This guy deserves all the support he can get for bringing the problems we all face into the realm of understandable proportions, and demonstrating that there are solutions available.
He's a Global Warming, CO2-phobic Fake-Green salesman and propagandist buy sometimes he does talk about real major environmental problems (of which plastic and oil spills in the sea are not one).. Plastic's main problem for humanity is the consumption of endocrine system imbalances screwing up our hormone balance. -- This is more to do with tin lining and plastic packaging and food wraps more than anything else, though the water supply is effected too, though mostly from inadequately processing sewage water back into the water supply.. If you believe in Global Warming and the Fake-Green Revolution you are part of the problem. -- The main problems 'caused' by plastics are NOT actually caused by plastics, they're caused by LANDFILLERS who banned INCINERATORS and incinerator development. The guy pushes a lot of exaggerated fake-green doom-mongering HARD SALES PROPAGANDA. CO2 is not the enemy, it is the stuff The Real Green World (The Plant World) is made from, while liberating the O2 for us to breathe. The IPCC is an insult to DECENT SCIENCE.
I once took a few hundred pounds of PET clamshell food containers to a recycler, along with a bunch of plastic bottles made from PET as well. I sprayed the clamshells with hose water, getting them somewhat clean. The recycler pulled out all of the clamshell food containers and said he could not take them. Most of the items that people put in their recycling bins for the city to pick up, end up in the landfill because they are not in pristine condition. The whole plastic recycling industry needs to be changed so that recyclers have incentives to recycle contaminated plastic. If not, no realistic solution will ever be achieved.
This is something people need to be made aware of. We put all our 'recycling' in the bin each fortnight and watch the 'dustcart' carry it away and think what a good thing we've done. But I suspect most of it just ends up in landfill or on a rubbiush dump out in the far-east. Not only can recyclers only accept certain types of plastic (and clean and non-mixed plastics, even then), they can't afford the staff to manually sort the incoming stream of mixed recycling (most of which cannot be sorted mechanically/automatically). Personally, I take a lot of care with our recycling - bundling up all the alluminium foil, cleaning bottles, making sure non-recycling doesn't get mixed in, etc - but our neighbours just put all packaging (and a great deal else!) in their recycling bin - often in carrier bags! All this is dumped into the same truck when it is collected, and arrives at the depot all mixed up. And I'm pretty sure as a result, that little, or none, of it actually gets recycled.
@@paulhaynes8045 the recyclers don't want to hurt their bottom line by washing the plastic before using it. And it wouldn't be too difficult either- shred it throw it all in a washing machine with detergent, rinse a few times then it's ready. The adhesive left by the label isn't PET yet that doesn't stop them from recycling the plastic drink bottles, so no one could ever convince me that oil contaminated plastic couldn't be cleaned enough to produce a food grade product.
@@paulhaynes8045 You see, this is why common people can't be trusted to be around too much plastic. One should need a liscence to use it at home. My family used to be so ignorant, putting up a fake plant screen in our garden, and pieces of it are blown off and now there's green plastic inside of the soil and grass.
How to reduce plastic use? 1. Water in the faucets-drinking water, 2. Each country-state produce enough food (no problem, when there are no wars, banks finance wars), no import-export of food internationaly 3. Organic food, longer fresh, healthier, 4. Development of small food storys, more manual work, 4. Support small farmers where manual work is main force, 5. Food prices up, quality of food up, food has more nutrients, people willeat less food, lose fat, become more healthier. Etc.
Has anyone mentioned the terrific series on BBC called Doomwatch. Each episode in the drama showed a team trying to react to a new problem caused by new tech. It covered so many concepts. Anyway, in one episode some group had developed a bacteria that ate nearly every plastic there was. Trouble is it got out and caused havoc. One scene showed the inside of a jet liner as the fittings and electrical insulation turned to mush. I'm not too worried about the bug but I do worry about the people who make sure questions aren't even asked. The sort who pay others to say "Nothing to see here, move along." If only the rich would become a fashionable superfood. In Addition I have to say. Your work is exceptional in so many ways I will not list them in case you swoon. Please, Please keep going at them.
Enjoyable educational and thought-provoking. Thank you. I am sure the biochem people and the genetic engineering groups are heavily studying those natural bacterial enzymatic activity, this might be a good way to recycle and besides being fascinating for us who study bacterial life.
In Japan they separate all types of waste into five or more pickups and the Japanese are careful to clean each piece of plastic before disposing of it. The way the USA manages it is lazy and self defeating as just a small amount of amount of dirty plastic, or plastic with foreign material prevents the recycling process from either working or from being efficient. Plus too many waste disposal municipalities buy the wrong equipment for their customers and then proceed to not recycle because the cost of changing again is too great after making the mistake of buying the wrong equipment in the first place.
How much energy and water is spent on the cleaning process performed in all these households? It might really be better for the environment for these plastics and the carbon they contain to be permanently sequestered in a landfill, thus being returned to the ground where they previously existed for millions of years in the form of oil or gas. This would keep them out of the oceans where they would turn to microplastic.
Worth mentioning that researchers are also looking at natural species that enjoy eating certain types of plastics - The Galleria genus of "wax moths" are enemies to commercial beekeepers, and yet show great potential for happily devouring our plastic waste.
I think a most important part of this process is the reduction then elimination of the production of semi or non recyclable materials that are only made that way to increase shareholder value at the expense of our environment. "Externalities"
If the manufacturer's made diffent plastics in set colours according to the type of plastic used, sorting would be very simple. That could be used for the single use versions at least.
Sorting is not the problem, the problem is contaminants that get into the structure of the molecule, you can't easily sort that out without chemically processing the plastic. It doesn't really matter much what type of plastic it is, they all suffer this same problem.
I don't understand much of this, but it sounds encouraging - like maybe the nerds will save us - again - if we can figure out how to shut up and stay out of their way. It would be interesting to hear how upcycling of plastics could fit with - or help drive - a Closed Loop Manufacturing scheme.
Thanks for the video. I wish you had started the video with your topic, though, rather than taking almost 7 minutes to get to it ... you almost lost me along the way but I hung in there. Topic starts here 6:48
The problem is how we deal with plastic waste and the recycling thereof. A) We don't, beyond telling each other that something must be done. B) We don't, to any significant degree beyond a few experimental recycling plants.
All of the above will only be viable if crude supplies run lower and gets more expensive. My impression is that big oil will only step up plastics production as ICE demand lessons with the increased adoption of EV's.
Back in the '70/80's I saw something on T.V. that stated the Japanese were mining their trash pits for metals. I've not heard about this in 30 plus years. Anyone else know if any country has gone and actually this done this in this day and age.
Although extending life cycles of plastic has been a solution to the problem as you have pointed out the push back by small and large corporations who control production have the opposite view!! It comes down to greed and profits. However with political and legislative cover as we have seen of late by the UK pushing higher recycling avenues every five years has these large entities rethinking Please remember the solutions to our problems are out there but disruptive technologies are being concealed and threatened for profits
The main problem the US faces with recycling centers that can shred and sort automatically with lasers and radiation. What we need is more of the plants like where your "stock footage" of that green bottle cap came out of. The recycling plant in Germany where they can get 98% pure into bales and then their sister company turns it into 99.9% chips of plastic or granules. The worlds main issue is that food containers need almost 99.999% pure material to be food safe where cosmetics is fine with 99.99%.
The problem with the word "plastic" is that it is about as specific as the word "mammal". Both plastics and mammals come in great variety. Yes, we have domesticated mammals like cows or goats. But whales or voles, less so. Likewise depolymerizing PET or polycarbonates will not necessarily work for all the other ones, just like milking machines for cows will not work for porcupines. Human Isomer already rightly pointed at this problem. I'd like to add that here lies a huge educational problem. If we wish people to do some sorting they need to have a bit of basic knowledge about mammals. I mean plastics. But there is none of that in our education system. For almost anyone a plastic is a plastic. Even for this otherwise excellent channel. The other thing that (eventually) needs to happen is that it needs to become economically attractive to recycle and that means that plastics that cannot be recycled need to be penalized at some point, even phased out. That also means that laminates/blends of more than one kind need to be outlawed if one of its components prevents recycling.
Remember Zn is biologically active too. More of it in the human body than Fe, so they tell us. Let's make sure the enzymes used don't leak out into the environment, where they might cause mischief, or something worse.
Excellent presentation as always. While a circular economy is a ideal aspiration, I would be really interested to hear your opinions on energy from waste schemes. Are they a cover for incineration or are they a valuable way of extracting value from waste? Reducing consumption is the first priority, reusing items second and recycling third, but how far down the list is energy from waste? An interesting video for the future maybe?
