A great summary! Its the first time Ive seen the chemical difference between natural biodegrable polymers and synthetic ones (long chain carbon) featured in a documentary. I think at this time in many countries, proper disposal and collection of our common plastic items is most immediately important. We have to change almost everything to these compostable alternatives - for everyone, and filter the escaped plastics out of the seas and habitats over the coming decades. That takes big political projects... buying as many of these genuinely compostable plastics as possible is also a good way to sponsor progress and make them more common and cheaper for all...
Eric just being realistic here but it is very likely too late. I cannot say it is for sure but it looks like we missed our mark by about 30 years. We are in bad, bad shape and only a miracle of science can save us.
@@kurohikes5857 ….. I hope you are wrong, but I believe we must keep trying. What is helping (strangely) is the massive fires in Australia. 40,000 square kilometres in one state alone, gone, about 140 houses destroyed, don't know how many killed. There are some deniers waking up, they are a disappearing breed. Greta Thunberg is a help in the sense she is the generation that will have to put in the hard yards. But it will get worse before it gets better.
@@kurohikes5857 Catastrophism is kind of like encouraging people to burn more carbon. It harms the cause because it makes people give up. We have ALL the technology we need to solve our climate and environmental problems today. All we need is the political will to do it. Making people give up is the exact opposite of what we need.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Help me understand how political will could change anything. The politics are protecting the economy first, the people second, and the ecology at the end of the list. Economy is lead by huge, private companies, finance groups, banks...politics are left with laws and taxes to convince the companies to evolve. Oil is so cheap (the price artificially brought down), the industry only respond by "plastic is cheaper, if we go green it will cost you", and the client will have to pay the bill. But it's a scam, typical greenwashing : a good example is the organic food. They said it's harder to grow, more risks, less effective blablabla, but it often grow in greenhouses, doesn't require costly chemicals, and the profits are huge (organic market has shown 15% growth per year in France). So it shows that it's just the industries being lazy or skeptic while it's pretty obvious that this is profitable. For the plastics it's the same. France has only voted a law against plastics last year...for 2040...so... Political will ? it's there but useless, lobbies are way too powerful (if you're not happy, say goodbye to our factories and hello to the chaos of unemployment). People Will ? they're ready to change if it's fair. Industry and Finance ? they don't want to change, want to keep getting immediate profit with huge margin, drugged on fossil energy.
You're an educator, a good writer, and video by video, a good producer/creator. I'm amazed at how your work has evolved in a year. Support this man's work. His voice could actually help some "fence-sitters" decide to make a difference. Individuals have more power than they may think.
Hemp and bamboo will be key in replacing oil-plastics and wood products, in the near future. Companies need to stop using plastics and convert to manufacturing with bamboo, hemp, soy, sorghum and other natural products that can break down and decompose quickly. Thanks for the vid, science, innovation and hard work will get us out of the mess we've created.
Yes and no. Some products you don't want to break down and compose too quickly. Things like cars, boats, reusable bottles, etc, etc. But yeah, particularly hemp and bamboo are awesome materials. Hemp, when graphitized, even makes an awesome battery and supercapacitor additive that performs better than low to mid grade expensive graphene. Carbonization can easily be be done in evacuated Solar heating tubes with Solar concentrators pointed at them. Graphitization can be easily done in well insulated microwave kilns, and since the carbon directly heats, it is a fairly energy efficient form of super heating (provided the kiln is very well insulated, and that's not hard to do).
First time viewer here. Really well researched video, extremely informative. Problems and drawbacks of different materials and technologies are discussed. It's serious but entertaining. Good job. Subscribed!
@@Ar-rb8kv Coca Cola is working on it. When they have a good container they will shift to it. Most of their products are in aluminum cans now, but some people still prefer the bottle because they can screw the lid back on.
@@lestermarshall6501 "Coca Cola is working on it." > Sorry but that is hilarious, they simply have been called out for doing nothing, implementation is a pipe dream and it is theirs. (sarc)
@@belaireguy4117 you can fix a problem until you have a container that works. I think they would prefer to use aluminum but you also have to satisfy the customer. That's all of the beverage industry too, not just the soft drink industry. They all use plastics.
Exactly, even those harsh facts can be realized through the information highway, the word "recycle" may need to be redefined. Some of us do the best we can but it now appears even those efforts are futile as the step after is beyond our control...sadly.
I never knew there were so many good alternatives to plastic. What are the shops and packaging companies waiting for? I can only assume oil based plastic must be cheaper to buy compared to the alternatives. Thailand has gone plastic bag free now, and on the whole, in my part of BKK anyway, people seem to be able to cope with it. I'm not sure it's going to save the planet, but any reduction on our dependence on oil and an improvement to the environment can only be a good thing.
Hi David. I think the slow response has been partly cost, as you say. But I think it's also yet another example of us humans not doing anything until we absolutely have to, combined with a heavy dollop of obstruction and obfuscation by our dear old friends in the petroleum business!
C=C and C-C bonds are present in lipids (fats and oils) typically C16 to C24 with 0 to 7 double bonds. They can be broken down biologically. The problem likely lies in the use of disulphide cross linkages used to strengthen plastics and the fact they tend to be trans rather than cis bonds. The presence of other chemicals such as plasticisers and colourants might also be a problem. Some moulds can break down plastics.
Great up-to-date world view of our plastic problem and some solutions! We should put a large deposit cost added to all the non biocompatible plastics worldwide, and use the money to fund ocean cleanup efforts. All these plastics should biodegrade easily, and put liquids in glass returnables or bulk distribution where you pay as you dispense into your own container. They had some things right in the good old days - George Klem's wine came in a refillable jug!
It's fairly easy to make bioplastics at home. For example, mix tapioca starch with some agar agar in water, a little acid (white vinegar or the like), a littler glycerin, and a little linseed oil, cook and mix it all together until the water evaporates off, and you can make a plastic. If you want to make a much stronger version, add some cellulose nanocrystals (can also be made at home, but beyond the scope of this post) and then also smear the gooey plastic batter onto some flax linen woven fabric. Using this method, you can make very strong plastic bags (by sewing them together), films, etc. The CNC acts also as a oxygen barrier, so such films are great at preserving non wet food items. Use less glycerin and linseed oil, use more raw CNC, and maybe throw in also some carbonized CNC (it won't be clear in that case), and you can make very strong and stiff plastics. Coat or bond with Titebond III wood glue (which is fairly eco and non toxic, though I'm not sure how biodegradable it is) and it becomes even more tough and water proof. Why do we also feel that we have to wait for others to make, market, and sell these things to us when so much of this stuff can be made at home and much of it fairly easily and/or cheaply? Just have a think indeed... ; ) We can also make super capacitors and batteries at home. We can make wind turbines at home. We can make super strong composites at home, etc, etc. A very good YT channel to start getting into all this, is Robert Murray Smith.
This show is one of the most meaningful ones on UA-cam, recommend to every one with a brain to watch. Thank you for this high quality program. The key to sustainability is three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, in this order. That is, the biggest impact is from Reduce, then Reuse, and lastly, Recycle. Hope this program can focus on the Reduce, educate the mass to reduce. History has taught us that any technological solutions can only cause net increase in carbon foot print. There is no evidence to show the opposite. If the thinking is to wish the next great inventions to solve man made problems, we already know the result to that wishful thinking.
We are not guilty the oil companies are guilty. Make laws to Ban the manufacture of plastic. Demand plastic producers clean up their mess! They need to pay for the costs of plastic pollution.
My insight this spring was when i found a bit of wheat growing beside the path and brought it home because of the beauty of the heads. When i snipped the heads off, i found that the diameter of the straw was as wide as a common paper straw, so i measured off a length and found it to be easy to use for stirring coffee. I left some in water overnight and it did not seem to disintegrate, so i wondered how my culture should have forgotten how to use real organic straws.
