And the recycled plastic, even if reused a bunch of times, would eventually get thrown back into the ocean by people who plum don't care about recycling, and it'll reach the ocean that way. Now this does have upsides. It IS still taking some plastic out of circulation and refining the recycling process, while also giving money to worse off people, AND it might decrease the demand slightly for plastic which'll slow plastic production a little. Still, while this whole thing is neat and helpful, this is far from an actual solution. In my eyes, a solution(s) would be this: Get plastic products like water bottles, food packaging, bags, etc., and create eco-friendly substitutes for them. Market them to the general public for a cheaper price than plastic products, and over a few years (Or decade), people would've swapped over to these substitutes, and decreased plastic demand. Once enough substitutes (For enough products, and quantity) have been produced, make a law/bill that makes plastic production illegal, at least in places where the eco-friendly subsitutes are readily in circulation. The next step, which could be worked on while the previous step is worked on, is to get rid of the plastic already in circulation. Get people to dispose of their perishable plastic products (Bags/containers, not DVD covers or anything that'll they'll keep), and set up mealworm and plastic eating fungi farms worldwide. Grab the plastics that're in landfills, oceans, streets, people's houses, etc., and toss em in for our little buddies to munch on. This would still leave microplastics (And possibly produce more) in the eco system, but I'm sure there'll be solutions for those too
Make no mistake about it-- David Katz fails to live up to his analogy of "turning off the tap". This does not, however, disqualify his idea which would incentivize the cleaning up of discarded plastic. What this does is makes his solution incomplete, because it doesn't discriminate between previously discarded plastics and new plastics. This means for regions where new plastic is easier to come by then discarded plastic, people will naturally choose to go that route. By offering this as a complete solution, Katz ignores the need to address the over-production of plastic. Pretty much, it says we don't need to turn off the faucet now, because I installed a drain :). Still a great solution because of the poverty aspect of it, but I'd like to see what he does to address this loophole.
The idea is good but is not presented in an honest way. Creating stimulus for poor countries to collect and recycle their plastic waste is very important but it's not "solving" poverty and it's defiantly not solving the problem with plastic waste. It's ridiculous to state that the solution is so simple. All of the major problems that our contemporary world is facing are structured in a really complex way that is very difficult to comprehend and deal with. Many people are working on them, many companies and organizations. It’s disrespectful to everyone else who is making an effort to say that your one company is suddenly going to fix it all and everyone else is wasting their time. The truth is poverty is not going to be solved by giving people back the already reduced value of the packaging (most commonly) of the goods for which they paid the full price to begin with. Even if you consider that the poorest are collecting the waste of everyone else. This still doesn’t solve issues with politics, corruption, economy etc. that are the root cause of the low standard of life in developing countries. Not to mention the health risks that come with just randomly going through the waste, he didn’t mention if they considered this problem and have a solution. And the problem with plastic is not nearly as simple as recycling it. You cannot have a plastic part form 100% recyclable material, it’s not going to work for any type of plastics. Usually about 5-10% of the material for a new part can come from recycled waste the rest is brand new material. The problem is that if you mold a part form 100% recycled material it can break apart very easy it doesn’t have the same mechanical properties. This isn’t to say that recycling is pointless, everyone should defiantly recycle their waste. However, without efforts to reduce the amount of plastic produced nothing will change. New types of material that replace plastic and are not harmful for the environment and society are being developed; new technologies for dealing with the waste we’ve already created are progressing… The effort this company is making is great. But it’s will take more than one organization that gives money in exchange for waste to solve it all. Stating that the solution is already here takes the responsibility away from consumers and manufactures. And that is not a productive strategy.
11:09 "That alone will put hundreds of millions of dolars..." Nope, sorry it's only 50Million $. You told us 50cents per kg. We can make that calculation :D
plastic is good. But we've gone overboard. Recycling doesn't help all that much. 80% of plastic comes from poor countries? Maybe we all( even us first world countries) need to place value in reusing things. For example, we use canvas bags for groceries in my house and use plastic as little as possible. we have a 5-gallon plastic water jug we refill at the store. My current biggest pet peeve is the plastic bags ( sometimes grocery or take out) we out the trash in. Our apartment complex requires garbage to be put in plastic bags tied shut before tossing them in the compactor. I think there must be a better way. In fact, I think the majority of our plastic garbage is the plastic bags out trash goes in...
And here in slovenia I'm obligated to pay my government 60 eur/month so they collect my recycling that I need to pre-sort for them and keep 5 separate trash cans in a 40m2 apartment. Yay progress.
We can't ban plastic altogether. Plastic is still used widely in healthcare for hygiene reasons, is still used in many electronics, in food packaging and even in fridges and freezers. Don't get me wrong, I hate what plastic is doing to the environment and animals, and I try to not use it unnecessarily and always bring my own bags or a backpack when shopping, yet, plastic can sometimes save people from sickness and even death. I really hope for a better alternative, however, plastic is still needed in some fields, unfortunately. Reusing plastic is a good idea, but you can't recycle plastic forever, and It's sadly pretty ineffective.
The option of bartering plastic garbage for necessary commodities will encourage many to use more plastic than before. My state has put a total ban on plastic with a few exceptions including food packaging and medicines. So while the new packaging is compulsorily of higher microns, many supermarkets are buying back the food packaging material at a nominal price; this will make people actively recycle what otherwise would be headed for the landfills and oceans.
Right, agreed. I just want to bring attention that it's not just one person “turning off the tap so the water wouldn't spill“. There's so many of us and not everyone concentrates or is skilled at one type of helping the environment. What this man is doing is from a completely different field than someone who would clean the oceans directly. And what he is doing might be absolutely necessary but it will take years for it to show results. The same goes for cleaning the oceans. But since it requires people from different fields I don't think it is necessary to start with one and finish with another. They should be happening at the same time, working hand in hand.
This means well but plastic will always be made no matter what, it's how we can manage it by reusing, recycling, reducing what we use, and preventing it from reaching the environment that will help. Unfortunately in these poorer countries they dont have the means or knowledge to know better. I agree with giving people incentive (money) for collecting and recycling plastic since it will cause a domino effect for their community; more money, less trash, better opportunity for fish, more tourism, and more education, means overall better conditions for everyone. There is no way to reverse the damage already made therefore we must reduce future damage in anyway we can.
Sorry, i don't percive this speech as a solution to plastic in the oceans. We have to riduce the quantity of plastic produced globally and his solutions has to keep the actual production of plastic the same if not increase it. there will never be enough cleaners specially for those places that are unreachable. nice thought tho.