I'm a bit skeptical about plasic-eating bacteria/enzymes. History tells us that, all too frequently, yesterday's 'solution' becomes tomrow's problem, and I can't help thinking we might be doing that again. What if the bacteria escapes (which it's bound to do), and we then find that the plastic we use in our homes and in industry, health-care, etc starts to get eaten? A leaking bottle of Coke in the fridge is pretty nasty, but nothing compared to the disasters that might occur in industry, bulk storage, safety, etc if all plastic becomes 'bio-degradable'.
I'm scared of superbugs. Their future evolution is never something entirely in our control. If some escape from a reactor and they mutate in some further way that is harmful to us/ to life, it's probably going to be impossible to close the lid of that Pandora's box. I'm much less scared of catalysts that simply either work or don't. (That's an apocalyptic sci-fi idea I have some vague ideas about. No problem of someone else picks it up, works on it, gets there first. Just please write an unhappy ending, that's all. So this is it: We want green hydrogen. It's notionally possible to modify algae to produce this by photosynthesis. Miracle! Solution found. ... and then a few chapters later, they leak into some ocean ... and you can imagine how that works out.)
Keep working on breaking down the plastic. Until that is perfected, dig holes in the country side and throw the plastic in the holes instead of the ocean. When available, robots can process the the landfills and make new products out of the plastic trash.
I'm going to disagree about plumbing being better with plastics. I think copper based plumbing is far superior and longer lasting than the plastic based alternatives. The one place that plastics have brought an improvement is the red and green synthetic seals that are available to use instead of the black rubber o-rings and seals.
As a chemist who works with one of the presented methods of "splitting" PET into its components, I can add that the process works. The issue is how to get the materials sorted for a good base to work with. If there's a rather low percentage of, e.g., PE contained, this will not be broken down, and other materials also won't. And it can be difficult to clean the products of the reaction. Sorting of materials is actually the major problem for any plastic recycling. If it was possible to separate the materials up to a 99.99% purity, recycling would be much easier. But anything below this purity will either lead to expensive clean-up steps, or will prevent recycling at all. By the way, "bisphenol" is pronounced differently (not bise-phenol, but biss-phenol), and it's unfortunately one potent endocrine disruptor which is under strict limits in most countries.
intresting.... but interoperability is something only governments can enforce... but on the other hand, isn't there already a big opertunity regarding commercial wastes? like restaurants, fishing nets, protective packaging (ie. Styrofoam) or is BPA-PC a minor unpopular plastic? like maybe we need it for PVC or polyester?
@@acasccseea4434 Why does it have to be enforced? And if a govt definitely wants it it can issue a crisis and a related lockdown. We've seen that in the last wto years and numerous lockdowns are looming on the horizon.
Spot on about the preparation. It seems sorting is a starting point with only the "choice cuts" going for splitting. Pop bottles (PET) could be a candidate. One idea from a science fiction magazine (Omni) is to at least separate the waste into types and storing them in deep holes until the technology comes about to use each one. The story was that each sealed tip could become a future goldmine.
@@frutt5k If the process requires a clean input stream, then that cleanliness has to be "enforced" somehow. They could, for example, pay less (or even nothing) for batches that don't meet the standard. Not all enforcement involves "jackbooted thugs".
True, but we already have deposits in many places and they’re not working. Although, I think the issue is just that they’re not expensive enough. I got juice from a place one time which had a $4 bottle deposit…you can bet your butt that I returned that bottle!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Yeah that's not how it works in the parts of the UK it's currently implemented, and is likely due to go across all 4 countries of the UK in the coming year. The deposit amount is 20p no matter if it's a small or large plastic bottle, can or tin. It's resulted in a 94% recycle rate of those containers.
@@NeonVisual I think there’s a cultural thing at play though. Cause I’m the US the standard deposit is 0.10 or something and our return rate is atrocious. Increasing it to .20 or .30 has been tossed around I believe, but I’m unsure how much of an effect it will have. The example of $4 that I had was just a single place that had their own system.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet 10c would be about 7p in our money. People probably wouldn't bother here at such a low level either. We also have a tax on high sugar drinks like coke which also helps to drive people away from garbage in plastic bottles. It's about 37 cents in your money per 1ltr on top of the regular price. So in your money a ltr of coke would have about 62c added to the price in total.
@@thesilentone4024 that would be great, when the interiors of durable goods like refrigerators and vehicles get dissolved into some disgusting biofilm edit: not to mention all the pipes in sanitation and insulation used for power distribution
Honestly this just in general. Landfills are often a ticking time bomb leak wise, and contain all sorts of materials. Sorting into metals, minerals/aggregate, and RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel), then Pyrolysis and/or Gasification of the RDF (As described ~6:30 in this video) could yield all sorts of products, *as well as* essentially doing environmental remediation work + boosting nearby property values.
Granted they may not always use the best possible pollution control systems / novel processes (they often use fixed/moving bed combustion rather than Fluidized Bed Combustion, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or Pyrolysis processes), but Europe uses few landfills and thus shows this is quite viable.
2:28 8 billion tons is nowhere near the total biomass on the planet. That'd be around 550 billion tons of carbon alone. With the water content, take several times that.
I thought this too. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he misspoke and meant to reference the animal biomass. (I don't actually know that this is true either, but sounds more plausible)
@@sammason2300 There is about 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon in animal biomass on earth, total animal biomass should be around 5 times more, so it's in the ballpark, but still not quite correct. I also really respect him, so I'd say the mistake was probably made by someone else and he didn't check it enough.
The solution to plastic waste is to attach responsibility for the waste to the use of the product. In other words, if a company wants to use plastic for a consumer application, they must create a plan for dealing with the resulting waste stream, and they must fund their share of the cost of that waste stream. This would result in the cost being added to the calculus of using plastics, and those uses that created the most difficult waste streams would become the most costly. Moreover, by pricing the cost of disposal into the cost of use, consumers would be forced to pay for the full cost of their convenience items. All together, this would push the market towards the most efficient use of plastic, and away from the uses that create the greatest problems. It does not work to try and fix this problem downstream. That's like saying to industry "no matter how big a problem you create, someone else will pay for fixing it.". We don't have to guess how that's going to turn out.
The things that I rely on and have been designed to fail so that I go buy a replacement are the ones that horrify me. Cause I’m forced to keep polluting just so a company can meet their quarterly profit goals.
There is nothing wrong with long-term use plastics. The problem is all the plastic packaging and other single-use things that are only plastic because plastic is cheap.
Same thoughts here.. it's inescapable - but we have gotten used to carrying our own shopping bags into stores and recycling everything that our city will recycle, which unfortuneately are just 1s and 2s. How is your curbside recycling set up?
A while back, a San Francisco startup had an interesting solution: Shred and wash the plastics, heat till the low melting point contents flow, and press into sheets or extrude into shapes. The results can then become anything from grocery bags to flooring, countertops, or structural beams.
@@PutItAway101 Linoleum is flammable and widely used. Wooden countertops? Laminates? Particleboard? Plywood? Don't look now, but our houses are already flamable. Just stay sober in the kitchen, don't smoke and have a few (properly maintained) fire extinguishers (one on every floor) and you are good to go. And don't forget smoke alarms.
After seeing your video I began to wonder: would it be possible to modify the MANUFACTURING process of particular plastics to include compounds that will aid in the recycling or industrial composting processes? Like mold the catalyst right into the part. Then when it’s tossed into a recycling reactor, it instantly breaks down.
The problem with including the catalyst for the breakdown of the product in the product itself is that it will do what it is supposed to do way before you want it to, basically, cutting down on the amount of time that the plastic could be used, since the catalyst would be slowly helping break it down from the minute it is introduced. Not to mention that, odds are, it would make the plastic less structurally stable, which is particularly bad if the plastic part is supposed to withstand any amount of force. In general, it is not that hard to have a reactor with the catalyst inside, allowing for a continuous process. The issue is with substrate purity. A lot of effort goes into sorting plastic waste so you can have mostly pure educts, which is necessary for a high quality product. And high quality products out of recycling are crucial if we want to make a circular economy financially feasible and have the products keep standards of quality.
The usefulness of plastics isn't just convenient bottles and plastic bags. Through circumstances in my life I worked in the medical industry and I can tell you that without plastics, our medical abilities would be degraded to the point that many people would die everyday than they do now. Just the amount of plastics used during a single kidney Dialysis session would fill a 5 gallon bucket of waste. And the average Dialysis patient needs 3 session per week. The cost and the function of Dialysis machines would skyrocket as well as the cost of each session without plastics. The same for pretty much any modern medical procedure.