Our jurisdiction banned single use plastic bags over a decade ago. The environmental benefit was significant. No old plastic bags wrapped around tree branches, in metal fences, blown about the streets or on the roads and wrapped into car radiator grilles. It was a brilliant piece of legislation that everyone is glad of
According to this study on bags the actual benefit wasn't so hot, conclusions on pg 89 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf
Here's another promising solution: People are now developing plastics recycling methods that break the plastic down into monomers that can be used to make virgin-quality new plastic. This would create a huge market for used plastics that are currently worth next to nothing. It would result in an order of magnitude more plastics being recycled. If we solve the problem of people dumping wastes into the environment, we'd make a huge dent in the problem.
Our state has recently banned single-use plastic bags and I'm proud to say I helped get that legislation passed!! We grow tons of hemp that can be used for all kinds of easily recycled packaging. Everyone benefits- our farmers, our citizens, and our environment!
@Justhaveathink Fascinating video, but I am concerned that the extra plant crops that would have to be grown to provide all these crops to produce these new bio materials would put even more pressure on natural flora and fauna, similar to the problems associated with palm oil crops. Human activity is like an overfull sandwich, no matter where you bite it the filling finds a way of spilling.
I love your channel. People really need to be asking questions, and with channels like yours they can find a wealth of essential information. I will always refer people here for subjects you've covered. Thank you.
On another plastic bag note, if you shop with Occado they will buy back all plastic bags for recycling at 5p per bag and not just their own, Just hand them to the delivery driver when they call.
Simple: Charge enough for heavy duty plastic re-usable containers that nobody throws them away, they can always turn them in for a few dollars at any grocery.
@Muckan It's definitely solving several problems where I live! We just banned single-use plastic bags, and we have a very robust hemp industry. Hemp is truly a wonderful material that can be used to make strong and easily recycled paper and fabrics, has oils that can be used to replace fossil fuels, and is easily converted into plastic substitutes with less energy and environmental damage!
I came to say this. It's true, hemp is amazing but ACTUAL cannabis has many properties which hemp varieties lack. They are both EXTREMELY useful plants though, yet until our systems of law are based in reality rather than some fascist authoritarian fantasy, we will continue destroying the planet in willful ignorance.
My uncle Chuck developed some of our modern plastics when he worked at Union Oil, and later lamented having developed nearly indestructible synthetic fibers. He said nature has it right; the fibers grow in nature, get used a bit, then biodegrade as they should.
@@grindupBaker Well in those days, when he realized no one wanted a dress or a suit that lasts forever the year was 1974, and he just wasn't good at public speaking to put voice to the issue. Today it's unavoidable, and we can only hope what is out there will flock out in time with minimal harm to the bottom of the food chain, and we turn the corner quickly on which plastics are made en masse...
In the 1950-s all people had shopping bags that were theirs and used again and again for years, and were made out of cloth. We also used wax paper for wrapping sandwiches, etc and steel thermoses for drinks. We also need to stop manufacturers using as much plastic in packing retail goods. They cause much damage just with the excessive packaging. I would like to recommend that the water industry and beverage industry in general, be stopped completely from using plastics at all, and only be allowed to deliver the reusable syrup containers to local vending machines. There you would pay and fill your personal reusable bottle. This should be the future of drinks, as it would remove plastics altogether. This technology is already in use and could be changed instantly. There I have just solved millions of tons of plastic pollution without hurting any industry. Ups, well maybe the plastics industry.
A topic for another video could be: A MORAL DILEMMA BIODEGRADABLE or RECYCLABLE ! ....because BIOPLASTIC will probably go to mitigate huge amounts of plantations, while recycling in theory will use over and over the plastic we consume; BUT as you mentioned on this video we are currently recycling just 10%...so which would be the best actual path for the environment .... THANKS !
You should make an episode on your favorite books. I read Empty Planet after seeing it on your shelf right on the left over there and loved it! You must have some other goodies on there, I can't make out the titles.
At 7:03, you say "The vast majority of bottles that get chucked into the bin every day end up in landfills or in the ocean." Are you saying that there are governments that have the wherewithal and responsibility to collect trash from bins, but proceed to dump it into the ocean? This is an important point, because for most high-volume plastics, landfilling is not a significant environmental problem. The plastic is kept out of the environment where it will cause many problems, but it does little or no harm by being buried. Feedstocks for plastic manufacture come from oil or gas, but could also come from biomass or carbon capture albeit at higher cost. If non-fossil feedstocks were used, landfilling would be a form of carbon sequestration. While ocean dumping is a horrible thing to do, landfilling is not that bad, and should not be considered in any way equivalent.
I don't think any western nation consciously sends plastics to the ocean, but many western countries do send their waste away by sea, usually to South East Asian countries. They are swamped with the stuff. China has now stopped importing it. Malaysia appears to be bearing the brunt and they cannot process it fast enough. If we ever did reach a point where feedstock was genuinely coming from carbon capture then that might change the game, but I suspect bioplastic alternatives will be embraced more quickly.
I always love your videos but I think you missed some nuances of this issue. I work in sustainability so this is in my wheelhouse. PLA is not a viable solution for disposable plastic. As you point out, industrial composters are required to process this waste, but few municipalities have access to one. The energy-intense process more than cancels out the CO2 benefits of using plant sugars to create the polymer. And since most people confuse 'compostable' with 'recyclable,' much of that plant plastic goes in the recycle bin where it contaminates the entire batch. Similarly, very little plastic is being recycled anymore because there's a shrinking secondary market for it. In the U.S., almost no one is recycling filmy plastics, so even cellulose-based alternatives will not be processed. If it can't decompose naturally, it won't alleviate the problem. Any product that can't biodegrade on its own is not helpful at this point. As many others have pointed out, the only real solution is to stop consuming so much single-use material. it's so-called convenience is a mirage.
@@JustHaveaThink Can you please do a video on Green Chemistry and micro-algae? Micro-algae is a great substitute to plastic and over 900 other fossil fuel based products. It is highly land efficient and absorbs more CO2 for photosynthesis than plants and trees. World governments and universities know about Green Chemistry and micro-algae but I'd really like these technologies become mainstream to the general public. Green Chemistry and micro-algae kind of remind me where solar, wind, and electric cars were 10 years ago, it just needs a little bit of a push to be successful. Stay safe and good luck!
This was excellent and informative. This is an opportunity for me to also dispel the notion that "Planting a Tree" actually does any good. I have been refereed as a "Parrot" by some commenters in this regard, so this new comment is especially notable for them. It is indeed true that the vast percentage of Carbon that makes up a tree (and any other photosynthetics) comes from the CO2 in our atmosphere. Unfortunately, trees don't live for ever. When they die, they decompose and release all of their carbon back into the air in the form of CO2. Planting a tree does NOTHING to mitigate CO2 in our atmosphere, unless we remove the tree out of our Biosphere just before it dies. 300,000,000 years ago, nature did this by fossilizing trees (and other vegetation) into coal and plankton, algae and other water-born photosynthetice into oil. This process is what made our atmosphere. We idiots then dug up the carbon that was formed by the manufacture of free O2 from CO2 and dragged it all back into our biosphere and remove our oxygen. What an absolutely stupid thing to do as it puts us back on the path to become Venus. Anyway, just know that Planting a tree does nothing helpful except adding some Beauty to our otherwise pitiful landscape of plastic waste...thanks for your concern and helpful message in this video.
It depends: If you plant a tree, then cut it and let it decompose - its only carbon-neutral. But if you plant a tree, let it decompose and make sure a tree is grown again, then there is a fixed CO2 portion taken out of the atmosphere. If you plant a tree, cut it and NOT let it decompose - then you iteratively can take CO2 out of the atmosphere - carbon capture and storage en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage via biological means so to speak.
Plastic-free campaigns really need to embrace these new alternatives, rather than try to eliminate disposable packaging. We should ask companies to offer these solutions rather than just ask them to eliminate the packaging without a viable replacement. Film packaging is great for preserving food. eliminating it will just increase food waste
Lovely solutions Dave. This format of Background -> Problem -> Solutions leaves the audience in a great mood about the future of this planetary boundary crisis. It was shocking seeing that woman take a bite of a plastic straw! Biodegradability is the key. Building in natural decomposition on sub-human time scales will afford developing nations time to acquire resources and establish services and institutions that will help close the economic loop. Using the biosphere as a natural extension of circularity is the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to actualize this.