Because it's such a huge problem, the plastic scourge isn't going to be solved with a single approach. The ultimate answer is to eliminate it and replace with something environmentally safe. But that's not going to happen any time soon. In the meantime we need to clean up the mess we've made and continue to make every day. It's going to take a diverse toolkit with many different approaches: Reducing our use. Banning or charging for plastic bags. Cleaning up the gyres. The Plastic Bank is yet another tool in the toolkit.
Something needs to be done about other plastics in north america, like felt marker plastic, tampon plastics, mcdonald toy plastics, makeup plastics and other plastics that are made by the millions.
The best and maybe the most efficient solution for these is for the world to setup a global law about plastic manufacturers prohibiting the use of plastics, instead use cartons with aluminum foil inside to replace sachets and plastic bottles by using so cartons can decompose and aluminum can be recycled and has much more value therefore there would be much people that will gather the aluminum to recycle it.
Another great contribution. It is inspiring to hear your idea and see it put into action. Walking the talk. It gives me hope and inspires me to do more. There is no time or room left for the coward that stands on the sidelines critical of those in the fight. Great work!
only people in western countries would claim such naive statements to 'ban plastic altogether'. plastic is CHEAP and a source of income. maybe in the US or Europe such approaches are possible but its gonna take decades before the entire world reaches that stage. in the meantime this is an amazing alternative. hope to see it implemented all over asia soon, especially indonesia and india where plastic AND poverty are in abundance.
Dude, in India A guy collects plastic, metal and papers every month door to door.. weighs it and pays cash right there. No need to take credit for discovering some great model.. you will realise it soon as you come to India.. its already well organised. The Key here is.. it only works if the waste generator is ready to segregate.. if not.. some "rag pickers" will have to spoil their life picking these things from the landfill.
Remember when we were kids, we use to go find soda bottles and return then to Any store and receive$.5 cents for each bottle.. just place a small refund to these items, $,10 for larger and so on, and make it illegal to throw it away.
Dude it is called a recycling center.The only difference between yours and the ones I used 40 years ago is they gave cash. Also how much are they getting paid? What happens when they run out of plastic? Poorer people tend to be less mobile, while there will always be plastic at some point you are going to have to travel to find it.
Boyan slot on ted watch his demonstration. Boyan is already cleaning the oceans of plastic. This guy here is unrealistic in many ways. A few descent ideas to recycle plastic but that's it
Social plastic is an important cleanup effort, and his effort is great. But for him not to emphasis the importance of ENDING plastic production is irresponsible. Plastic production is the source of flow that needs to be stopped.
In the netherlands we already have that system for plastic bottles. You bring them back to the store and get like 0.20 per bottle. You can get money back or pay some of your shoppings. We separate glass, plastic, clothes and greens like vegetables and paper. But we do not get money back for all of it. They do create new products and make energy out of the vegetables. Google it 😃
We are entering the age when new materials science will eventually produce affordable biodegradable plastic and from new sources besides fossil oil. Plastic is light weight, strong, flexible, moldable, easily kept sanitary until needed, saves lives, keeps people healthy, makes our machines more energy efficient. As mentioned we need to get smarter what kinds of plastic we use for what purposes and learn from our mistakes, not set our standard of living back 100 years through narrow mindedness.
ShinyShandera I agree that he's being patronizing but I don't see what you mean by "diatribe." He isn't directly attacking the listener, he's doing the opposite.
Rick Sanchez I think it's arguable that the angle he's speaking from places blame on anyone who isn't bought into the program he's pitching. From that perspective I'd imagine the word is appropriate but maybe you perceived it another way.
The line that really irritated me is that the poor aren't capable of imagining to recycle. Poor people would have to keep buying new things if they didn't reuse/recycle what they have. They can't afford not to.
@ Rick S I agree totally - patronising AF: "We can pay poor island people to pick up our trash and we pay in to a savings account......" This TOTAL pranit just confirms what I've been concerned about for some time: Ted is (largely) unintelligent Mercan people mouthing off. Worse yet - they do it to an audience of think-I-thinks who sycophantically massage their egoes for them. MEH. Very MEH
You CAN NOT be serious !! Pay impoverished island people to litter-pick, and then (sic) pay their pittance in to a 'savings account'............are you for real?? Are you a Mercan or something??
Good idea, only, besides recycling, the oceans and land needs to be cleaned up as rapidly as possible and a moratorium should be placed on commercial fishing fleets to allow the oceans fish populations to recover from over fishing. Humans populations must be allowed to use and farm any an all vacant lands in cities and communities. People must start becoming self sufficient..local farming!!
I mean it's admirable but you need to think about something. People work on self preservation and efficiency. Laziness and survival. Cost for others benefit is unlikely. Sure maybe half the population would do this if enacted but the other half wouldn't. Keep in mind I love your idea but humans are not caring and humanitarian by nature. You need wide spread adoption of this sort of thing. Bio engineering is more likely to see degradation because we could make organisms eat it. No work on our part other than those who already care about it. Those who work in bio engineering being paid is far cheaper than the resources needed to change one of the fundamental pieces of the han condition. Then the work is done by self propogating microbes or whales, etc. No work on our part, maximum efficiency achieved.
There used to be drinking fonts in all villages and towns - we need a similar system direct from natural or man made - springs ( filtered, stored spring water ) at £1 per litre slot machine/card machine.
Anybody who says ban plastic all together, please throw away your cell phone, laptop, iPad, and half your items in your office and home! You are being unrealistic!! This guy talks soo slow but I like his project and any doing and creating awareness is crucial. As for the solution I believe to mass shred into basic building materials and sell it back to manufacturers vs them buying new materials to make plastic. It also can be used in road building or you could make complete furniture, pipes, fences, etc. out of it. Possibilities are there, simple and doable. And yes it can become a self-sustaining business or management but for the greedy and profit driven of course not.
germanylicious i think You should ban the platic thats is unnesesary, like bags, bottles, food packaging and so on, you are able to produce that Economycly...
cell phones, laptops and ipads only make up very small ammounts of plastics entering the ocean. the vast majority of plastics littering the ocean is from plastic bags, bottles etc. simple items which are consumed daily an thrown away daily. mostly in poor developing countries. i grew up in indonesia and there was plastic litter everywhere. in the rivers and on the beaches. how many iphones and laptops do you think i saw among that litter?