THIS I have no experience in the area so can’t speak to that, but seeing pre-plastics medical devices (in museums/period pieces etc) is kind of eerie; all the latex tubing, leather, etc That and everything tended to be much bulkier and required autoclave for reuses, even for the most simple of things! Even things like tape for gauze/stabilizing a needle are often plastics, so a simple bandage for a cut/after you donate blood benefits from plastics!
Thanks Dave. I truly hope that this research leads to economically viable processes for plastics recycling, as soon as possible. The last time I took a long sea voyage was in the early 1970's, and even back then, I was shocked by the amount of plastics waste which was floating, all along the shipping lanes. And the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps worse than the Pacific, on average. It'll be far worse now, two generations later.
I worked in the coast guard, spending long periods of time on ships that were docked in various harbours in Canada and the US. I was always disgusted by the litter, mainly plastic, that wound up in a typical harbour after a good rain storm.
I live in rural eastern Australia on a large property, on a regular basis we find spent balloons, plastic tarps, building insulation, complete umbrellas that have fallen out of the sky? In the last three weeks we have been gifted two umbrellas, one next the house on a day with very little wind.. from the plastic sky gods? We are miles away from the nearest neighbor, further from a town, an hours drive from a city, just imagine what is floating around up there? Not really related but anyway. Anyone else experienced this?
I'm wondering how close you live to a road that is regularly traversed by lorries carrying an unsecured load. Perhaps on the way to a landfill site or something.
How about we make Coca Cola & co. pay to clean up and force them to go back to glass bottle as before they lobbied to use plastic to increase their margin?
Thanks for sharing these emerging solutions for making plastics more circular. Let's hope they're able to be scaled up quickly as well as companies shifting their mindsets / business models around how plastic is produced.... couldn't agree more that we need to start making less virgin materials and use more that have been "recycled" and in the case, broken down to be rebuilt!
My 9 to 5 is in “continuous improvement” so I’m pretty experienced in what the average company wants to see before they swap to new tech. It’s honestly just profit or savings. So the biggest thing that we can do in the meantime to help speed the switch along is “putting our finger on the scale” so that the new solution = more profit. Until that happens, it will only be a handful of well intentioned companies who make the switch…but nothing of real consequence.
I think it's time for governments to step in and start to regulate use of new plastics - perhaps by something similar to carbon taxes. The more recycled or upcycled plastics the manufacturers can use, the less taxes they should pay. And we, as consumers, will very quickly recognize the true value of recycling then - recycled products will be cheaper than new ones. And I bet suddenly a lot of manufacturers will discover the beauties of non-plastic packaging options... We've tried for decades now to do it nicely and "not harm the industries". Time to change the tone of the music.
Governments are bought off by the oil industry. People have to choose NOT to buy plastic, starting with single use stuff , like baggies and bottles. It isn’t hard- it’s a choice.
I just noticed for the first time that you have "Capital", from Piketti, in your background. What was your opinion of it? It's great to have been following you. You started as a channel more about technology and science, and incorporated more and more climate videos, and alluding now a little bit to social issues stemming from our political and economic context (Capitalism). This mirrors my own progress on those issues, and it led me to learn a lot on the history of Labor, the struggles for Socialism and Anarchims, and involve myself politically on that front. Anyway, it's not a political channel, but you seem to have a good perspective, it would be great to know more about your political views. Especially if it can be framed in the need to go beyond Capitalims to save our burning planet. I think you did a video that touched on it, but I don't remember that it was very developped on how we could achieve this (depends on your political affiliation, the tactics you prefer). If you'd like books that explore this, I'm currently reading "Toward a New Socialism", by the economist Paul Cockshott, and it's very good. "The people's Republic of Wal-Mart" showed how we could plan our economy (crucial for a coordinated green transition). The book "Less is More", by Jason Hickel, alluded to some of the things we need to do, which goes into a Socialist direction, but could be implemented within a Capitalist framework (it does admonish the notion that we can continue with "Green Growth"). Basically, it was: - No more planned obsolescence (could reduce our production needs by a lot). - No more induced demand (ads). People would be happier too, less consumerism. - Restoration of the commons. Land trusts. Public transport. Walkable urban landscape. - Things should be repairable. Uniform standards. Easily swappable components. Made to be recycled or re-used (end-of-lifecycle in mind). A circular economy. ... there was a lot more, it was a bit too reformist for my taste, but I'd add: - Planned directly democratic production. Because I don't see how to tackle climate change unless our economy is geared to satisfy our needs, not for profit by exploiting ourselves, creating externalities. This imply the end of Capitalism, and the method on how to get there vary. But the important part is the need for direct democracy. Anyway, I could explain a lot more, but I was curious to hear from your perspective.
That's just my two cents. Thanks for bringing up these ideas though, and sharing those books. By the way, besides those book recommendations, do you follow any UA-cam channel that do cover these topics? I'm assuming you follow this content already, and I'm interested to check it out.
Hi DeathToMockingBirds. Thanks for your feedback. In fact if you go right back to video #1 about four years ago, you'll see that the channel was actually started specifically to focus on the climate emergency and has developed more technical videos along the way. The strapline of the channel is "The Climate and Sustainable Energy Channel". As for my politics, I would say I am a pragmatic socialist. I thought 'Capital' was extremely technical and very hard going. I only got about half way through and gave up. In general terms, I recognise that we need the three legs of the stool - Government, Commerce and the Public to make a success of climate mitigation.
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you for your answer. I also stopped Capital halfway, both from Piketty and Marx. Ultimately it boils down to keeping Capitalism or not, with direct democracy in the workplace or not. To me, I have trouble imagining the green transition we need while Capitalist incentives keep driving decisions regarding the production of goods (which is the main contributor to climate change). Your channel is the main one I recommend when it comes to available solutions, it's a matter of having a system in place that has an active interest in the well-being of all, not one built on exploitation.
Thank you for giving me a glimmer of hope. We could speed up this evolution by taxing the hell out of plastics made from virgin materials. But that would require a functional democracy.
Agreed. I actually call and email my politicians once a month on this exact subject. Sure, it kind of feels like screaming into a void, but I guess it’s better than sitting on my butt doing nothing.
That introduction was brilliant! You can feel right away that this video is going to go in depth about plastics, unlike the many "inspirational" videos which never go into the important details.
In 1978 I invented a way to recycle landfill plastics of the thermo-plastic variety vs the thermo-setting kind. The racially invidious professor gave me a terrible grade. Years later I saw my technique being employed to make park benches. Many roads degrade over time as the sun cooks the tar of which roads are made which makes them crumble. Combining recycled plastic with recycled glass would make much more durable roads than by using the current slurry of tar and rock aggregate. In fact a strategic use of such composite roads could be made into solar energy producers of EMF and/or batteries and/or electric roadways.
Thanks for the weekly update! As I see it the problem is that we produce too many different types of plastic, and a good recycling-upcycling technology that works for all of them is unlikely to exist. The only two solutions that I see are: 1. Legislation that forbid putting on the market of all but a few plastic types. 2. We simply incinerate all plastic waste and develop technologies to sustainably produce plastic without usin fossil hydrocarbons.
It would be good to have a JHAT episode on incineration as a way of dealing with waste - good or bad?. Our local council built one (against the wishes of its future neighbours!), to avoid using land-fill (when the government made landfill very expensive a few years ago), but I'm fairly certain they no longer use this incinerator (why, I don't know and can't find out).
Easy its bad to burn it go camping and try it Than gi camping and burn it with a propane torch Still bad. Then claim to do electricity with your propane torch Than cool down your propane fire with more garbage and add more propane. Then claim you produce electricity. There easy
@@paulhaynes8045 Yes an episode on waste incineration would be interesting. I've tested the emissions of a few of them in my previous job and they can be fairly clean, but for the sake of profit they don't do enough (imo) for the abatement of dioxins/PCBs/PAHs etc.
Incineration puts all the carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and it is only feasible for certain polymers like PE or PP. As soon as you have chlorinated polymers in the waste like CPE, PVC, PVDC you're likely to get toxic products. But forbidding those would be a big blow as they are actually quite useful materials. Depolymerization ("Splitting") would circumvent such problems. (Which is why this is an interesting video). The truth is that there is no simple solution. Progress can be made but it requires that more people become knowledgeable about all the little devils in all the details. Governments cannot leave that to the polymer industry. They will have to hire polymers people to sort it out independently form the industry. Otherwise they will make really dumb decisions.
Thank you Dave, I needed this video. I've been relying on those precious microbes to be even remotely positive about plastic waste. This zinc catalyst + methanol method could be another solution to reduce the vast plastic islands we've built up over the decades.