Really good reporting. Thanks. There are many downsides to using synthetic FF plastics, but there is an upside to burying this waste in landfills. Since the plastic mainly comes from natural gas, and since the plastic will last in a landfill for hundreds of years, then using these plastics can be a way to divert and sequester some f0ssile fuels that would have been burned instead. This is of course provided that the plastic actually does get buried and not dumped at sea or burned. Maybe banning ocean dumping and the burning of trash should be a legislative priority in all governments of the world. This won't happen if people don't demand it.
Plastic bag was an eco invention. It supposed to limit deforestation by limiting those paper bags and wicker baskets. It was strong, reusable and recyclable. People are the problem. They even made the killing machine from a car (road casualties)!
Instead of plastic, use either paper or aluminum alternatives. Paper bags, Paper cups, Paper straws, Juices in paper cartons or aluminum bottles, and water in aluminum bottles or cans.
The plastic straw shouldn't be the focus, a replacement isn't needed but a strong lean toward reusability with paper types behind that and any degradable plastic-like product after. We have to remember that no matter what they're made of we're churning out mass quantities of things that is nonsensical to tool our industry for. Restaurants could offer reusable straws, as silverware is commonly enough washed after exposure to customers. Anything beyond that could be paper and plastic-likes where necessary. I can't abide why a sit and eat restaurant would propose a customer use a single use item beyond a napkin.
Plastic bags, my town council fine me if I dont use them and then immediately throw them away afterwards. I own dogs, three dogs to be exact and I walk them around my local park every day. This involves 3 bags per visit and two walks a day. Thats 2,190 a year. I am all in favour of cleaning up after my dogs but as my park is surrounded by bushes too dense for anyone to go into why cant I use the "Stick & flick" supported by the forestry commission. That way the poop would be gone quite quickly rather than hang around wrapped up in poop preserving plastic and there wouldn't be over 2000 bags going into landfill every year. It really is annoying to be forced to use single use plastic bags every time. I strongly agree owners should be fined for not clearing it up but the option should exist to dispose of it either way. I am aware there are so called bio degradable bags but I understand these are very slow to decompose if at all and if buried under other waste without oxygen hardly degrade at all.
Moving to biodegradable alternatives needs to happen asap but that will still leave all the existing plastic. In the meantime if recycling can't be made easy enough for food packaging that makes up the bulk of waste we should just admit that it will be incinerated and tell consumers what NOT to put in the waste bag including any metal and glass while continuing to recycle these along with clean paper (not greasy contaminated pizza boxes). Food waste, paper and plastic can be incinerated close to or within cities and energy recovered where it is needed and the CO2 captured. At the moment 'general waste' isn't even incinerated and goes to landfill because it might contain batteries or other toxic materials.
Great video but you completely missed a another very significant/important plant based alternative for plastic. --And it's already been well tested and developed. HEMP!!
How much seaweed will one need to replace a billion straws? Who will be growing the seaweed? Will the seaweed growing be sustainable and non-polluting? There's no point in just replacing one extractive technology with another.
True Niel. And I imagine those are questions that developers are asking themselves. We certainly don't want more biodiversity destroyed in the way that palm oil and animal feed stock soy plantations are doing.
We don't need to kick our plastic addiction, we need to change how it's made. If it was made of carbon already in the carbon cycle, it would be an excellent way to sequester carbon.
It's great that people are inventing these things, but so many of these options weren't great for the environment as many think they are. All the plastics made from edible materials attract fish & other animals into large nets and areas entangled in a lot of plastic. Plus they're terribly resource inefficient. Reducing and refusing plastic, refilling containers with food instead of constantly needing single-use packaging, that's the cheapest and darn side easiest option
I don't _want_ to live plastic-free. I _like_ plastic! I don't like plastic _pollution,_ obviously, but the only issues with plastic itself are carbon from the ground that can reach our atmosphere, potential contaminants in the plastic, and irresponsible disposal methods. All of which can be solved without giving up plastic! I do agree though that bioplastics and edible plastic alternatives are a good idea.
Plastic packaging and bags have no value to society. They are bad for the environment and the consumer. Also, I think switching to paper and cloth bags may make more jobs for the economy. Plastic bags and packaging should criminalised. Even Lego has stopped using plastic bags, so now only their pieces are synthetic plastic. Even plastic clothes are bad. They're also uncomfortable compared to cottom.
Great show, and congrats for always trying to keep things positive. I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but let me give you a taste of what the enemy is doing. Swiss industry is heavily invested in fossil fuels and so plastics are a major part of that. You think plastic is bad now? They want to produce 10 times more in the years to come, since they are worried that EV will take off. But they have little to worry about since they orchestrated a coup in Bolivia, and it wasn't to steal the Lithium. They don't want it developed, since they can keep selling you your ICEV. I am promoting Windyday Concept, where worker coop factories will be developed in all cities on all continents for batteries, solar panels, wind & tide turbines, tiny homes and local farms. The farms would be for food, but also for hemp, linseed and bamboo. My parents lived in a world without plastic, but hemp was the number one crop in the world. Let's go back to that time, shall we?
All the plastic alternative's you mentioned are considered BIOPLASTIC ?... ie: Ligning, natureflex, pla, ecoflow, notpla, lolystraw, bamboo, and bio-cassava ? ...AND THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE 😉☮️🌍
I honestly don‘t get why plastic is such a problem in well developed countries, where people throw the plastic in the trash and the trash is incinerated instead of going into a landfill. How much CO2 equivalent does it actually produce when incinerating these? Seriously, when mesured in % of global CO2 emissions... otherwise I totally get it :)
I was thinking that if people don't want to recycle plastic because it is too expensive then it should get ground up and put into concrete products or pavement.
Bring back the milk man.....delivers pop, milk, water ect......But he collects the empties to be washed and re used......It was perfect. Just go back to food rapped in paper upon purchase......But wait, then they cant get us to buy too much by packaging stuff together.......Oh well lets re think the whole thing just to increase unnecessary purchases and waste
Nothings going to change anytime soon as regards the use of plastics but supermarkets and shops could help by reverting back to paper bags and coffee cups could be made from waxed cardboard or separate plastic liner.
Supermarkets should just have canvas shopping bags handy, and just charge a deposit if one forgot to bring one's own bag(s). Bags of woven flax or hemp or jute should last a decade or more...
@@dougmc666 I couldn't careless about carbon dioxide emissions it's just plant food but it's better to recycle rather than landfill, burning if need be.
The biotechnology should make a bacterial species capable of efficiently "eating" plastics. So far all bacteria which do so, do it very inefficiently and slowly. Only genetic engineering will help (if the public wasn't hating on it)
A woman took the rests after filet is taking fish, 🐟 for eksampel the skin of the fish, and the bones of the fish. And crunch it to powder, and made a bio-plastic out of it.
So now that we have to BUY plastic bags at the stores, they are much thicker and will be much harder and take much longer to beak down in the environment. HOW SMART IS THIS?
The only viable alternative we choose for plastics must degrade quickly both in conventional landfills and in the ocean, should it unfortunately up there.
Tesco vs. Asda, in a ridiculous battle on saving a penny. Aldi vs. Lidl, same thing. Walmart vs Costco, same thing. This madness is going on all over the world. They all claim customers WANT cheap things. At the same time, the manufacturers are spending billions on seriously intelligent marketing strategies. Every colour, font, size etc. carefully chosen to catch attention. Commercials in shops played at double volume. Flyers dropped into every letterbox in the country. With "cheap" whilst max profit on the mind, major companies will not cut back or switch to bio degradable wrappings, if only a single colour won't look as fancy on the new wrapping. If shops are given the choice between a) a cheap pack of plastic butter, easy to stack and store, long lasting and high margin because of stupid low production cost b) an expensive block of butter, packed in a bio degradable wrapper lasting for shorter periods, and low margin because of (for now) higher production cost then the shops will chose the cheaper alternative. The customers are called to action, in order to fight this psychological warfare. Customers are asked to "buy less plastic goods". I would turn it around. Buy plastic wrapped vegetables. But strip the plastic off the vegetables and throw the plastic wrapping back into the supermarket shelves.