Jon B oh true. I totally agree but I only named a few or I'd still be writing. I was trying to make a point because if you look around in your office there are tons of plastic items. Your microwave is too. Obviously not single use but that's why I said people that say ALL plastic! should be banned are being unrealistic even if not everything ends up in the ocean. You ban it all you won't even have the long term products. That was my point.
This isn't a solution. The basic idea is good, but it doesn't replace cleanup, it complements it. 1. There is already plastic in the oceans. It won't be collected by these people. 2. The plastic they collect is being recycled. A percentage of that will end up in the oceans, adding to the plastic that is already there and ISN'T being cleaned up. Or to use his overflowing sink example, He's not turning the tap off completely, AND he doesn't get a bucket or mop, because he's decided that turning down the tap just a bit is good enough.
Dimetropteryx He didn't say don't clean up the ocean, he said do that last. This is not a replacement for ALL plastic waste scenarios, but it is a very smart solution that will help! If plastic is turned into currency, you might see some of the pirates off the coasts of poor countries doing some ocean clean up instead of high risk robbery. Try injecting a little imagination to improve ideas instead of rejecting ideas that you don't find perfect.
He did say don't clean up the ocean. That's what doing it last means. "Don't do it when it's critical to do it." As for "injecting a little imagination to improve ideas", that's what I just did. As for the idea not being perfect, that's not a matter of opinion. As for rejecting the idea, read the second sentence.
Dimetropteryx Your first sentence is a categorical statement rejecting this solution, ”This is not a solution." Also last, doesn't mean not at all. You have an interesting use of language that I can't follow. Good luck with future communications.
Wrong. The first sentence rejects the framing of this as a solution, in direct contradiction of his claim that it is one. As I already explained, last does mean at all and that has nothing to do with language, and everything to do with the fact that there will never be a "last" to do this in. I have a feeling you are very eager to opine and less eager to communicate.
Wow, such simple solutions to clean up our plastic messes and lift up downtrodden people. By the way, I appreciated the speaker's timing and pauses. Gave me more time to contemplate and embed his points.
We need to change the way we package everything, specially small pieces of useless plastic that is hard to recycle. One time use plastics should be banned.
I think it will be easier to dump plastic directly into the Ocean, by not sending plastic waste to poor country and dump in their Ocean, at least you save some green house gas.
@@springrollwang4441 that's a TERRIBLE idea omygosh
evolunter, you might want to rethink that. It's common knowledge that reused plastic water bottles harbor bacteria.
That's for sure.
First of all.
one time use plastics should be recycled if clean or go to the landfill, and thats it. Everyone seems to believe that plastics is not supposed to be in a landfill, but thats the perfect place for it. it sits there and does nothing to the environment, we cover it up and build a park on it. trying to recycle dirty or exotic plastics is nasty and expensive, we should have just sent it to the landfills or burn it (with ash capture) and very little would have ended up in the ocean
Set the playback speed to 1.25x
You're welcome.
Mahir Cave genius thanks
1.5x is even better.
Came here to say the same thing in the same words :D
*fistbump*
Yeah. This dude emphasizes waaaaay too many words. Thank you based TH-cam gods.
Its about the dramatic effect. I should have read this comment first. Hahah
The first thing we need to ban is bottled water. It's totally unnecessary and instead there should be drinking water available everywhere and we can carry reusable bottles.
I strongly fucking agree.
R yeah too bad a lot of people are just lazy
Nope because bottled water makes more profit so that automatically means we should continue down that path and destroy the planet
@Medic Engineer no mate it's not a scam. the difference between bottled water and tap water is that in tap water there are chemicals and a lot of lime which is not harmful to the human body but makes it taste different which bottled water doesn't have. it's also great for people that go to contries where the water cleaning is different and might give you bacterial infections and food posioning since you;'re not used to it.
I live downhill from a landfill. No, I'm not drinking my tap water.
Why not stop producing plastic in the first place. Or using biodegradable alternative plastic
aasem al-lmki it’s the next step
because there is no other material like plastic, its cheap, strong and easy to use. so thats why we use plastic in everything
The rest of the world couldn't afford it. The majority of the Earth's population is below the American poverty line, and plastic in all it's ease and cheapness, has given people access to and the ability to buy things they'd never be able to otherwise.
@@AClRCLEOFLlGHT i hope we find cheaper and better alternative and adapt it as soon as possible.
Search for envigreen. They make biodegradable bags which are substitute for plastic.
His analogy is "turn off the tap before cleaning up"
His solution is to clean up the plastic, but didn't mention reducing plastic consumption 🤔
recycling or stop using plastic
Consumption isn’t as big a problem as production. Consuming the plastic, as long as it’s recycled (both a product made by recycled plastic, and recycled by the consumer), would effectively solve the problem (not perfectly, but substantially). If this was done on a massive scale, the tap would basically be off, though it would almost definitely be a slightly leaky faucet. Ensuring this model is the primary model means that less (new) plastic is being produced, and less plastic is going into the ocean. Idk, if you follow the whole thing through, I think the analogy does actually work. ✌🏼
What you're saying Lincoln is a lot of words with no content. You're a platitude. This TED talk addresses one aspect of the plastic problem with a very good solution. Don't conflate issues.
Lincoln The whole plastic cycle has many aspects of it. Don't throw his idea into the landfill simply because it doesn't address the who plastic cycle. That's just foolish. Many other people, I'm sure, are working furiously on all aspects of the plastic cycle.
I think his analogy of “turn of the tap” means stop plastics from going to the ocean by recycling. He offers one solution.
Hemp used to be mandatory to grow. Make it mandatory again. You can make plastic from it and it degrades
Lol so true and paper
@@Epck Paper comes from Trees, the demand for paper material will cut down 10 times the amount of trees when you ban plastic.
@@tparker2095 yeah the reason I appreciate hemp is because it would become a substitute for the trees in paper manufacturing
@@tparker2095 and I dont want to ban plastic I want to unban "hemp"
you need to know that in order to make "biodegradable" plastics from hemp or any other plant, you need to add chemicals to it that make it totally NON-Organic. So the result of its breakdown is the same methane off-gassing as paper or other organics in landfills but it cannot be collected and reused like organic compost. Also there is a very limited number of uses for these types of bio-plastics because they do not have near the wide range of qualities and uses as olefin-plastics. Plus, I believe we need to focus all of our plant growing technology on making food for people, NOT for packaging!
Plastic is perfect in a landfill, and the carbon used to make it is sequestered within it.