2:24 Hold on, i believe 8 billion tons of plastic is still far less than the total biomass on earth, right? If i'm not mistaken there is ~450 billion tons of carbon stored in all plants. But it might be comparable to the biomass of all animals, which would be the same order of magnitude if i remember correctly. And of course that's still a dizzying amount of plastic, don't get me wrong...
I try and avoid using plastic as much as possible. Or reuse it where and when I can. I believe I do a better job at it than most people, but it's not easy.
Agreed. I find that living a “low waste lifestyle” tends to mean swapping your own time and effort in order to produce less waste. Hopefully, we start to make some changes to our economy where the low waste option is also the easiest one as well as the one that costs the least.
I’m excited for this, but I don’t expect it to take off until we seriously pull back on our fossil fuel production. Until then, virgin plastic is insanely cheap because it’s coming from the excess of another process so it’ll be near impossible for anything to compete. But this sure would be amazing…having a circular plastic system and no fossil fuel drilling? Where do I sign up for that future!
We need more bribe money to keep the money system going, if the hippies win everyone will be dead from the factories shutting down leading to global total dying. Or as we know it, GTD, as refered to in the Bible: marc chapter 4 page 40 verse 5
@@matthewsaxe6383 yup I’m all for it. I actually call and email my reps once a month in order to remind them that I want a carbon tax put in place. Slowly but surely we seem to be getting there.
@Tommy Taffy normally I’m all for subsidies, but this case is different for me. We already subsidize the fossil fuel industry which becomes evidenced when I compare the gas that my wife uses for her commute as a percentage of our budge vs a percentage of our carbon footprint. The gas makes up a messily 1% of our budgeted expenses, but accounts for about 12% of our carbon footprint. So that’s why I’m in favor of increasing the cost of oil based products. I don’t mind if you call it a tax or a removal of subsidies or something else, the price needs to reflect the environmental impact.
Unfortunately with PLA, you have to have very specific conditions within the compost its in so that it can start degrading. And with 3d printing modfying the polymer for better durability, weather resistance etc, they chuck in more problematic chemicals into the compost that it would land in.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Maybe in terms of usefullness against plastic trash yeah, we just found a way to generate plastic if we run out of fosssil fuel lol
The conditions aren’t too difficult commercially, the main issue is lack of investment in the Municipal Solid Waste Management side, as well as lack of sorting/clear labeling.
@@DRakeTRofKBam Granted - Electrolysis (For Hydrogen->Plastics/More Likely Use in Hydrotreating Parts of the Other Pathways Below etc) - Gasification (For Syngas->Plastics) - Pyrolysis (for Pyrolysis Oil as a replacement for Crude Oil / Some Fractions of Crude Oil) Can all work as well as Non-Conventional Method Bioplastics (Like PLA etc), and the latter two can be done both with biomass, as well as with unsorted/degraded plastics as well as any other fractions in what is called “Refuse Derived Fuel” or RDF AND All of the plastics made with these processes would use existing facilities (helping with the “Just Transition” to a decarbonized economy), and be a “Drop In Replacement” (ie be Nylon, or ABS, or Acetal, not something “nylon like” etc)
I remember a video whereby they said "You need to *make Virgin plastic more expensive* That way it will give companies incentive to use recycable plastics - - -then all that waste will be a valuable resource!"
Thank you for another informative video. I see cyclical systems as all important when we talk about sustainability. The earth is that type of systems and we are a part of the earth.
Agreed. A book I was reading recently kept pointing out how none of our current economic systems account for needing raw materials and disposing of waste. Hence, half the issues that we’re facing today.
@@matthewsaxe6383 donut economics. I bought it after hearing the lady give a Ted talk and be a guest on the Freakonomics podcast. I wouldn’t recommend it though because I think it’s targeted at Econ majors so 60% of it went over my head. But if you’re interested then I’d highly recommend the “is economic growth the wrong goal” episode of Freakonomics. Seem like really great theories though so I hope it catches on.
You dont think the manufacturering of disposable plastic impacts the environment? I would argue that planned obsolescence is the biggest contributor to global warming. How many barrels of oil are used to manufacture plastic items that are designed to fail right out of warranty?
You said it again, " now we need to get the cost of the process low enough...." At the end of the day you can't escape the economic fact of life, that businesses cannot compete using a more expensive process. The solution to this imbalance is not to despair at ever making these good guy solutions cheaper, but to put more effort into making the bad stuff more expensive. The economic playing field will then slope in favour of the environmental solutions. The money then flows like water downhill into perfecting these technologies. How do we make the bad stuff more expensive? Tax it at source, -as the oil or gas or coal comes out of the ground. The trouble is that too many governments are very deeply in the pockets of the oil giants, they cannot legislate against their masters.
I hope to see those innovative new processes brought to a significant scale soon. In the meantime individuals can reduce their plastic consumption by buying food items in bulk sizes which reduces the ratio of plastic to product mass.
One small scale simple idea is to bring your own bags to the grocery store. That way you reuse the bags multiple times. I do that, and the staff adjusted quickly to the idea. They don't a t like it's wierd...or that you are wierd.
@@julieheath6335 - In my area most businesses are open to customers bringing their own bag, or they encourage it. It is understandable that some businesses might be hesitant since such use can be seen as a potential for hiding and stealing merchandise.
I'd better buy a bigger plastic refrigerator, and more plastic storage boxes and bags, so that the extra provisions can be stored. Oh, and I'll have to use a car for carrying the goods home from the shops, in bigger plastic carrying bags. I'm being ironic, but these things do happen. Larger quantities often involve using thicker-walled plastic packaging, so it's not as linear a process as many people think.My wife discovered that, when she tried to buy 'biologically degradable' cleaning products, there were several downsides. Here are a few: They arrived in plastic packaging. They cost more. They were less effective at cleaning, requiring larger quantities of hot water, to prevent hygiene from suffering. They had to be bought from countries far away from home, via the internet, because local stores could not / would not sell them. The cleaning items were much less durable and had to be discarded sooner. All of the waste went into landfill, because the local authorities could not recycle most of it.
Manufacturers aren’t helping his ratio by downsizing their packages to disguise the fact they’re raising the unit (mL or g) cost by keeping the package price static and giving you less product. This also increases the plastic:product ratio, increasing plastic use. For example, juice cartons went from 64 fluid ounces to 59 and are now 52. Ice cream tubs are worse - many went from 64 floz to 48. Oddly, milk cartons are often still 64 floz.
Now this sounds very promising. I am strongly against changing from plastic. The problem is not the plastic but how we deal with it after use. A sensible recycling method would be perfect.
Yeah your first sentence is quite narrow, you can broaden that to most of the world. Thinking plastic isn't everywhere in the developing world too is just folly.
Looks great on paper! I'm hoping this is rapidly commercialised and industrialised. I reckon it'd help if plastic manufacturers were tariffed with recycling costs. As the producers, they are obligated to deal with the clean up.
Since a large quantity of plastics originate as packaging of products from.China. A tariff is not going to do anything to a foreign company. Consumers end up paying ALL tariffs.
Even imported products can be forced to account for recycling costs. Many items just would not/could not be sold if they had to include recycling costs. Many times, an otherwise excellent product could not be sold if it had to include recycling cost. That would mean that decisions about parts and packaging would be part of the product cycle, automatically paying for the recycling cost. It also would behoove major manufacturers to help pay for sophisticated recycling facilities to reduce their costs of production.
It breaks my heart when I see in an ice cream shop server sick a plastic neon coloured spoon into the ice cream cone, or here where i live they sell cooked corn in the park, but serve it in a cup with a plastic spoon... or when I see my family use plastic single use earbuds, we've become so numb and careless...
Speaking of ice cream shops: it also kills me when I see them using plastic spoons for samples. So they literally use the spoon for one tiny bite and then discard it!
We've recently switched to having our milk delivered in glass bottles. A very small change, but rather inconvenient (larger plastic bottles are a much more efficient way of storing the milk in the fridge, and we have developed 'order anxiety' - a condition that causes stress the day before every delivery as we try to work out if we've got enough milk left to get us through to the next morning!). And it's also rather expensive (a 2 pint plastic bottle of organic milk from Sainsbury's costs £1.20, whereas a delivered pint of organic milk costs 88p - 47% more!). But at least that's a little less plastic being 'recycled' (I have strong doubts as to whether it really is recycled), and 12 kilos less that I have to carry up the hill each week. We are lucky that we're well enough off to do this - I suspect that most people, especially those with cars or who have their shopping delivered, would think we were daft. I mention this, not to get a pat on the back for being green (or told that I am daft!), but to illustrate just how difficult it is to give up just a small amount of the plastic we use. We are fairly careful with what we buy and go out of our way to not buy plastic (in as much as we can), and we recycle and compost everything we can. But our non-recycling bin (collected every two weeks) is still pretty full each time it is collected, and it is almost entirely full of plastic packaging. But at least it's light to carry up the cellar steps!