Hmm? What a tough question.......How about glass bottles? Oh, Oh, I know....paper bags!!! I'm a genius!!! I mean NO ONE ever thought of that!!!! Hail Me! Hail Me!
What about the problem that bioplastics mixed with normal plastics can ruin a whole recycling batch and it has to be thrown out to landfill. How can we make sure that bioplastics end up in the right process streams? That's why I'm not certain that bioplastics are the way to go.
With today's technology, light sources and sensors can read each plastics "fingerprint" absorption spectrum, plus UV and IR. Sorting machines can handle the rest.
@@JustHaveaThink I wonder about that industry.. one really can't negotiate with planet Earth, and last time I checked the owners of big plastic are still here, same biology as the rest of us. Are they lost in a fog?
@@JustHaveaThink In Australia (and in general I think) they can't even seperate different types of plastics. The go into big bales of "mixed plastics" which are shipped to asian countries where they end up in nature. Aweful. And customers think they do the right think when recycling. Therefore it's ok to buy plastic. THAT is the excuse of the incumbent industries. It's not as simple as to change logistics.
"500,000,000 plastic straws are thrown away every day in the US" @ 8:34 seems a bit high given the total population of the US is about 330,000,000. This is about 1.5 straws per day for every person in the US. The 500,000,000 straws per day number was developed by a 9-year-old. reason.com/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau/ I am sure there are millions of plastic straws used in the US every day and I don't want to marginalize their impact on the environment BUT when claims are made that are "somewhat inflated" it is easy for deniers to use those numbers to refute the entire topic of plastic pollution. I might be wrong calling the 500,000,000 per day figure as "somewhat inflated" but from my rather limited perspective, it seems high.
@Justhaveathink Maybe a more practical solution would be to find out how the plastic waste GETS IN THE OCEANS?and stop it. Find out why PLASTIC ISNT RECYCLED and fix it, rather than continue sending it to Asia? AND rather than taking the knee-jerk reaction of producing a whole new packaging system that will have its own unforeseen negative impact on the ecosystem. Just have a think please.
thank you for very interesting and educative videos, really appreciate this channel! i pay attention especially to one use plastic, but im still trying to figure out how to replace plastic bags for cats poop... i know it sounds strange but.. its each day one :/ and to use recyclable bags are too expensive for me ;/ anyone has idea how to deal with cat litter in some ecological way?? (my cats go partly outside if im around the house, but they still use often their bathroom inside) ps. there is no way it could be flash down the toilet...
I scoop it into small biodegradable paper bags, lift a little sod or woodland leaf dander and tuck it in. Works for our local bobcats, why not for the domesticated cat?
I use nappy bags for my dog. Naty are a corn starch option. It's £1.99 at Boots for 50 but they're better than plastic. You can also get them from Amazon. I've only just found out about them so once I've gotten rid of the ones we've already got, I'll be getting those in future.
@@chuckkottke Thanks, actually yeah, i could find a spot in the garden, in between trees when no one wonders...maybe i wont do it in very hot days, so people do not complain of smell, good idea, thanks for sharing x
@@mandzipop1752 good solution, thanks for the tip, im in Germany, so im googling now some alternatives, actually if you order big amount, it gets cheaper,will try to combine this and the suggestion in comment above, thanks for writing!
@@akkamiau Hey, it's no big deal really! The smell happens when it sits exposed; once it's tucked under the turf, no worries. Breaks down naturally, fertilizes the mycorrhiza and root hairs. What would mother nature do...
You wouldn't want a peptide heart valve... why not burn it efficiently to convert the material back to energy? It's the pollution from it caused by man, not the material itself that's the problem. It makes sense to create new sustainable materials though, that's a good thing IF there are no unintended consequences....
Maybe not, and maybe there is a BETTER product than plastic for your heart valve. What i tire of is people finding little nitpicky things to whine about...no one said plastic will never be used, the landfills arent filling up with heart valves christ DOES ANYONE THINK LOGICALLY. Sorry but we dont need any negativity around climate mitigation, our idiot president has that covered.
Don Fields sorry you’ve been sold the man made climate change scam and are mixing up climate with good planet husbandry. What you are sick of, I am sick of slick solutions and hat do not address the fundamental problem and the globalists pushing through the UN for Totalitarian controls and new revenue streams from ‘green’ technologies. It’s the old Problem, cause, Solution play. If you are interested in learning why the narrative is false, search windowsontheworld.net them listen to the episode ‘The Man Who Saw the Future’. I doubt you will though- you sound like you are very comfortable in your echo chamber. Hope you do though.
My question is how much of our arable land needs to be utilized to replace plastic when scientists tell us we have a limited number of harvests left in our depleted soils?
@HardWarUK I live in Australia watching my continent burning around me, with only a 1.1% measured rise in average global temperatures, and finding it hard to remain positive. So many blissfully ignorant people out there, conditioned to consume. Bread & circuses to keep the plebians pacified.
A limited amount of harvests in the world's depleted soils? You are right!! However, only if global extreme weather does not accelerate too quick, as many believe it will. Then our harvests may end within a blink of an eye.
My guess is that we're gonna use all the alternatives, not just 1 of them, so we can have wood pulp plastic alongside the seaweed stuff, as then we diversify our production while not overusing certain resources.
A great summary! Its the first time Ive seen the chemical difference between natural biodegrable polymers and synthetic ones (long chain carbon) featured in a documentary.
I think at this time in many countries, proper disposal and collection of our common plastic items is most immediately important. We have to change almost everything to these compostable alternatives - for everyone, and filter the escaped plastics out of the seas and habitats over the coming decades. That takes big political projects... buying as many of these genuinely compostable plastics as possible is also a good way to sponsor progress and make them more common and cheaper for all...
You are a hero to me, JHAT! My personal res for 2020 is to get as plastic free as possible. You have helped immensely. THANK YOU!
This would’ve been a great video to watch 30 years ago.
Better now than never, it's still not too late.
Eric just being realistic here but it is very likely too late. I cannot say it is for sure but it looks like we missed our mark by about 30 years. We are in bad, bad shape and only a miracle of science can save us.
@@kurohikes5857 ….. I hope you are wrong, but I believe we must keep trying.
What is helping (strangely) is the massive fires in Australia. 40,000 square kilometres in one state alone, gone, about 140 houses destroyed, don't know how many killed. There are some deniers waking up, they are a disappearing breed.
Greta Thunberg is a help in the sense she is the generation that will have to put in the hard yards. But it will get worse before it gets better.
@@kurohikes5857 Catastrophism is kind of like encouraging people to burn more carbon. It harms the cause because it makes people give up. We have ALL the technology we need to solve our climate and environmental problems today. All we need is the political will to do it. Making people give up is the exact opposite of what we need.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Help me understand how political will could change anything. The politics are protecting the economy first, the people second, and the ecology at the end of the list. Economy is lead by huge, private companies, finance groups, banks...politics are left with laws and taxes to convince the companies to evolve. Oil is so cheap (the price artificially brought down), the industry only respond by "plastic is cheaper, if we go green it will cost you", and the client will have to pay the bill. But it's a scam, typical greenwashing : a good example is the organic food. They said it's harder to grow, more risks, less effective blablabla, but it often grow in greenhouses, doesn't require costly chemicals, and the profits are huge (organic market has shown 15% growth per year in France). So it shows that it's just the industries being lazy or skeptic while it's pretty obvious that this is profitable. For the plastics it's the same. France has only voted a law against plastics last year...for 2040...so...