It does not leach into the soil, and is a stable base for future (park) construction on the site of a decommissioned landfill.
Its OK to be human, and it is OK as a human to have some waste. We need to continue to reduce and properly manage the waste, recycle all that we can, and know exactly the limitations of the waste/recycling infrastructure in the areas where we live so we dont send off worthless dirty "recyclates" to third world countries where it is easier for them to just dump it in the river instead of properly processing it like they say they will do.
I really like hemp, but plastics has saved my life and affects people more positively than they will ever realize.
very interesting speech. And thank you, for seaking slowly, so I had understand better, because I'm not english motherlanguage. Thank you
all you pessimists here, it's not perfect but it's far better than doing nothing.Sure there is profit to be made, is that so wrong?
It’s easier for them to call bullshit and say it won’t work and go about their tunnel vision lives rather than accept a subtle change in what they buy could possibly slow down the polution of the planet. Thank to denial, they are also immortal!
Yes, making that sort of profit in that sort of business with this sort of "business partners on the collector side IS in deed extremely wrong, but as long as this cynical approach works it's still better than nothing in terms of "closing the tap".
ikr. The only reason the world was so hyped with solar power last year was because they found it got cheaper than coal. "The" coal, the one energy source thats supposed to be dirty but also cheap... and solar beat it in terms of price (at least in the middle east)
World doesnt run fueled by goodwill and hippie thoughts. People can hate reality if they want, but reality is that people cannot work for free. Its not even a capitalism thing. Its reality. If you earn nothing, you cant feed yourself, and you cannot top up the energy you spent while doing good deeds, meaning you cannot do the good deeds anymore (because youre dead). Money isnt some kinda "necessary evil". Its a tool. Whether this tool is used for good or evil depends on the user
Someone who says "why dont we stop producing plastic..." is not pessimistic 😂
This is not a profitable enterprise by any stretch of the imagination and relies on dead end funding. Love the idea but this is a pipe dream.
Manufacturing companies. They are the SOURCE of the plastic. We're not putting pressure on them.
Amen 🙌
I feel the same way about oil companies. We need to limit them, as they are the SOURCE.
Yes good point as well. All part of "The Fix" for the global discarded plastic problem. . . to create alternatives. . .then to choose to only use these alternatives. . . will affect the companys producing the "bad" stuff. . it is market forces. . . and will indeed get to the souce.
Sense PLASTICS are Oil based...
It's the Big Oil Corporations that are ruining our FUTURE with Toxic Pollution.
Plastic made from plant based cellulose is more Earth Friendly.
We buy it, so they sell it. If we won't give them money, they have to change. But it takes effort and thinking on our parts, and a willingness to deal without certain conveniences. It would be easier for us if they change first. But it's easier for them to just keep doing what makes them money and is easiest on them. Vicious circle.
Your metaphor is flawed. Recycling is not equivalent to turning off the tap. It's more like bailing one side of the overflowing sink into the other side so less water (plastic) hits the floor (ocean). It may slow the rate of plastic entering the ocean, but the core problem remains. Until we ban the creation and distribution of single-use plastic bags, containers, utensils, etc., the plastic "tap" will remain open, and the ocean will remain at risk.
KungFuBlitzKrieg his metaphor connects the main source of plastic in our oceans is impoverished communities who have no choice but to live in squalor- so they are turning off the “tap” of the main source- by turning that trash that has no place but in the streets in those communities into a currency and a way improve their life.
Time to give the elderly jobs. Put them in the sweat shops croaqueing grocery bags. That will help a portion..
exactly. according to analogy- plastic is the water, production and consumption industry of plastic is the water pressure, and the sink/kitchen is planet earth
enter he
he sees people with no supplies.
He then began talking about how he was going to source the supplies for life to people who didnt have any, as long as they began using eye droppers to clean the overflowing sink in the kithen.
droppings are to be collected in a bowl
I transform their droppings into bowl of baby jesus tears of infinite value.
I give their lives meaning and worth as people pay exorbitant amounts to pick droplets from my jusus tears of infinite value
*applause*
no way solves the problem, and wastes time and energy toiling with the spoil
kungfu and bytheunknown both very right - combined; now need to look at getting it out of the seas and stopping it getting there in the first place.
It seems to be a good idea, but to make poor people clean up the mess we first world people make is questionable!
Totally agree
But I love to see Sea Bird suffocating.
Now, two years later in 2020, some of those poor countries are refusing to take first world’s recycling garbage and they’re sending it back to whence it came.
What ignorant virtue signaling dribble. Most of the garbage in the ocean comes from 3rd world countries that have major rivers flowing through them. 90% comes from the major rivers flowing through 3rd world countries. Look it up. I’m all for helping those countries provide sanitation services to the poor villages and help those cultures have a shift in habits... as long as it doesn’t involve European or US politicians who will try to make it into a game of “I’m better than this guy. Vote for me to help you feel better about yourself and better than all of the people that vote for my opponent .” That crap gets us no where but to division.
@@ericksonjustinAK Couldn't agree more. They pollute the ocean, so what better an opportunity for them but to clean up their mess whilst making a living out of it? I'd say they should be very thankful, and we should too.
Lot of potential in India...how can I be apart of this ?
Drop and give me ten!
Send a toilet to India
@@davidjames666 can you send back what they take during colonization.after that we will send a golden toilet
@@davidjames666 we have the best democratic system so any indian will not worry about corruptive qov. Will not last.
dream travel as an Indian, I can say that the ind govt is corrupt af
the fundamental problem remains the current economic system, as in a monetary-market economy there is no profit in being eco-friendly (in fact taking care of sustainability might even have some extra costs), and in general there's no profit in taking care of health and well-being (on social, environmental and individual levels). if there is no profit in doing something, industries won't do it: either because they can't afford it (due to economic competition with other industries) or because they have become addicted to profit /power (which is an understandable symptom /consequence of living in a unhealthy economic system, which also correlates with the quality /health of society and culture).
programmes like the one proposed in this video can alleviate plastic waste and the respective pollution, but if we wanna "turn off the tap", as he said at the beginning of the video, if we wanna address the root cause of the problem (which also happens to be the root cause of many big problems and of much sickness and suffering in our societies) then the "tap" is the current economic system.
pollution (like the other problems i mentioned) is not a technical or technological problem: we do have the tools to clean the oceans and to produce goods and in general to live, as societies, in a completely ecologically-sustainable way. the problem is economic. another example is how eco-friendly alternatives are often suppressed by big industries as, otherwise, their profits and possibly their economic survival would be threatened.
there are alternatives which would technically be feasible if enough people were willing to stand for them, or which might eventually be taken into consideration by governments anyway as the current system gets closer and closer to collapse, due to ecological crises and technological unemployment (due to automation);
if u wanna learn more on this whole topic, the starting point id currently recommend is www.nlrbe.org (which stands for "natural law resource-based economy"), as at the bottom of that page u will also find 2 links that will bring u to the 2 main projects that i know of on this topic; i also recommend their most viewed videos (which are their main documentaries) on their respective youtube channels
Was so excited when he started off with "the solution to stopping the flood is turning off the faucet", aka stopping the plastic problem at the source....... but then he just talked about dealing with the end result aka pollution, which won't solve the overall problem.........