It’s great that you try your best but why still consuming cows milk and I assume other animal products? If I may ask, as avoiding these products is one of the most impactful choices we can make as individuals to help the environment and the climate crisis.
@@ab-td7gq It's a fair question. If there were more plant-based products that were tasty and readily avialable it would make the choice much easier. But a cold glass of milk is a hard thing the substitute, isn't it?
You're doing your part and i salute you for that. We all have our part. Some of us small and others cause it's within their powers to do a lot more. If we all contributed as much as we can the world would be a happier, greener and cleaner place.. ... But you never know who you might inspire and how far your influence might go.
@@TheBricetune There are great alternatives these days and delicious plant based recipes on line. Its easier than ever before. Taste buds take only a few weeks to adapt to new foods. Milk is full of pus, blood, feces, hormones and often antibiotics so for me personally it wasn’t that hard to switch to soy milk.
@@ab-td7gq I much prefer oat milk. It’s also stable in hot drinks, whereas soy milk will curdle. I use the cartons cut in half as plant pots for my veg seeds.
incinerating it for heat energy would reduce our need to extract oil, and eliminate the waste. landfills seem like a lazy way of dealing with waste...the idea is just "out of sight, out of mind".
Incinerator is probably harder to make a profit unless there's exception to safety regulation like not needing to filter smoke stack (for toxin) or not needing to care for garbage truck traffic into the neighbourhood (waste sludge). The incinerator will be great if it can operate like coal power plant and have nothing to care.
Landfilling plastic keeps it out of the ocean and sequesters carbon. If the landfill is properly designed, leaching of substances from the plastic should not be a problem.
@@xponen Europe operates manly on a model where they have strict (Although in my opinion not struct enough) emission control regulations and thus are fine short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. You can read up on their policy as well as existing “Incineration” and/or “Waste to Energy” (incineration with steam boiler+turbine) plants. The main issue that needs to be solved in the Incineration model is Processing of Ash, as of now it is disposed of in landfills. Granted it isn’t as toxic as Coal Ash, especially if the Refuse Derived Fuel / Feedstock is sorted accordingly, but a problem we should avoid nonetheless. Various Newer Combustion / Gasification methods can produce “slag” rather than ash which is essentially igneous rock which can be used as concrete or earthworks aggregate etc (i need to look into any potential leaching hazards more, but from what i have encountered they are supposedly inert) Also ash reprocessing (done frequently with “Fly Ash” to make Cement, less common with “Bottom Ash”) could also solve the problem by “sorting” the ash into hazardous materials (any Mercury etc, although this should be FAR less than coal) and useful chemicals. Main issue is cost/complexity, but this may be solvable? I haven’t looked into the literature on this as much as other methods described here. Also, at least if I remember correctly, pyrolysis produces no ash, only “Pyrolysis Oil” and “Char/Petcoke” (some char is retained in the pyrolysis oil forming a somewhat significant issue if used as a “drop in” replacement for crude oil, although this is addressable if I remember correctly. Pyrolysis can allow for chemical recycling as mentioned ~6:30 which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in theory at least, this comment doesn’t have citations etc so refer to a proper paper for that) since plastic/chemicals are extracted rather than burned. Also it can save energy in a similar manner. Doing a “Power-to-X” / “Power-to-Chemicals” process, as well as Gasification to an extent, would require more steps and energy to get to some hydrocarbon feedstock from hydrogen and/or syngas. With pyrolysis oil it is just a simple filtering/distillation away. **IN CONCLUSION TO THIS WORDWALL:** As of now there can be a Low Landfill Processes (bits of ash in a landfill, rather than barely compacted mixed MSW), and in the near term there can be *No Landfill, Low/No GHG Emissions Processes* (All Char/Fly Ash Cement/Slag Aggregate/Pyrolysis Oil/Process Derived Chemicals)
@@incognitotorpedo42 It is less of an issue of “if” it will leak and contaminate groundwater, but “when”. Liners will fail eventually. Also due to the lack of sorting, and processing they contain toxic Leachate/Solid Materials. Processing + Incineration/Gasification etc can reduce this l, *but in the end a pit of unsorted waste is a pit of unsorted waste, no matter how fancy*
@@incognitotorpedo42 On the note of carbon sequestration, i think burying near pure carbon, “washed” char/coke/petcoke/carbon black etc, in a deep stable area (as opposed to surface level biochar which has unclear stability due to various processes) in a sort of “reverse coal/graphite mining” could be a really neat and stable way of Carbon Sequestration, so i do agree on that note i guess! Also just “Carbon Sequestration in Building Materials” (using bioplastics/carbon fiber/other carbon materials in permanent structures) can work too.
The next thing is to make waste plastic worth something so in poorer countries you get people either recycling or just going out and collecting it because it gives them a wage. That would go a lot if not mostly all the way to stop it entering the oceans.
The single use plastic industry and plastic industry as a whole needs to be held accountable. Implement strick EPR and gradually stop/ban the use of Single Use Plastic as food & beverage container while implementing worldwide Zero Waste Sustainable Economy (Refuse, Reuse, Repair, Refill, Repurpose, Rot, etc)
Talk to the Philippines about not dumping their trash in rivers. This one small country is responsible for more than a third of all the plastic in the oceans.
@@incognitotorpedo42 It's not that they're intentionally dumping trash into the rivers. They lack a waste disposal infrastructure in general, so trash ends up on the ground, in the street, and eventually gets rained on and washed away. The effect is the same, just sayin'
@@incognitotorpedo42 are you that blind, most sachet and other single use plastic packaging are MADE AND USE BY BIG WESTERN COMPANY !!!! When they could be implementing Refill, you know LIKE THEY USED TO. But ever since oil price cheap n more drilling single use plastic becomes their choices that leads to todays situation. People become addicted and dependent of single use packaging because of their decision to cut corner and make more money. Btw many grassroot in SAE country have been fighting againts the single use plastic by western multinational companies. And base on research by Jambek et al China is first then Indonesia second biggest plastic polluters that goes to the rivers and ocean. Your opinion are exactly what the Big Polluter have been doing --> Shifting the Blame to the Consumer !
I've always thought the problem with plastics was not the plastics but us! If we kept everything collected and sorted at some point we would be able to do something even profitable with all that plastic waste. Humans are just slobby irresponsible pigs. :-( I don't think I've ever, at least after the age of 6 thrown anything plastic out into the world, and mostly put stuff in the recycle bins they were supposed to go in. Doesn't take that much effort. In fact often I pick up other people's plastic.
Thanks for this update - much appreciated. For plastic recycling, the technology developed by the Dutch Urban Mining Corporation is worth checking out. They can do amazing things. ALSO... it's worth pointing out that the plastic waste problem is actually exagerrated. Yes, you read that right. Chris Dearmitt, an independent scientist and consultant, has worked hard to show the real extent of what is going on. See "plastic paradox" if, like me, you care about the facts.
I got about 20 min into looking at Chris Dearmitt, and I am already very skeptical. The first website I came across read like a "one weird trick" scam. Next I started watching 'the great plastics distraction pt2' and immediately recognized tired old propaganda techniques. Once I saw that comments were turned off on the video, I stopped watching. Pretty sure this guy is a scam.
I think one of the best things we can do about plastics is make our governments (or perhaps just mine, 'cause I'm sure the U.S. is the worst) stop subsidizing the oil industry.
Couldn’t agree more. Don’t know if you’re already a part of Citizen’s Climate Lobby, but you may want to look into it. Get to meet semi regularly with like-minded people and call your reps regularly to encourage them to do stuff like this.
We don't need new microbes to solve the plastic pollution problem. We need fair trade supply chains that create livelihoods for the urban poor. We can used plastic waste to reduce poverty.
That will not pay for itself, so you have to ask if there is a more efficient way to create livelihoods for the urban poor. Since we currently incarcerate large numbers of them, we could start by using prisons as schools that teach real job skills, then seal prison records for non-violent offenders as soon as they are released.
Sanity check here. The amount of biomass on earth is about 550 gigatonnes. That's a lot more than the total 8bn tonnes of plastic of plastic ever made.
Always happy to see improvements in the plastics industry but we really need to look for alternative materials, whether green-plastics or something new entirely. This is because, no matter what, some plastic will always get into the environment, and more research is coming out to show how dangerous plastic is as microplastics as well as food container plastics both accumulating and leaching toxins.