Political will ? it's there but useless, lobbies are way too powerful (if you're not happy, say goodbye to our factories and hello to the chaos of unemployment).
People Will ? they're ready to change if it's fair.
Industry and Finance ? they don't want to change, want to keep getting immediate profit with huge margin, drugged on fossil energy.
You're an educator, a good writer, and video by video, a good producer/creator. I'm amazed at how your work has evolved in a year. Support this man's work. His voice could actually help some "fence-sitters" decide to make a difference. Individuals have more power than they may think.
Thank you Globe Hacker. I really appreciate your support. All the best. Dave
The more we learn about AGW and how it can be mitigated, the more frustrated we get with the deniers.
Thumbs up to the contents you deliver man... thanks for your time.
Hemp and bamboo will be key in replacing oil-plastics and wood products, in the near future. Companies need to stop using plastics and convert to manufacturing with bamboo, hemp, soy, sorghum and other natural products that can break down and decompose quickly. Thanks for the vid, science, innovation and hard work will get us out of the mess we've created.
I really hope you are right Russ, though I have my doubts. I think order through chaos seems more likely to occur than order through more order 😏
Yes and no. Some products you don't want to break down and compose too quickly. Things like cars, boats, reusable bottles, etc, etc.
But yeah, particularly hemp and bamboo are awesome materials.
Hemp, when graphitized, even makes an awesome battery and supercapacitor additive that performs better than low to mid grade expensive graphene. Carbonization can easily be be done in evacuated Solar heating tubes with Solar concentrators pointed at them. Graphitization can be easily done in well insulated microwave kilns, and since the carbon directly heats, it is a fairly energy efficient form of super heating (provided the kiln is very well insulated, and that's not hard to do).
First time viewer here.
Really well researched video, extremely informative. Problems and drawbacks of different materials and technologies are discussed. It's serious but entertaining.
Good job.
Subscribed!
Hi xnebiax. Welcome to the channel and thanks for your kind words. Much appreciated. All the best. Dave
All exciting new tech. Love the optimism of this channel.
Very good show. I also think we should go back to the days when we were almost plastic free.
Lol good luck persuading Coca-Cola's shareholders.
@@Ar-rb8kv Coca Cola is working on it. When they have a good container they will shift to it. Most of their products are in aluminum cans now, but some people still prefer the bottle because they can screw the lid back on.
@@lestermarshall6501
"Coca Cola is working on it."
> Sorry but that is hilarious, they simply have been called out for doing nothing, implementation is a pipe dream and it is theirs. (sarc)
@@belaireguy4117 you can fix a problem until you have a container that works. I think they would prefer to use aluminum but you also have to satisfy the customer.
That's all of the beverage industry too, not just the soft drink industry.
They all use plastics.
Your quite right . Buy local unpacked goods
I have tried to limit my plastic use, but some products only come in plastic. I take them to the council recycling bins, but after that...
Exactly, even those harsh facts can be realized through the information highway, the word "recycle" may need to be redefined. Some of us do the best we can but it now appears even those efforts are futile as the step after is beyond our control...sadly.
I never knew there were so many good alternatives to plastic. What are the shops and packaging companies waiting for? I can only assume oil based plastic must be cheaper to buy compared to the alternatives. Thailand has gone plastic bag free now, and on the whole, in my part of BKK anyway, people seem to be able to cope with it. I'm not sure it's going to save the planet, but any reduction on our dependence on oil and an improvement to the environment can only be a good thing.
Hi David. I think the slow response has been partly cost, as you say. But I think it's also yet another example of us humans not doing anything until we absolutely have to, combined with a heavy dollop of obstruction and obfuscation by our dear old friends in the petroleum business!
C=C and C-C bonds are present in lipids (fats and oils) typically C16 to C24 with 0 to 7 double bonds. They can be broken down biologically. The problem likely lies in the use of disulphide cross linkages used to strengthen plastics and the fact they tend to be trans rather than cis bonds. The presence of other chemicals such as plasticisers and colourants might also be a problem. Some moulds can break down plastics.
Great up-to-date world view of our plastic problem and some solutions! We should put a large deposit cost added to all the non biocompatible plastics worldwide, and use the money to fund ocean cleanup efforts. All these plastics should biodegrade easily, and put liquids in glass returnables or bulk distribution where you pay as you dispense into your own container. They had some things right in the good old days - George Klem's wine came in a refillable jug!
It's fairly easy to make bioplastics at home. For example, mix tapioca starch with some agar agar in water, a little acid (white vinegar or the like), a littler glycerin, and a little linseed oil, cook and mix it all together until the water evaporates off, and you can make a plastic.
If you want to make a much stronger version, add some cellulose nanocrystals (can also be made at home, but beyond the scope of this post) and then also smear the gooey plastic batter onto some flax linen woven fabric. Using this method, you can make very strong plastic bags (by sewing them together), films, etc. The CNC acts also as a oxygen barrier, so such films are great at preserving non wet food items.
Use less glycerin and linseed oil, use more raw CNC, and maybe throw in also some carbonized CNC (it won't be clear in that case), and you can make very strong and stiff plastics. Coat or bond with Titebond III wood glue (which is fairly eco and non toxic, though I'm not sure how biodegradable it is) and it becomes even more tough and water proof.
Why do we also feel that we have to wait for others to make, market, and sell these things to us when so much of this stuff can be made at home and much of it fairly easily and/or cheaply? Just have a think indeed... ; )
We can also make super capacitors and batteries at home. We can make wind turbines at home. We can make super strong composites at home, etc, etc.
A very good YT channel to start getting into all this, is Robert Murray Smith.
This show is one of the most meaningful ones on UA-cam, recommend to every one with a brain to watch. Thank you for this high quality program.
The key to sustainability is three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, in this order. That is, the biggest impact is from Reduce, then Reuse, and lastly, Recycle. Hope this program can focus on the Reduce, educate the mass to reduce.
History has taught us that any technological solutions can only cause net increase in carbon foot print. There is no evidence to show the opposite. If the thinking is to wish the next great inventions to solve man made problems, we already know the result to that wishful thinking.
ThankU for sharing and posting.
We are not guilty the oil companies are guilty. Make laws to Ban the manufacture of plastic. Demand plastic producers clean up their mess! They need to pay for the costs of plastic
pollution.
My insight this spring was when i found a bit of wheat growing beside the path and brought it home because of the beauty of the heads. When i snipped the heads off, i found that the diameter of the straw was as wide as a common paper straw, so i measured off a length and found it to be easy to use for stirring coffee. I left some in water overnight and it did not seem to disintegrate, so i wondered how my culture should have forgotten how to use real organic straws.
Our jurisdiction banned single use plastic bags over a decade ago. The environmental benefit was significant. No old plastic bags wrapped around tree branches, in metal fences, blown about the streets or on the roads and wrapped into car radiator grilles. It was a brilliant piece of legislation that everyone is glad of
According to this study on bags the actual benefit wasn't so hot, conclusions on pg 89 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291023/scho0711buan-e-e.pdf
Here's another promising solution: People are now developing plastics recycling methods that break the plastic down into monomers that can be used to make virgin-quality new plastic. This would create a huge market for used plastics that are currently worth next to nothing. It would result in an order of magnitude more plastics being recycled. If we solve the problem of people dumping wastes into the environment, we'd make a huge dent in the problem.
Our state has recently banned single-use plastic bags and I'm proud to say I helped get that legislation passed!! We grow tons of hemp that can be used for all kinds of easily recycled packaging. Everyone benefits- our farmers, our citizens, and our environment!
@Justhaveathink Fascinating video, but I am concerned that the extra plant crops that would have to be grown to provide all these crops to produce these new bio materials would put even more pressure on natural flora and fauna, similar to the problems associated with palm oil crops. Human activity is like an overfull sandwich, no matter where you bite it the filling finds a way of spilling.
I love your channel. People really need to be asking questions, and with channels like yours they can find a wealth of essential information. I will always refer people here for subjects you've covered. Thank you.