Elizabeth Danielle agreed. I think that this needs to happen simultaneously but as he said, when people are that poor it's hard to worry about recycling. So this way they are dealing with one part of the problem. We need to lobby governments around the world to ban single use plastics alongside this initiative.
no one thing solves the overall problem. The "overall" solution is, in fact, a mesh of smaller solutions that have the same goals in mind act on different angles.
His plan is literally a bucket and mop🤣
I can't believe all of you totally missed what he said.
80% of plastic in oceans comes from poor countries. This is turning off the tap.
@@mcstinkle Yes! Exactly. No one thing will fix the problem. It must be hit from every angle.
Does not shut off the tap. We need to find plastic alternative quickly.
glass and paper ;)
PS, great username.
@@bdufka paper straws are the most disgusting things ever
Joh-dude straws were a dumb idea in the first place
The tap is garbage in rivers in 3rd world countries.
This sounds intresting...Collect the plastic and feed your family. The homless in my area would thrive from this idea. Making plastic a kind of currency seems like a perfect set up.
Plenty of homeless people already do this. It doesn't work in 1st world countries where the cost of living is higher.
@@eclipse5393 and that is why this is not a solution, it would cause gentrification of the third world, which is good, but after that the citizens of the newly third world countries would produce more garbage and they won't need to recycle it.
How about requiring many welfare families to collect a certain amount. I know many able bodied people on welfare who can’t be bothered to work but have time to watch a lot of TV and go to bars.
fix his weird long pauses between his speech by putting the speed on 1.25
The real problem is oil giant company like Shell, Exxon 🌬️☄️♻️🐾🕊️🐝🍃🎑🎋🎏
Tell that to the Asians, South Americans and Africans. My country has curbed plastic waste to 30% of what it used to be and we're a small country to begin with.
The concept proposed here is by no mean a rational solution to this practical problem. We need to move to a BETTER technology (evaporatable silicone? dissovable wax?) to replace plastic. People will stop being supplied plastic on their packaging and will therefore stop throwing/wasting it in the ocean/soil.
It takes a long-term vision and requires investments, thinking and engineering; not just "social justice warriorism". Plastic banks are just another way to collect the plastic one one side before it reaches the ocean. Meanwhile, somewhere else, people keep dumping... :p
I swear everybody here didn’t watch it on purpose it’s all their teachers that sent us here
lmaoo im doing an assignment on it rn
Heck no, I care very much about the subject.
This dude takes a 10 min break between every group of words
Only when the rich suffer the same as the poor will they open their eyes.
i agree
I too believe this is flawed . Odwalla has made a responsible plastic why cannot other companies ? Their plastic bottles are made mostly from plants and will recycle much more quickly and do far less harm to our environment . We can rake the ocean and in also use pressure machines that force plastic up to be racked out of the ocean . There is also a computerized way to do this also The computer can collate where the plastic is and make machines at a fathom that is practical and do the same as above. Sound simple no it isn't and would take a few years to just produce . However it does Not leave the world in dire straits as this person is saying and could offer hope. If all of us were not so dauntingly guilty and afraid of being things could at least be more positive and believe me in myself too. Let's look outside of this and see the psychological reality we are afraid of being vulnerable and vulnerably honest as well . This is our as he says our negative down fall if we take it then we have ourselves to blame . As always we are the children ( of God?)
Do not listen to your critics.
Your contributions to saving the world will become your legacy. It’s people like you who give hope to the hopeless.
Well done my friend.
This guy is making a business with plastic. He did not turn off the tap, he is cleaning up the water and selling it again.
More like scooping it up from the sink before it spills onto the floor.
supply & demand
no
You know something is wrong with your speech when you set playback at 2x and it is still perfectly comprehensible
really ???
its still important to clean the ocean, to say otherwise is to be grossly ignorant . the plastic is going into the food chain and affects everyone weather you eat seafood or not. but yes it important to encourage people to recycle before it enters the oceans.
Trevor Van Zuydam Unfortunately we all know many people who recycle nothing and places where you can’t find a place to recycle, which is why I often carry plastics and aluminum cans in my car until I can find a place.
this isn’t the murderer
AND YOU THINK OIL companies.. WILL stop A BILLION dollar BUISNESS.. YES plastic COMES FROM OIL 👈... GOOD LUCK WHIT THAT.. 👈
Wonderful idea!!! This and the great ocean cleanup project launched at the pacific garbage patch recently are part of the sweeping fixes taking place to make a world of difference.
Yes recycling is a good options as a midway plan while we don't ban plastic from our society as a spread material all over use. We need plastic, we may very well always need it, and if so will also always need to recicle it, but we need to rethink it's use and meanwhile have to clean up the mess we already made. Ocean cleanup is until now the best practical, economically viable and down earth executable way to do it. Anyway we need all the good ideas possible to help acting against this cancer, so in the end it's a good idea also.
So in order for there to be incentive to collect plastic, plastic has to be produced correct? It's a good idea, but not a long term solution as long as plastic is being produced, which hopefully won't be much longer.
Nyanino There's already plenty of plastic out there. No currency system works if its basis is limitless.
Ben
Unfortunately we won’t have anything to replace it for at least another 30 to 50 years
What this man is doing, and what Boyan Slat is doing over at his company, are two examples of viable solutions to some of the bigger part of the problem.
No waiting around for the death knell of micro-organisms in our oceans, which most government bureaucracies don’t pay any mind to
This whole video is explaining that these businesses are creating a feel good marketing campaign to charge consumers more, while creating a dependency on the charity in the form of company scripts (which was forbidden in the USA). Giving her the job of picking up plastic is giving her a sense worth? Any idiot can pick up trash, it's not a useful or beneficial skill for employment. So giving them a pittance (or others donating their recycling) is NOT a beneficial long term solution to these ultra poor people. I was laughing so hard when you compared mountains of plastic trash to acres of diamonds, if that were the case, you should be able to pay her a lot more than her kid's school tuition and uniforms, or are you just throwing her the bone scraps while eating the steak?