Agreed. Better recycling products are great for the application where we truly need plastics…but it won’t coverup the rampant overuse of plastics which we currently do.
All new plastic products need to be made from 100% recycled materials. No new single use plastic should ever be made. Plastic litter is disgusting. Why can't all new roofing be made from recycled plastic waste instead of using asphalt shingles. Plastic roofing would last forever instead of asphalt shingles needing to be replaced every 20 years. Manufacturers need to rethink their production methods and use more recycled materials. All docks, piers, home decks, park seating and many other products can be made from recycled plastic materials. There needs to be a market for recycled materials so that the cost of collecting, sorting and shipping can be recovered.
Most plastics degrade rapidly in sunlight. Plastic roofing is a terrible idea. We don't make plastic things out of 100% recycled material because it doesn't work. If we develop depolymerization technology as described in this video, then it could work, but it might still cost a fortune.
He mentioned "compostable" plastics. Problem is, they can't be composted in backyard bins, instead, they require industrial composting facilities. How many of these facilities exist? What's the percentage of plastic waste is of the compostable variety, is it enough to make separating it out worthwhile?
Well the issue of over enginered and escaped micro biology is actually quite a threat to the world. Moreover so because we cannot oversee the consequenses at this point. The bio cure might end up worse than the orriginal problem.. its a problem we humans created... lets not go for the quick easy fix without full comprehension of due consequences but rather do the right thing and fix it by upcycling it all without the aid of potentially dangerous micro biologic options.
I don’t know the extent, but it is a bit concerning to me to imagine a future where plastics can “rot” in the same manner as wood, which didn’t for a long while as well! Reminds me of that scene in “The Andromeda Strain” where the microbes eat the hermetic seals!
Granted since it is an artificial material, by cleaning litter and limiting use, we can remove the evolutionary pressure and thus make the genes fade away, in a similar manner to antibiotic resistance. Also phase out of landfills, and biosafety practices in the digestion facilities will remove/control (in respective order) those from the equation as well.
We know recycling was a big industry smokescreen since they prefer making new plastic. And most plastic doesn't even make it to recycling bins. It's absurd to rely on careless humans to recycle, so this video sounds like more pro-plastic propaganda.
This guy deserves all the support he can get for bringing the problems we all face into the realm of understandable proportions, and demonstrating that there are solutions available.
yes indeed perhaps he should get a yacht that is his very own
He's a Global Warming, CO2-phobic Fake-Green salesman and propagandist buy sometimes he does talk about real major environmental problems (of which plastic and oil spills in the sea are not one).. Plastic's main problem for humanity is the consumption of endocrine system imbalances screwing up our hormone balance.
--
This is more to do with tin lining and plastic packaging and food wraps more than anything else, though the water supply is effected too, though mostly from inadequately processing sewage water back into the water supply.. If you believe in Global Warming and the Fake-Green Revolution you are part of the problem.
--
The main problems 'caused' by plastics are NOT actually caused by plastics, they're caused by LANDFILLERS who banned INCINERATORS and incinerator development. The guy pushes a lot of exaggerated fake-green doom-mongering HARD SALES PROPAGANDA. CO2 is not the enemy, it is the stuff The Real Green World (The Plant World) is made from, while liberating the O2 for us to breathe. The IPCC is an insult to DECENT SCIENCE.
I once took a few hundred pounds of PET clamshell food containers to a recycler, along with a bunch of plastic bottles made from PET as well. I sprayed the clamshells with hose water, getting them somewhat clean. The recycler pulled out all of the clamshell food containers and said he could not take them. Most of the items that people put in their recycling bins for the city to pick up, end up in the landfill because they are not in pristine condition. The whole plastic recycling industry needs to be changed so that recyclers have incentives to recycle contaminated plastic. If not, no realistic solution will ever be achieved.
This is something people need to be made aware of. We put all our 'recycling' in the bin each fortnight and watch the 'dustcart' carry it away and think what a good thing we've done. But I suspect most of it just ends up in landfill or on a rubbiush dump out in the far-east. Not only can recyclers only accept certain types of plastic (and clean and non-mixed plastics, even then), they can't afford the staff to manually sort the incoming stream of mixed recycling (most of which cannot be sorted mechanically/automatically). Personally, I take a lot of care with our recycling - bundling up all the alluminium foil, cleaning bottles, making sure non-recycling doesn't get mixed in, etc - but our neighbours just put all packaging (and a great deal else!) in their recycling bin - often in carrier bags! All this is dumped into the same truck when it is collected, and arrives at the depot all mixed up. And I'm pretty sure as a result, that little, or none, of it actually gets recycled.
@@paulhaynes8045 the recyclers don't want to hurt their bottom line by washing the plastic before using it. And it wouldn't be too difficult either- shred it throw it all in a washing machine with detergent, rinse a few times then it's ready. The adhesive left by the label isn't PET yet that doesn't stop them from recycling the plastic drink bottles, so no one could ever convince me that oil contaminated plastic couldn't be cleaned enough to produce a food grade product.
I wonder how much biological contamination (like from food stains) these zinc based catalysts can handle.
@@paulhaynes8045 - where I live, aluminum foil is not supposed to be put into the recycling container, only aluminum cans.
@@paulhaynes8045 You see, this is why common people can't be trusted to be around too much plastic. One should need a liscence to use it at home. My family used to be so ignorant, putting up a fake plant screen in our garden, and pieces of it are blown off and now there's green plastic inside of the soil and grass.
How to reduce plastic use?
1. Water in the faucets-drinking water,
2. Each country-state produce enough food (no problem, when there are no wars, banks finance wars), no import-export of food internationaly
3. Organic food, longer fresh, healthier,
4. Development of small food storys, more manual work,
4. Support small farmers where manual work is main force,
5. Food prices up, quality of food up, food has more nutrients, people willeat less food, lose fat, become more healthier.
Etc.
Has anyone mentioned the terrific series on BBC called Doomwatch. Each episode in the drama showed a team trying to react to a new problem caused by new tech. It covered so many concepts. Anyway, in one episode some group had developed a bacteria that ate nearly every plastic there was. Trouble is it got out and caused havoc. One scene showed the inside of a jet liner as the fittings and electrical insulation turned to mush.
I'm not too worried about the bug but I do worry about the people who make sure questions aren't even asked. The sort who pay others to say "Nothing to see here, move along." If only the rich would become a fashionable superfood.
In Addition I have to say. Your work is exceptional in so many ways I will not list them in case you swoon. Please, Please keep going at them.
Enjoyable educational and thought-provoking. Thank you. I am sure the biochem people and the genetic engineering groups are heavily studying those natural bacterial enzymatic activity, this might be a good way to recycle and besides being fascinating for us who study bacterial life.
Hopeful news. Its nice to hear for a change.
In Japan they separate all types of waste into five or more pickups and the Japanese are careful to clean each piece of plastic before disposing of it. The way the USA manages it is lazy and self defeating as just a small amount of amount of dirty plastic, or plastic with foreign material prevents the recycling process from either working or from being efficient. Plus too many waste disposal municipalities buy the wrong equipment for their customers and then proceed to not recycle because the cost of changing again is too great after making the mistake of buying the wrong equipment in the first place.
How much energy and water is spent on the cleaning process performed in all these households? It might really be better for the environment for these plastics and the carbon they contain to be permanently sequestered in a landfill, thus being returned to the ground where they previously existed for millions of years in the form of oil or gas. This would keep them out of the oceans where they would turn to microplastic.
Worth mentioning that researchers are also looking at natural species that enjoy eating certain types of plastics - The Galleria genus of "wax moths" are enemies to commercial beekeepers, and yet show great potential for happily devouring our plastic waste.
I think a most important part of this process is the reduction then elimination of the production of semi or non recyclable materials that are only made that way to increase shareholder value at the expense of our environment. "Externalities"
there need to be consistent volumes of the feedstock to even consider recycling.
If the manufacturer's made diffent plastics in set colours according to the type of plastic used, sorting would be very simple. That could be used for the single use versions at least.
Sorting is not the problem, the problem is contaminants that get into the structure of the molecule, you can't easily sort that out without chemically processing the plastic. It doesn't really matter much what type of plastic it is, they all suffer this same problem.
I don't understand much of this, but it sounds encouraging - like maybe the nerds will save us - again - if we can figure out how to shut up and stay out of their way.
It would be interesting to hear how upcycling of plastics could fit with - or help drive - a Closed Loop Manufacturing scheme.
Thanks for the video. I wish you had started the video with your topic, though, rather than taking almost 7 minutes to get to it ... you almost lost me along the way but I hung in there. Topic starts here 6:48
The problem is how we deal with plastic waste and the recycling thereof. A) We don't, beyond telling each other that something must be done. B) We don't, to any significant degree beyond a few experimental recycling plants.