On another plastic bag note, if you shop with Occado they will buy back all plastic bags for recycling at 5p per bag and not just their own, Just hand them to the delivery driver when they call.
Top tip
Great, informative video. Thanks.
Simple: Charge enough for heavy duty plastic re-usable containers that nobody throws them away, they can always turn them in for a few dollars at any grocery.
Use Hemp Problem solved !
@Muckan It's definitely solving several problems where I live! We just banned single-use plastic bags, and we have a very robust hemp industry. Hemp is truly a wonderful material that can be used to make strong and easily recycled paper and fabrics, has oils that can be used to replace fossil fuels, and is easily converted into plastic substitutes with less energy and environmental damage!
I came to say this. It's true, hemp is amazing but ACTUAL cannabis has many properties which hemp varieties lack. They are both EXTREMELY useful plants though, yet until our systems of law are based in reality rather than some fascist authoritarian fantasy, we will continue destroying the planet in willful ignorance.
This was wonderful to watch. Thank you!
Always interesting, love your work
My uncle Chuck developed some of our modern plastics when he worked at Union Oil, and later lamented having developed nearly indestructible synthetic fibers. He said nature has it right; the fibers grow in nature, get used a bit, then biodegrade as they should.
The Sound of Silence
@@grindupBaker Well in those days, when he realized no one wanted a dress or a suit that lasts forever the year was 1974, and he just wasn't good at public speaking to put voice to the issue. Today it's unavoidable, and we can only hope what is out there will flock out in time with minimal harm to the bottom of the food chain, and we turn the corner quickly on which plastics are made en masse...
In the 1950-s all people had shopping bags that were theirs and used again and again for years, and were made out of cloth. We also used wax paper for wrapping sandwiches, etc and steel thermoses for drinks.
We also need to stop manufacturers using as much plastic in packing retail goods. They cause much damage just with the excessive packaging.
I would like to recommend that the water industry and beverage industry in general, be stopped completely from using plastics at all, and only be allowed to deliver the reusable syrup containers to local vending machines. There you would pay and fill your personal reusable bottle. This should be the future of drinks, as it would remove plastics altogether. This technology is already in use and could be changed instantly.
There I have just solved millions of tons of plastic pollution without hurting any industry. Ups, well maybe the plastics industry.
A topic for another video could be: A MORAL DILEMMA BIODEGRADABLE or RECYCLABLE ! ....because BIOPLASTIC will probably go to mitigate huge amounts of plantations, while recycling in theory will use over and over the plastic we consume; BUT as you mentioned on this video we are currently recycling just 10%...so which would be the best actual path for the environment .... THANKS !
Good way to start the year - a good news story!
You should make an episode on your favorite books. I read Empty Planet after seeing it on your shelf right on the left over there and loved it! You must have some other goodies on there, I can't make out the titles.
At 7:03, you say "The vast majority of bottles that get chucked into the bin every day end up in landfills or in the ocean." Are you saying that there are governments that have the wherewithal and responsibility to collect trash from bins, but proceed to dump it into the ocean? This is an important point, because for most high-volume plastics, landfilling is not a significant environmental problem. The plastic is kept out of the environment where it will cause many problems, but it does little or no harm by being buried. Feedstocks for plastic manufacture come from oil or gas, but could also come from biomass or carbon capture albeit at higher cost. If non-fossil feedstocks were used, landfilling would be a form of carbon sequestration. While ocean dumping is a horrible thing to do, landfilling is not that bad, and should not be considered in any way equivalent.
I don't think any western nation consciously sends plastics to the ocean, but many western countries do send their waste away by sea, usually to South East Asian countries. They are swamped with the stuff. China has now stopped importing it. Malaysia appears to be bearing the brunt and they cannot process it fast enough. If we ever did reach a point where feedstock was genuinely coming from carbon capture then that might change the game, but I suspect bioplastic alternatives will be embraced more quickly.
I always love your videos but I think you missed some nuances of this issue. I work in sustainability so this is in my wheelhouse. PLA is not a viable solution for disposable plastic. As you point out, industrial composters are required to process this waste, but few municipalities have access to one. The energy-intense process more than cancels out the CO2 benefits of using plant sugars to create the polymer. And since most people confuse 'compostable' with 'recyclable,' much of that plant plastic goes in the recycle bin where it contaminates the entire batch. Similarly, very little plastic is being recycled anymore because there's a shrinking secondary market for it. In the U.S., almost no one is recycling filmy plastics, so even cellulose-based alternatives will not be processed. If it can't decompose naturally, it won't alleviate the problem. Any product that can't biodegrade on its own is not helpful at this point. As many others have pointed out, the only real solution is to stop consuming so much single-use material. it's so-called convenience is a mirage.
1:11 I love this description haha 😄
i,m very surprised that hemp did,nt get a mention !
Bill & Ben The Flowerpot Men were so far ahead of their time. "Weeeeeeeeed ! Weeeeeeeeed !".
All of these initiatives sound great. In another vidoe can you adress the impact on land use of switching to plant bssed alternatives.
The Poore people of East London will have great summer holidays in Kent picking baskets full of grocery bags & phone cases is what will happen.
cut down more forests ! Just like they did for palm oil and soyabean
Hi Andy. We will certainly look at that.
@@JustHaveaThink Can you please do a video on Green Chemistry and micro-algae? Micro-algae is a great substitute to plastic and over 900 other fossil fuel based products. It is highly land efficient and absorbs more CO2 for photosynthesis than plants and trees. World governments and universities know about Green Chemistry and micro-algae but I'd really like these technologies become mainstream to the general public. Green Chemistry and micro-algae kind of remind me where solar, wind, and electric cars were 10 years ago, it just needs a little bit of a push to be successful.
Stay safe and good luck!
This was excellent and informative. This is an opportunity for me to also dispel the notion that "Planting a Tree" actually does any good. I have been refereed as a "Parrot" by some commenters in this regard, so this new comment is especially notable for them. It is indeed true that the vast percentage of Carbon that makes up a tree (and any other photosynthetics) comes from the CO2 in our atmosphere. Unfortunately, trees don't live for ever. When they die, they decompose and release all of their carbon back into the air in the form of CO2. Planting a tree does NOTHING to mitigate CO2 in our atmosphere, unless we remove the tree out of our Biosphere just before it dies. 300,000,000 years ago, nature did this by fossilizing trees (and other vegetation) into coal and plankton, algae and other water-born photosynthetice into oil. This process is what made our atmosphere. We idiots then dug up the carbon that was formed by the manufacture of free O2 from CO2 and dragged it all back into our biosphere and remove our oxygen. What an absolutely stupid thing to do as it puts us back on the path to become Venus. Anyway, just know that Planting a tree does nothing helpful except adding some Beauty to our otherwise pitiful landscape of plastic waste...thanks for your concern and helpful message in this video.
It depends: If you plant a tree, then cut it and let it decompose - its only carbon-neutral. But if you plant a tree, let it decompose and make sure a tree is grown again, then there is a fixed CO2 portion taken out of the atmosphere. If you plant a tree, cut it and NOT let it decompose - then you iteratively can take CO2 out of the atmosphere - carbon capture and storage en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage via biological means so to speak.
Excellent video, also professionally presented.. nice one.
Plastic-free campaigns really need to embrace these new alternatives, rather than try to eliminate disposable packaging. We should ask companies to offer these solutions rather than just ask them to eliminate the packaging without a viable replacement. Film packaging is great for preserving food. eliminating it will just increase food waste
As long as we have a throw away society, nothing is sustainable.
Hemp. You missed hemp as a replacement for polymer fibers in textiles.
Thank you for this subject. So important to me and the planet!
Excellent. Thank you.
Lovely solutions Dave. This format of Background -> Problem -> Solutions leaves the audience in a great mood about the future of this planetary boundary crisis.
It was shocking seeing that woman take a bite of a plastic straw!