You're not preventing ocean plastic when it's already there and the same pieces there today will still be there when your great grandchildren have kids.
I wonder how chinas recent ban of the importation of plastics for recycling will affect his business model
So true! Thanks for this comment!
PrettyPinkPeacock
thanks
They probably create enough/have enough sitting around, that they can depend on that. China does not have a plastic shortage.
He will find another project that will be planetary sustainable technology.
He's a caring intelligent young man.
Don't like this. The dude sounds like he's being told the script on the fly and he's trying to make it look natural. This 'Plastic Bank' or 'Social Plastic' sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme.
Plus, one of the most important points is "Cleaning the oceans is a temp fix but not a proper one, we need to tackle it at the source. Stop plastic going into the ocean", and to me that's just as good (Or bad). Yeah it's not reaching the ocean, but you're still not tackling plastic at it's actual source which is the production process. And the recycled plastic, even if reused a bunch of times, would eventually get thrown back into the ocean by people who plum don't care about recycling, and it'll reach the ocean that way.
Now this does have upsides. It IS still taking some plastic out of circulation and refining the recycling process, while also giving money to worse off people, AND it might decrease the demand slightly for plastic which'll slow plastic production a little.
Still, while this whole thing is neat and helpful, this is far from an actual solution.
In my eyes, a solution(s) would be this: Get plastic products like water bottles, food packaging, bags, etc., and create eco-friendly substitutes for them. Market them to the general public for a cheaper price than plastic products, and over a few years (Or decade), people would've swapped over to these substitutes, and decreased plastic demand. Once enough substitutes (For enough products, and quantity) have been produced, make a law/bill that makes plastic production illegal, at least in places where the eco-friendly subsitutes are readily in circulation.
The next step, which could be worked on while the previous step is worked on, is to get rid of the plastic already in circulation. Get people to dispose of their perishable plastic products (Bags/containers, not DVD covers or anything that'll they'll keep), and set up mealworm and plastic eating fungi farms worldwide. Grab the plastics that're in landfills, oceans, streets, people's houses, etc., and toss em in for our little buddies to munch on. This would still leave microplastics (And possibly produce more) in the eco system, but I'm sure there'll be solutions for those too
We can avoid plastic bags and other single use plastics. But what about packaged products because most of these are in plastics. Heartwrenching
Make no mistake about it-- David Katz fails to live up to his analogy of "turning off the tap". This does not, however, disqualify his idea which would incentivize the cleaning up of discarded plastic. What this does is makes his solution incomplete, because it doesn't discriminate between previously discarded plastics and new plastics. This means for regions where new plastic is easier to come by then discarded plastic, people will naturally choose to go that route. By offering this as a complete solution, Katz ignores the need to address the over-production of plastic. Pretty much, it says we don't need to turn off the faucet now, because I installed a drain :). Still a great solution because of the poverty aspect of it, but I'd like to see what he does to address this loophole.
This is the *good* David Katz.
The idea is good but is not presented in an honest way. Creating stimulus for poor countries to collect and recycle their plastic waste is very important but it's not "solving" poverty and it's defiantly not solving the problem with plastic waste. It's ridiculous to state that the solution is so simple. All of the major problems that our contemporary world is facing are structured in a really complex way that is very difficult to comprehend and deal with. Many people are working on them, many companies and organizations. It’s disrespectful to everyone else who is making an effort to say that your one company is suddenly going to fix it all and everyone else is wasting their time.
The truth is poverty is not going to be solved by giving people back the already reduced value of the packaging (most commonly) of the goods for which they paid the full price to begin with. Even if you consider that the poorest are collecting the waste of everyone else. This still doesn’t solve issues with politics, corruption, economy etc. that are the root cause of the low standard of life in developing countries. Not to mention the health risks that come with just randomly going through the waste, he didn’t mention if they considered this problem and have a solution.
And the problem with plastic is not nearly as simple as recycling it. You cannot have a plastic part form 100% recyclable material, it’s not going to work for any type of plastics. Usually about 5-10% of the material for a new part can come from recycled waste the rest is brand new material. The problem is that if you mold a part form 100% recycled material it can break apart very easy it doesn’t have the same mechanical properties. This isn’t to say that recycling is pointless, everyone should defiantly recycle their waste. However, without efforts to reduce the amount of plastic produced nothing will change. New types of material that replace plastic and are not harmful for the environment and society are being developed; new technologies for dealing with the waste we’ve already created are progressing…
The effort this company is making is great. But it’s will take more than one organization that gives money in exchange for waste to solve it all. Stating that the solution is already here takes the responsibility away from consumers and manufactures. And that is not a productive strategy.
11:09 "That alone will put hundreds of millions of dolars..." Nope, sorry it's only 50Million $. You told us 50cents per kg. We can make that calculation :D
plastic is good. But we've gone overboard. Recycling doesn't help all that much. 80% of plastic comes from poor countries? Maybe we all( even us first world countries) need to place value in reusing things. For example, we use canvas bags for groceries in my house and use plastic as little as possible. we have a 5-gallon plastic water jug we refill at the store.
My current biggest pet peeve is the plastic bags ( sometimes grocery or take out) we out the trash in. Our apartment complex requires garbage to be put in plastic bags tied shut before tossing them in the compactor. I think there must be a better way. In fact, I think the majority of our plastic garbage is the plastic bags out trash goes in...
And here in slovenia I'm obligated to pay my government 60 eur/month so they collect my recycling that I need to pre-sort for them and keep 5 separate trash cans in a 40m2 apartment. Yay progress.
We can't ban plastic altogether. Plastic is still used widely in healthcare for hygiene reasons, is still used in many electronics, in food packaging and even in fridges and freezers. Don't get me wrong, I hate what plastic is doing to the environment and animals, and I try to not use it unnecessarily and always bring my own bags or a backpack when shopping, yet, plastic can sometimes save people from sickness and even death. I really hope for a better alternative, however, plastic is still needed in some fields, unfortunately. Reusing plastic is a good idea, but you can't recycle plastic forever, and It's sadly pretty ineffective.
Am I the only one who likes how he paces himself in his speech?