All of the above will only be viable if crude supplies run lower and gets more expensive. My impression is that big oil will only step up plastics production as ICE demand lessons with the increased adoption of EV's.
Agreed, at the end of the day fossil fuels are really the root cause of a lot of issues which won’t be resolved until we leave them in the ground.
Back in the '70/80's I saw something on T.V. that stated the Japanese were mining their trash pits for metals. I've not heard about this in 30 plus years. Anyone else know if any country has gone and actually this done this in this day and age.
Fascinating!
Although extending life cycles of plastic has been a solution to the problem as you have pointed out the push back by small and large corporations who control production have the opposite view!! It comes down to greed and profits. However with political and legislative cover as we have seen of late by the UK pushing higher recycling avenues every five years has these large entities rethinking Please remember the solutions to our problems are out there but disruptive technologies are being concealed and threatened for profits
The main problem the US faces with recycling centers that can shred and sort automatically with lasers and radiation. What we need is more of the plants like where your "stock footage" of that green bottle cap came out of. The recycling plant in Germany where they can get 98% pure into bales and then their sister company turns it into 99.9% chips of plastic or granules. The worlds main issue is that food containers need almost 99.999% pure material to be food safe where cosmetics is fine with 99.99%.
Plastics can also easily be recycled in a closed loop gasifier, producing no CO2 and providing fuel and heat !
The problem with the word "plastic" is that it is about as specific as the word "mammal". Both plastics and mammals come in great variety. Yes, we have domesticated mammals like cows or goats. But whales or voles, less so. Likewise depolymerizing PET or polycarbonates will not necessarily work for all the other ones, just like milking machines for cows will not work for porcupines. Human Isomer already rightly pointed at this problem.
I'd like to add that here lies a huge educational problem. If we wish people to do some sorting they need to have a bit of basic knowledge about mammals. I mean plastics. But there is none of that in our education system. For almost anyone a plastic is a plastic. Even for this otherwise excellent channel.
The other thing that (eventually) needs to happen is that it needs to become economically attractive to recycle and that means that plastics that cannot be recycled need to be penalized at some point, even phased out. That also means that laminates/blends of more than one kind need to be outlawed if one of its components prevents recycling.
Instead of throwing plastics into the landfill, they should melt them all down and store them in a warehouse until we figure out how to process them.
Remember Zn is biologically active too. More of it in the human body than Fe, so they tell us. Let's make sure the enzymes used don't leak out into the environment, where they might cause mischief, or something worse.
Excellent presentation as always. While a circular economy is a ideal aspiration, I would be really interested to hear your opinions on energy from waste schemes. Are they a cover for incineration or are they a valuable way of extracting value from waste? Reducing consumption is the first priority, reusing items second and recycling third, but how far down the list is energy from waste? An interesting video for the future maybe?
Airlines should make their tickets chargeable by the KG.
If we bred a super bug that can break down plastic, could that be a hazard if it jumps the fence out into our plastic life and east's everything?
Finally zinc has a use besides pennies.
Why don't we make ALL the plastic manufacturers spend 25% of their profits and 100% of their CEO bonuses to clean up their mess.
Thanks for the--as usual--outstanding content.
Suggestion: Can you take a look at the topic of the aerosol masking effect, aka "global dimming"?
I'm a bit skeptical about plasic-eating bacteria/enzymes. History tells us that, all too frequently, yesterday's 'solution' becomes tomrow's problem, and I can't help thinking we might be doing that again. What if the bacteria escapes (which it's bound to do), and we then find that the plastic we use in our homes and in industry, health-care, etc starts to get eaten? A leaking bottle of Coke in the fridge is pretty nasty, but nothing compared to the disasters that might occur in industry, bulk storage, safety, etc if all plastic becomes 'bio-degradable'.
I'm scared of superbugs. Their future evolution is never something entirely in our control. If some escape from a reactor and they mutate in some further way that is harmful to us/ to life, it's probably going to be impossible to close the lid of that Pandora's box. I'm much less scared of catalysts that simply either work or don't.
(That's an apocalyptic sci-fi idea I have some vague ideas about. No problem of someone else picks it up, works on it, gets there first. Just please write an unhappy ending, that's all. So this is it: We want green hydrogen. It's notionally possible to modify algae to produce this by photosynthesis. Miracle! Solution found. ... and then a few chapters later, they leak into some ocean ... and you can imagine how that works out.)
Keep working on breaking down the plastic. Until that is perfected, dig holes in the country side and throw the plastic in the holes instead of the ocean. When available, robots can process the the landfills and make new products out of the plastic trash.
How do you add zinc and methane to a plastic reactor when converting it to gasoline
I'm going to disagree about plumbing being better with plastics. I think copper based plumbing is far superior and longer lasting than the plastic based alternatives. The one place that plastics have brought an improvement is the red and green synthetic seals that are available to use instead of the black rubber o-rings and seals.
One solution creates another only to be high lighted 20-30 years later.
As a chemist who works with one of the presented methods of "splitting" PET into its components, I can add that the process works. The issue is how to get the materials sorted for a good base to work with. If there's a rather low percentage of, e.g., PE contained, this will not be broken down, and other materials also won't. And it can be difficult to clean the products of the reaction.
Sorting of materials is actually the major problem for any plastic recycling. If it was possible to separate the materials up to a 99.99% purity, recycling would be much easier. But anything below this purity will either lead to expensive clean-up steps, or will prevent recycling at all.
By the way, "bisphenol" is pronounced differently (not bise-phenol, but biss-phenol), and it's unfortunately one potent endocrine disruptor which is under strict limits in most countries.
intresting.... but interoperability is something only governments can enforce...
but on the other hand, isn't there already a big opertunity regarding commercial wastes? like restaurants, fishing nets, protective packaging (ie. Styrofoam)
or is BPA-PC a minor unpopular plastic? like maybe we need it for PVC or polyester?
@@acasccseea4434 Why does it have to be enforced? And if a govt definitely wants it it can issue a crisis and a related lockdown. We've seen that in the last wto years and numerous lockdowns are looming on the horizon.
Wow..😧…😌👌🏼.. Thank You for Your work and sharing info❣️ 👏🏼☺️🇸🇪
Spot on about the preparation. It seems sorting is a starting point with only the "choice cuts" going for splitting. Pop bottles (PET) could be a candidate. One idea from a science fiction magazine (Omni) is to at least separate the waste into types and storing them in deep holes until the technology comes about to use each one. The story was that each sealed tip could become a future goldmine.
@@frutt5k If the process requires a clean input stream, then that cleanliness has to be "enforced" somehow. They could, for example, pay less (or even nothing) for batches that don't meet the standard. Not all enforcement involves "jackbooted thugs".
Just recently microplastics were found in human blood for the first time.
@Dave? Posted but youtube deleted it
@Dave? Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood, Environment International, 2022.
not to mention that we've found them on the ocean floor, mountaintops, placentas, and mother's milk. it's everywhere. we've all been poisoned by it.
I think deposit return on plastics is the way to go. Then instead of becoming a waste product they have a value. Litter pickers could make a fortune.
True, but we already have deposits in many places and they’re not working. Although, I think the issue is just that they’re not expensive enough.
I got juice from a place one time which had a $4 bottle deposit…you can bet your butt that I returned that bottle!
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet Yeah that's not how it works in the parts of the UK it's currently implemented, and is likely due to go across all 4 countries of the UK in the coming year. The deposit amount is 20p no matter if it's a small or large plastic bottle, can or tin. It's resulted in a 94% recycle rate of those containers.
@@NeonVisual I think there’s a cultural thing at play though. Cause I’m the US the standard deposit is 0.10 or something and our return rate is atrocious. Increasing it to .20 or .30 has been tossed around I believe, but I’m unsure how much of an effect it will have.
The example of $4 that I had was just a single place that had their own system.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet 10c would be about 7p in our money. People probably wouldn't bother here at such a low level either. We also have a tax on high sugar drinks like coke which also helps to drive people away from garbage in plastic bottles. It's about 37 cents in your money per 1ltr on top of the regular price. So in your money a ltr of coke would have about 62c added to the price in total.
This would be a help, just unfortunate that there always has to be a monetary motivation to get people to care.
Hopefully they dont boost the micro organisms too much and they start eating all of our plastic things lol. Some good ideas.
I would be ok with that boost because then we can go back to are old ways glass.
And natural rubber.