Biodegradability is the key. Building in natural decomposition on sub-human time scales will afford developing nations time to acquire resources and establish services and institutions that will help close the economic loop. Using the biosphere as a natural extension of circularity is the cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to actualize this.
Really good reporting. Thanks. There are many downsides to using synthetic FF plastics, but there is an upside to burying this waste in landfills.
Since the plastic mainly comes from natural gas, and since the plastic will last in a landfill for hundreds of years, then using these plastics can be a way to divert and sequester some f0ssile fuels that would have been burned instead. This is of course provided that the plastic actually does get buried and not dumped at sea or burned.
Maybe banning ocean dumping and the burning of trash should be a legislative priority in all governments of the world. This won't happen if people don't demand it.
Plastic bag was an eco invention. It supposed to limit deforestation by limiting those paper bags and wicker baskets. It was strong, reusable and recyclable.
People are the problem. They even made the killing machine from a car (road casualties)!
Instead of plastic, use either paper or aluminum alternatives. Paper bags, Paper cups, Paper straws, Juices in paper cartons or aluminum bottles, and water in aluminum bottles or cans.
The plastic straw shouldn't be the focus, a replacement isn't needed but a strong lean toward reusability with paper types behind that and any degradable plastic-like product after. We have to remember that no matter what they're made of we're churning out mass quantities of things that is nonsensical to tool our industry for. Restaurants could offer reusable straws, as silverware is commonly enough washed after exposure to customers. Anything beyond that could be paper and plastic-likes where necessary. I can't abide why a sit and eat restaurant would propose a customer use a single use item beyond a napkin.
Thanks. I think my compost heap near the trees is Industrial Grade. Not by design, just turned out.
Plastic bags, my town council fine me if I dont use them and then immediately throw them away afterwards. I own dogs, three dogs to be exact and I walk them around my local park every day. This involves 3 bags per visit and two walks a day. Thats 2,190 a year. I am all in favour of cleaning up after my dogs but as my park is surrounded by bushes too dense for anyone to go into why cant I use the "Stick & flick" supported by the forestry commission. That way the poop would be gone quite quickly rather than hang around wrapped up in poop preserving plastic and there wouldn't be over 2000 bags going into landfill every year. It really is annoying to be forced to use single use plastic bags every time. I strongly agree owners should be fined for not clearing it up but the option should exist to dispose of it either way. I am aware there are so called bio degradable bags but I understand these are very slow to decompose if at all and if buried under other waste without oxygen hardly degrade at all.
Brilliant video!👍
Hemp is another fabric fiber is its processing as bad as bamboo?
Like many here I do what I can to mitigate these problems, but local and national government could do much to help. Alas they are focused on profits.
Your show is awesome I always enjoy.
Moving to biodegradable alternatives needs to happen asap but that will still leave all the existing plastic. In the meantime if recycling can't be made easy enough for food packaging that makes up the bulk of waste we should just admit that it will be incinerated and tell consumers what NOT to put in the waste bag including any metal and glass while continuing to recycle these along with clean paper (not greasy contaminated pizza boxes). Food waste, paper and plastic can be incinerated close to or within cities and energy recovered where it is needed and the CO2 captured. At the moment 'general waste' isn't even incinerated and goes to landfill because it might contain batteries or other toxic materials.
Great video but you completely missed a another very significant/important plant based alternative for plastic. --And it's already been well tested and developed. HEMP!!
Your channel is just wonderful. Thank you for what you do!
How much seaweed will one need to replace a billion straws? Who will be growing the seaweed? Will the seaweed growing be sustainable and non-polluting? There's no point in just replacing one extractive technology with another.
True Niel. And I imagine those are questions that developers are asking themselves. We certainly don't want more biodiversity destroyed in the way that palm oil and animal feed stock soy plantations are doing.
We don't need to kick our plastic addiction, we need to change how it's made. If it was made of carbon already in the carbon cycle, it would be an excellent way to sequester carbon.
You said PLA will breakdown with microbes and heat. Will it break down if I toss it in my compost bin as the pile heats up to make compost?
It's great that people are inventing these things, but so many of these options weren't great for the environment as many think they are. All the plastics made from edible materials attract fish & other animals into large nets and areas entangled in a lot of plastic. Plus they're terribly resource inefficient. Reducing and refusing plastic, refilling containers with food instead of constantly needing single-use packaging, that's the cheapest and darn side easiest option
I don't _want_ to live plastic-free. I _like_ plastic! I don't like plastic _pollution,_ obviously, but the only issues with plastic itself are carbon from the ground that can reach our atmosphere, potential contaminants in the plastic, and irresponsible disposal methods. All of which can be solved without giving up plastic!
I do agree though that bioplastics and edible plastic alternatives are a good idea.
Plastic packaging and bags have no value to society. They are bad for the environment and the consumer. Also, I think switching to paper and cloth bags may make more jobs for the economy. Plastic bags and packaging should criminalised. Even Lego has stopped using plastic bags, so now only their pieces are synthetic plastic.
Even plastic clothes are bad. They're also uncomfortable compared to cottom.
Great show, and congrats for always trying to keep things positive. I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but let me give you a taste of what the enemy is doing.
Swiss industry is heavily invested in fossil fuels and so plastics are a major part of that. You think plastic is bad now? They want to produce 10 times more in the years to come, since they are worried that EV will take off. But they have little to worry about since they orchestrated a coup in Bolivia, and it wasn't to steal the Lithium. They don't want it developed, since they can keep selling you your ICEV.
I am promoting Windyday Concept, where worker coop factories will be developed in all cities on all continents for batteries, solar panels, wind & tide turbines, tiny homes and local farms.
The farms would be for food, but also for hemp, linseed and bamboo. My parents lived in a world without plastic, but hemp was the number one crop in the world. Let's go back to that time, shall we?
Thank you this was a very good show as are all of your shows, I would hope we can find alternatives and have the nerve to use them.
All the plastic alternative's you mentioned are considered BIOPLASTIC ?... ie: Ligning, natureflex, pla, ecoflow, notpla, lolystraw, bamboo, and bio-cassava ? ...AND THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE 😉☮️🌍
Liquid wood is actually really fucking rad. I'm thinking of it like a ww40k esque "Plaswood."
Seems like it might be easier to design an animal that would have plastic as it's #1 food source.
I read an article about just that a few months ago.
A researcher discovered it by accident and is trying to develop it into a viable solution.
There is a bacteria that does just that, i dont recall its name but scishow did a show on it i believe.
@Donald McCarthy you first, just hold your breath, thats pretty quiet, idiot.
@@donfields1234 I remember that video!
Bacteria
Thanks for another great video, Dave. I'm just commenting for the sake of the algorithm.
Thanks Andrew. I appreciate your support. All the best. Dave
I honestly don‘t get why plastic is such a problem in well developed countries, where people throw the plastic in the trash and the trash is incinerated instead of going into a landfill. How much CO2 equivalent does it actually produce when incinerating these? Seriously, when mesured in % of global CO2 emissions...
otherwise I totally get it :)
I was thinking that if people don't want to recycle plastic because it is too expensive then it should get ground up and put into concrete products or pavement.
Bring back the milk man.....delivers pop, milk, water ect......But he collects the empties to be washed and re used......It was perfect. Just go back to food rapped in paper upon purchase......But wait, then they cant get us to buy too much by packaging stuff together.......Oh well lets re think the whole thing just to increase unnecessary purchases and waste
this is nice!
i love your channel
Nothings going to change anytime soon as regards the use of plastics but supermarkets and shops could help by reverting back to paper bags and coffee cups could be made from waxed cardboard or separate plastic liner.
Paper bags have about three time the carbon footprint as the standard plastic grocery bag
Supermarkets should just have canvas shopping bags handy, and just charge a deposit if one forgot to bring one's own bag(s). Bags of woven flax or hemp or jute should last a decade or more...
@@dougmc666 It can be made from recycled paper and shredded for compost if you have a garden.
@@bertieschitz-peas429 - Without the energy from a pulp mill recycled paper has a higher carbon footprint than making new paper.