The option of bartering plastic garbage for necessary commodities will encourage many to use more plastic than before. My state has put a total ban on plastic with a few exceptions including food packaging and medicines. So while the new packaging is compulsorily of higher microns, many supermarkets are buying back the food packaging material at a nominal price; this will make people actively recycle what otherwise would be headed for the landfills and oceans.
Right, agreed.
I just want to bring attention that it's not just one person “turning off the tap so the water wouldn't spill“. There's so many of us and not everyone concentrates or is skilled at one type of helping the environment. What this man is doing is from a completely different field than someone who would clean the oceans directly. And what he is doing might be absolutely necessary but it will take years for it to show results. The same goes for cleaning the oceans. But since it requires people from different fields I don't think it is necessary to start with one and finish with another. They should be happening at the same time, working hand in hand.
This means well but plastic will always be made no matter what, it's how we can manage it by reusing, recycling, reducing what we use, and preventing it from reaching the environment that will help. Unfortunately in these poorer countries they dont have the means or knowledge to know better. I agree with giving people incentive (money) for collecting and recycling plastic since it will cause a domino effect for their community; more money, less trash, better opportunity for fish, more tourism, and more education, means overall better conditions for everyone. There is no way to reverse the damage already made therefore we must reduce future damage in anyway we can.
Sorry, i don't percive this speech as a solution to plastic in the oceans. We have to riduce the quantity of plastic produced globally and his solutions has to keep the actual production of plastic the same if not increase it. there will never be enough cleaners specially for those places that are unreachable. nice thought tho.
Because it's such a huge problem, the plastic scourge isn't going to be solved with a single approach. The ultimate answer is to eliminate it and replace with something environmentally safe. But that's not going to happen any time soon. In the meantime we need to clean up the mess we've made and continue to make every day. It's going to take a diverse toolkit with many different approaches: Reducing our use. Banning or charging for plastic bags. Cleaning up the gyres. The Plastic Bank is yet another tool in the toolkit.
Something needs to be done about other plastics in north america, like felt marker plastic, tampon plastics, mcdonald toy plastics, makeup plastics and other plastics that are made by the millions.
Naomi Beery Are you actually suggesting GLASS tampon inserters? Or steel?
The best and maybe the most efficient solution for these is for the world to setup a global law about plastic manufacturers prohibiting the use of plastics, instead use cartons with aluminum foil inside to replace sachets and plastic bottles by using so cartons can decompose and aluminum can be recycled and has much more value therefore there would be much people that will gather the aluminum to recycle it.
Another great contribution. It is inspiring to hear your idea and see it put into action. Walking the talk. It gives me hope and inspires me to do more. There is no time or room left for the coward that stands on the sidelines critical of those in the fight. Great work!
only people in western countries would claim such naive statements to 'ban plastic altogether'. plastic is CHEAP and a source of income. maybe in the US or Europe such approaches are possible but its gonna take decades before the entire world reaches that stage. in the meantime this is an amazing alternative. hope to see it implemented all over asia soon, especially indonesia and india where plastic AND poverty are in abundance.
Nice. Great idea/concept. . . to help along, the fix of the global discarded plastic problem.
Dude, in India A guy collects plastic, metal and papers every month door to door.. weighs it and pays cash right there. No need to take credit for discovering some great model.. you will realise it soon as you come to India.. its already well organised. The Key here is.. it only works if the waste generator is ready to segregate.. if not.. some "rag pickers" will have to spoil their life picking these things from the landfill.
Remember when we were kids, we use to go find soda bottles and return then to Any store and receive$.5 cents for each bottle.. just place a small refund to these items, $,10 for larger and so on, and make it illegal to throw it away.
Dude it is called a recycling center.The only difference between yours and the ones I used 40 years ago is they gave cash. Also how much are they getting paid? What happens when they run out of plastic? Poorer people tend to be less mobile, while there will always be plastic at some point you are going to have to travel to find it.
How can anyone vote thumbs down for this? It's brilliant, and not even a pipedream -- it's already a reality! Very exciting. Thank you, Mr. Katz.
They are probably oil industry masters/CEOs/oil rig owners
we need to go back to Indian Ayurvedic and Natural culture which existed for thousand of years back until destroyed by british and mughals
India alone would be having 8 trillion kgs of plastic.
Boyan slot on ted watch his demonstration. Boyan is already cleaning the oceans of plastic. This guy here is unrealistic in many ways. A few descent ideas to recycle plastic but that's it
Wow, this is a pretty intense speech, a very good solution, respect!
where did the 80% statistic come from, which research???????
Social plastic is an important cleanup effort, and his effort is great.
But for him not to emphasis the importance of ENDING plastic production is irresponsible.
Plastic production is the source of flow that needs to be stopped.
Thats not his business model ;]
In the netherlands we already have that system for plastic bottles. You bring them back to the store and get like 0.20 per bottle. You can get money back or pay some of your shoppings.
We separate glass, plastic, clothes and greens like vegetables and paper. But we do not get money back for all of it.
They do create new products and make energy out of the vegetables. Google it 😃
I love Netherlands and the Dutch people
This guys is high if he thinks collecting trash is going to fix poverty.
TheVigilante2000 it wont, but it isnt a bad first step.
Take your plastic to Tesco.. get points on your club card..
Its a no brainer
GREAT PLAN!!! We have to start somewhere!!!
actually they have
Good luck, this is not scalable. When this runs out of capital funding (donations) its done. I love the enthusiasm but this is a pipe dream.
Thank you..........we are killing our own planet, the only ONE we have to live on!
we can live on mars in 20+ years XDD
We are entering the age when new materials science will eventually produce affordable biodegradable plastic and from new sources besides fossil oil. Plastic is light weight, strong, flexible, moldable, easily kept sanitary until needed, saves lives, keeps people healthy, makes our machines more energy efficient. As mentioned we need to get smarter what kinds of plastic we use for what purposes and learn from our mistakes, not set our standard of living back 100 years through narrow mindedness.
Single use water bottles, drinking straws and unnecessary plastic bags have got to go, as a start.
This guy is seriously patronizing. His diatribe feels like a sales pitch you would see on Shark Tank, not something that belongs at a TED Talk.
ShinyShandera I agree that he's being patronizing but I don't see what you mean by "diatribe." He isn't directly attacking the listener, he's doing the opposite.
Rick Sanchez I think it's arguable that the angle he's speaking from places blame on anyone who isn't bought into the program he's pitching. From that perspective I'd imagine the word is appropriate but maybe you perceived it another way.
I really felt like stopping him like Mr.nice and asking for the numbers.
The line that really irritated me is that the poor aren't capable of imagining to recycle. Poor people would have to keep buying new things if they didn't reuse/recycle what they have. They can't afford not to.
@ Rick S I agree totally - patronising AF: "We can pay poor island people to pick up our trash and we pay in to a savings account......" This TOTAL pranit just confirms what I've been concerned about for some time: Ted is (largely) unintelligent Mercan people mouthing off. Worse yet - they do it to an audience of think-I-thinks who sycophantically massage their egoes for them. MEH. Very MEH
scooping up water and putting it back into the flooding sink
God bless you and your work !!Such a great thing!!!!
You spend more money in gas driving to these plastic banks then what you will get for your plastic! Stop single use plastic production!
Yes
the long pauses aside: great talk!
youre not watching at normal speed still are u ?
You CAN NOT be serious !! Pay impoverished island people to litter-pick, and then (sic) pay their pittance in to a 'savings account'............are you for real?? Are you a Mercan or something??
The answer is HEMP. Natural substitute for ALL petrochemicals. FACT!!!
For sure you are correct, we need to declare this to be a state of emergency.
That’s what I was saying ban plastic all together.
Good idea, only, besides recycling, the oceans and land needs to be cleaned up as rapidly as possible and a moratorium should be placed on commercial fishing fleets to allow the oceans fish populations to recover from over fishing. Humans populations must be allowed to use and farm any an all vacant lands in cities and communities. People must start becoming self sufficient..local farming!!
No one cares if there is no big monetary incentive for the elites in it.
I mean it's admirable but you need to think about something. People work on self preservation and efficiency. Laziness and survival. Cost for others benefit is unlikely. Sure maybe half the population would do this if enacted but the other half wouldn't. Keep in mind I love your idea but humans are not caring and humanitarian by nature. You need wide spread adoption of this sort of thing. Bio engineering is more likely to see degradation because we could make organisms eat it. No work on our part other than those who already care about it. Those who work in bio engineering being paid is far cheaper than the resources needed to change one of the fundamental pieces of the han condition. Then the work is done by self propogating microbes or whales, etc. No work on our part, maximum efficiency achieved.
In a few years there will be another continent made out of plastic
There used to be drinking fonts in all villages and towns - we need a similar system direct from natural or man made - springs ( filtered, stored spring water ) at £1 per litre slot machine/card machine.
“social plastic” Who created that word? Amazing
Why don’t we just adapt to eating plastic
Ikr
Anybody who says ban plastic all together, please throw away your cell phone, laptop, iPad, and half your items in your office and home!
You are being unrealistic!!
This guy talks soo slow but I like his project and any doing and creating awareness is crucial.
As for the solution I believe to mass shred into basic building materials and sell it back to manufacturers vs them buying new materials to make plastic. It also can be used in road building or you could make complete furniture, pipes, fences, etc. out of it. Possibilities are there, simple and doable. And yes it can become a self-sustaining business or management but for the greedy and profit driven of course not.
germanylicious i think You should ban the platic thats is unnesesary, like bags, bottles, food packaging and so on, you are able to produce that Economycly...
VanzonHD oh of course. But I don't think people realize how much of our daily items are of or contain plastic.
cell phones, laptops and ipads only make up very small ammounts of plastics entering the ocean. the vast majority of plastics littering the ocean is from plastic bags, bottles etc. simple items which are consumed daily an thrown away daily. mostly in poor developing countries. i grew up in indonesia and there was plastic litter everywhere. in the rivers and on the beaches. how many iphones and laptops do you think i saw among that litter?
Jon B oh true. I totally agree but I only named a few or I'd still be writing. I was trying to make a point because if you look around in your office there are tons of plastic items. Your microwave is too. Obviously not single use but that's why I said people that say ALL plastic! should be banned are being unrealistic even if not everything ends up in the ocean. You ban it all you won't even have the long term products. That was my point.
the packaging is mostly the place that plastic lies though; if you have a steel cooking oven etc... the plastic isn't necessary
how is the sale of reclaimed plastic going today
This isn't a solution. The basic idea is good, but it doesn't replace cleanup, it complements it.
1. There is already plastic in the oceans. It won't be collected by these people.
2. The plastic they collect is being recycled. A percentage of that will end up in the oceans, adding to the plastic that is already there and ISN'T being cleaned up.
Or to use his overflowing sink example, He's not turning the tap off completely, AND he doesn't get a bucket or mop, because he's decided that turning down the tap just a bit is good enough.
Dimetropteryx He didn't say don't clean up the ocean, he said do that last. This is not a replacement for ALL plastic waste scenarios, but it is a very smart solution that will help! If plastic is turned into currency, you might see some of the pirates off the coasts of poor countries doing some ocean clean up instead of high risk robbery. Try injecting a little imagination to improve ideas instead of rejecting ideas that you don't find perfect.
He did say don't clean up the ocean. That's what doing it last means. "Don't do it when it's critical to do it."
As for "injecting a little imagination to improve ideas", that's what I just did.
As for the idea not being perfect, that's not a matter of opinion.
As for rejecting the idea, read the second sentence.
Dimetropteryx Your first sentence is a categorical statement rejecting this solution, ”This is not a solution." Also last, doesn't mean not at all. You have an interesting use of language that I can't follow. Good luck with future communications.
Wrong. The first sentence rejects the framing of this as a solution, in direct contradiction of his claim that it is one. As I already explained, last does mean at all and that has nothing to do with language, and everything to do with the fact that there will never be a "last" to do this in.
I have a feeling you are very eager to opine and less eager to communicate.
The value of plastic wouldn't be high enough to replace the potential reward of robbery.
Is this really anything new?
Nothing short of brilliant. Keep up the great job.
cradle to grave responsibility for the manufactor
This is amazing.. just great! Best ted talk I've heard in a while..
Can you talk any slower didn't catch every. ....single.....word
this is so incredible, i love his mentality "turn off the tap". Such a smart idea, helping people better themselves well helping our planet.
I sort of skimmed through this.
Did he address how we can greatly reduce our need for plastic?
That's where it all comes from. We think we need it.
Most underrated TED talk.
Wow, such simple solutions to clean up our plastic messes and lift up downtrodden people.
By the way, I appreciated the speaker's timing and pauses. Gave me more time to contemplate and embed his points.
Social plastic trade? Simply called it Green trading! Tin cans and cardboard also could go in. Bravo!
Yeah.. He probably wants to change his name now...