@@dougmc666 I couldn't careless about carbon dioxide emissions it's just plant food but it's better to recycle rather than landfill, burning if need be.
The biotechnology should make a bacterial species capable of efficiently "eating" plastics. So far all bacteria which do so, do it very inefficiently and slowly. Only genetic engineering will help (if the public wasn't hating on it)
A woman took the rests after filet is taking fish, 🐟 for eksampel the skin of the fish, and the bones of the fish. And crunch it to powder, and made a bio-plastic out of it.
Great video! Newly subscribed. Top banana.
So now that we have to BUY plastic bags at the stores, they are much thicker and will be much harder and take much longer to beak down in the environment. HOW SMART IS THIS?
Good video. Gave you a tweet and a solution below. 😀😊😎
Very nice, you have mastered time travel now, excellent 😂.
LOL! Thanks Don :-)
The only viable alternative we choose for plastics must degrade quickly both in conventional landfills and in the ocean, should it unfortunately up there.
how hard is it to mechanically break the carbon bond in plastic on both large and small scales?
You need a lot of energy, just as you do to make the bonds join up in the first place.
hemp plastic is biodegradable
Eco Flow is edible or at least it's variants used elsewhere. Tastes of corn.
Tesco vs. Asda, in a ridiculous battle on saving a penny.
Aldi vs. Lidl, same thing.
Walmart vs Costco, same thing.
This madness is going on all over the world.
They all claim customers WANT cheap things.
At the same time, the manufacturers are spending billions on seriously intelligent marketing strategies. Every colour, font, size etc. carefully chosen to catch attention. Commercials in shops played at double volume. Flyers dropped into every letterbox in the country.
With "cheap" whilst max profit on the mind, major companies will not cut back or switch to bio degradable wrappings, if only a single colour won't look as fancy on the new wrapping.
If shops are given the choice between
a) a cheap pack of plastic butter, easy to stack and store, long lasting and high margin because of stupid low production cost
b) an expensive block of butter, packed in a bio degradable wrapper lasting for shorter periods, and low margin because of (for now) higher production cost
then the shops will chose the cheaper alternative.
The customers are called to action, in order to fight this psychological warfare.
Customers are asked to "buy less plastic goods".
I would turn it around. Buy plastic wrapped vegetables. But strip the plastic off the vegetables and throw the plastic wrapping back into the supermarket shelves.
Hmm? What a tough question.......How about glass bottles? Oh, Oh, I know....paper bags!!! I'm a genius!!! I mean NO ONE ever thought of that!!!! Hail Me! Hail Me!
Hemp is the answer.
What about the problem that bioplastics mixed with normal plastics can ruin a whole recycling batch and it has to be thrown out to landfill.
How can we make sure that bioplastics end up in the right process streams? That's why I'm not certain that bioplastics are the way to go.
With today's technology, light sources and sensors can read each plastics "fingerprint" absorption spectrum, plus UV and IR. Sorting machines can handle the rest.
That's just logistics though Diego isn't it. Yet another excuse propagated by the incumbent industries.
@@JustHaveaThink I wonder about that industry.. one really can't negotiate with planet Earth, and last time I checked the owners of big plastic are still here, same biology as the rest of us. Are they lost in a fog?
@@JustHaveaThink In Australia (and in general I think) they can't even seperate different types of plastics. The go into big bales of "mixed plastics" which are shipped to asian countries where they end up in nature. Aweful. And customers think they do the right think when recycling. Therefore it's ok to buy plastic. THAT is the excuse of the incumbent industries. It's not as simple as to change logistics.
"500,000,000 plastic straws are thrown away every day in the US" @ 8:34 seems a bit high given the total population of the US is about 330,000,000. This is about 1.5 straws per day for every person in the US. The 500,000,000 straws per day number was developed by a 9-year-old.
reason.com/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau/
I am sure there are millions of plastic straws used in the US every day and I don't want to marginalize their impact on the environment BUT when claims are made that are "somewhat inflated" it is easy for deniers to use those numbers to refute the entire topic of plastic pollution.
I might be wrong calling the 500,000,000 per day figure as "somewhat inflated" but from my rather limited perspective, it seems high.
There should be a way to make it biodegradable.
@Justhaveathink Maybe a more practical solution would be to find out how the plastic waste GETS IN THE OCEANS?and stop it. Find out why PLASTIC ISNT RECYCLED and fix it, rather than continue sending it to Asia? AND rather than taking the knee-jerk reaction of producing a whole new packaging system that will have its own unforeseen negative impact on the ecosystem. Just have a think please.
Loliware? What an unfortunate name.
Why?
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thank you for very interesting and educative videos, really appreciate this channel!
i pay attention especially to one use plastic, but im still trying to figure out how to replace plastic bags for cats poop... i know it sounds strange but.. its each day one :/ and to use recyclable bags are too expensive for me ;/ anyone has idea how to deal with cat litter in some ecological way?? (my cats go partly outside if im around the house, but they still use often their bathroom inside) ps. there is no way it could be flash down the toilet...
I scoop it into small biodegradable paper bags, lift a little sod or woodland leaf dander and tuck it in. Works for our local bobcats, why not for the domesticated cat?
I use nappy bags for my dog. Naty are a corn starch option. It's £1.99 at Boots for 50 but they're better than plastic. You can also get them from Amazon. I've only just found out about them so once I've gotten rid of the ones we've already got, I'll be getting those in future.
@@chuckkottke Thanks, actually yeah, i could find a spot in the garden, in between trees when no one wonders...maybe i wont do it in very hot days, so people do not complain of smell, good idea, thanks for sharing x
@@mandzipop1752 good solution, thanks for the tip, im in Germany, so im googling now some alternatives, actually if you order big amount, it gets cheaper,will try to combine this and the suggestion in comment above, thanks for writing!
@@akkamiau Hey, it's no big deal really! The smell happens when it sits exposed; once it's tucked under the turf, no worries. Breaks down naturally, fertilizes the mycorrhiza and root hairs. What would mother nature do...
You wouldn't want a peptide heart valve... why not burn it efficiently to convert the material back to energy? It's the pollution from it caused by man, not the material itself that's the problem. It makes sense to create new sustainable materials though, that's a good thing IF there are no unintended consequences....
Maybe not, and maybe there is a BETTER product than plastic for your heart valve. What i tire of is people finding little nitpicky things to whine about...no one said plastic will never be used, the landfills arent filling up with heart valves christ DOES ANYONE THINK LOGICALLY. Sorry but we dont need any negativity around climate mitigation, our idiot president has that covered.
Don Fields sorry you’ve been sold the man made climate change scam and are mixing up climate with good planet husbandry. What you are sick of, I am sick of slick solutions and hat do not address the fundamental problem and the globalists pushing through the UN for Totalitarian controls and new revenue streams from ‘green’ technologies.
It’s the old Problem, cause, Solution play.
If you are interested in learning why the narrative is false, search windowsontheworld.net them listen to the episode ‘The Man Who Saw the Future’.
I doubt you will though- you sound like you are very comfortable in your echo chamber. Hope you do though.
My question is how much of our arable land needs to be utilized to replace plastic when scientists tell us we have a limited number of harvests left in our depleted soils?
@HardWarUK I live in Australia watching my continent burning around me, with only a 1.1% measured rise in average global temperatures, and finding it hard to remain positive. So many blissfully ignorant people out there, conditioned to consume. Bread & circuses to keep the plebians pacified.
A limited amount of harvests in the world's depleted soils? You are right!! However, only if global extreme weather does not accelerate too quick, as many believe it will. Then our harvests may end within a blink of an eye.
My guess is that we're gonna use all the alternatives, not just 1 of them, so we can have wood pulp plastic alongside the seaweed stuff, as then we diversify our production while not overusing certain resources.
@Donald McCarthy Wow, you are so right: "Suffused with a hideous narcissist spirituality". Thanks for this one!!
@HardWarUK Cows eat vegan