@@thesilentone4024 that would be great, when the interiors of durable goods like refrigerators and vehicles get dissolved into some disgusting biofilm
edit: not to mention all the pipes in sanitation and insulation used for power distribution
Invasive species much
I hope they do
The micropocalpse
One day we might be digging up old dumps to mine plastic for recycling, if the microbes haven't gotten there first.
I think it might happen for precious metals from e-waste first.
Honestly this just in general. Landfills are often a ticking time bomb leak wise, and contain all sorts of materials.
Sorting into metals, minerals/aggregate, and RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel), then Pyrolysis and/or Gasification of the RDF (As described ~6:30 in this video) could yield all sorts of products, *as well as* essentially doing environmental remediation work + boosting nearby property values.
Granted they may not always use the best possible pollution control systems / novel processes (they often use fixed/moving bed combustion rather than Fluidized Bed Combustion, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or Pyrolysis processes), but Europe uses few landfills and thus shows this is quite viable.
@Just Have A Think By the way I’d love a video on Landfill Mining / No-Landfill Municipal Solid Waste Workflows if you can ever get around to it!
2:28 8 billion tons is nowhere near the total biomass on the planet. That'd be around 550 billion tons of carbon alone. With the water content, take several times that.
I thought this too. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he misspoke and meant to reference the animal biomass. (I don't actually know that this is true either, but sounds more plausible)
@@sammason2300 There is about 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon in animal biomass on earth, total animal biomass should be around 5 times more, so it's in the ballpark, but still not quite correct.
I also really respect him, so I'd say the mistake was probably made by someone else and he didn't check it enough.
The solution to plastic waste is to attach responsibility for the waste to the use of the product. In other words, if a company wants to use plastic for a consumer application, they must create a plan for dealing with the resulting waste stream, and they must fund their share of the cost of that waste stream.
This would result in the cost being added to the calculus of using plastics, and those uses that created the most difficult waste streams would become the most costly. Moreover, by pricing the cost of disposal into the cost of use, consumers would be forced to pay for the full cost of their convenience items. All together, this would push the market towards the most efficient use of plastic, and away from the uses that create the greatest problems.
It does not work to try and fix this problem downstream. That's like saying to industry "no matter how big a problem you create, someone else will pay for fixing it.". We don't have to guess how that's going to turn out.
Agreed. We need to stop socializing the damage from these companies while privatizing the profits.
Maybe a tax o. Vergin plastic. Used cans for soda. Go back to returnable glass, like Coca Cola use too do.
I’ve always been mildly horrified at how reliant I am on plastic on a daily basis, seemingly no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
The things that I rely on and have been designed to fail so that I go buy a replacement are the ones that horrify me. Cause I’m forced to keep polluting just so a company can meet their quarterly profit goals.
i know right storing things in cardboard is nasty tasting and yet all fish we eat are full of microplastics unless they where made in a aquaponics
There is nothing wrong with long-term use plastics. The problem is all the plastic packaging and other single-use things that are only plastic because plastic is cheap.
You’re not horrified enough, have a mental breakdown and then I’ll consider your proposal for extra garage space.
Same thoughts here.. it's inescapable - but we have gotten used to carrying our own shopping bags into stores and recycling everything that our city will recycle, which unfortuneately are just 1s and 2s. How is your curbside recycling set up?
A while back, a San Francisco startup had an interesting solution: Shred and wash the plastics, heat till the low melting point contents flow, and press into sheets or extrude into shapes. The results can then become anything from grocery bags to flooring, countertops, or structural beams.
That idea originated by a woman in Africa. She made paving "stones" and bricks.
@@spacelemur7955 likely thousands of people have tried variations.
Not sure I'd want an extemely flammable countertop, doesn't seem like a good place to use plastic! Or floors, for that matter.
@@PutItAway101 Linoleum is flammable and widely used. Wooden countertops? Laminates? Particleboard? Plywood?
Don't look now, but our houses are already flamable.
Just stay sober in the kitchen, don't smoke and have a few (properly maintained) fire extinguishers (one on every floor) and you are good to go. And don't forget smoke alarms.
@@PutItAway101 so, you’re deathly afraid of cars, water bottles, synthetic clothing, scrub brushes, toys, …
After seeing your video I began to wonder: would it be possible to modify the MANUFACTURING process of particular plastics to include compounds that will aid in the recycling or industrial composting processes? Like mold the catalyst right into the part. Then when it’s tossed into a recycling reactor, it instantly breaks down.
The problem with including the catalyst for the breakdown of the product in the product itself is that it will do what it is supposed to do way before you want it to, basically, cutting down on the amount of time that the plastic could be used, since the catalyst would be slowly helping break it down from the minute it is introduced. Not to mention that, odds are, it would make the plastic less structurally stable, which is particularly bad if the plastic part is supposed to withstand any amount of force.
In general, it is not that hard to have a reactor with the catalyst inside, allowing for a continuous process. The issue is with substrate purity. A lot of effort goes into sorting plastic waste so you can have mostly pure educts, which is necessary for a high quality product. And high quality products out of recycling are crucial if we want to make a circular economy financially feasible and have the products keep standards of quality.
The usefulness of plastics isn't just convenient bottles and plastic bags. Through circumstances in my life I worked in the medical industry and I can tell you that without plastics, our medical abilities would be degraded to the point that many people would die everyday than they do now. Just the amount of plastics used during a single kidney Dialysis session would fill a 5 gallon bucket of waste. And the average Dialysis patient needs 3 session per week. The cost and the function of Dialysis machines would skyrocket as well as the cost of each session without plastics. The same for pretty much any modern medical procedure.
THIS
I have no experience in the area so can’t speak to that, but seeing pre-plastics medical devices (in museums/period pieces etc) is kind of eerie; all the latex tubing, leather, etc
That and everything tended to be much bulkier and required autoclave for reuses, even for the most simple of things!
Even things like tape for gauze/stabilizing a needle are often plastics, so a simple bandage for a cut/after you donate blood benefits from plastics!
Thanks Dave. I truly hope that this research leads to economically viable processes for plastics recycling, as soon as possible. The last time I took a long sea voyage was in the early 1970's, and even back then, I was shocked by the amount of plastics waste which was floating, all along the shipping lanes. And the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps worse than the Pacific, on average. It'll be far worse now, two generations later.
I worked in the coast guard, spending long periods of time on ships that were docked in various harbours in Canada and the US. I was always disgusted by the litter, mainly plastic, that wound up in a typical harbour after a good rain storm.
I live in rural eastern Australia on a large property, on a regular basis we find spent balloons, plastic tarps, building insulation, complete umbrellas that have fallen out of the sky? In the last three weeks we have been gifted two umbrellas, one next the house on a day with very little wind.. from the plastic sky gods?
We are miles away from the nearest neighbor, further from a town, an hours drive from a city, just imagine what is floating around up there? Not really related but anyway. Anyone else experienced this?
I'm wondering how close you live to a road that is regularly traversed by lorries carrying an unsecured load. Perhaps on the way to a landfill site or something.
2:23 Eight billion tons is NOT more than the total mass of all living biomass on the planet.
It appears total biomass is likely ~500 billion tonnes.
How about we make Coca Cola & co. pay to clean up and force them to go back to glass bottle as before they lobbied to use plastic to increase their margin?
Thanks for sharing these emerging solutions for making plastics more circular. Let's hope they're able to be scaled up quickly as well as companies shifting their mindsets / business models around how plastic is produced.... couldn't agree more that we need to start making less virgin materials and use more that have been "recycled" and in the case, broken down to be rebuilt!
My 9 to 5 is in “continuous improvement” so I’m pretty experienced in what the average company wants to see before they swap to new tech. It’s honestly just profit or savings.
So the biggest thing that we can do in the meantime to help speed the switch along is “putting our finger on the scale” so that the new solution = more profit.
Until that happens, it will only be a handful of well intentioned companies who make the switch…but nothing of real consequence.
I think it's time for governments to step in and start to regulate use of new plastics - perhaps by something similar to carbon taxes. The more recycled or upcycled plastics the manufacturers can use, the less taxes they should pay. And we, as consumers, will very quickly recognize the true value of recycling then - recycled products will be cheaper than new ones. And I bet suddenly a lot of manufacturers will discover the beauties of non-plastic packaging options... We've tried for decades now to do it nicely and "not harm the industries". Time to change the tone of the music.
Governments are bought off by the oil industry. People have to choose NOT to buy plastic, starting with single use stuff , like baggies and bottles. It isn’t hard- it’s a choice.
I just noticed for the first time that you have "Capital", from Piketti, in your background. What was your opinion of it?
It's great to have been following you. You started as a channel more about technology and science, and incorporated more and more climate videos, and alluding now a little bit to social issues stemming from our political and economic context (Capitalism). This mirrors my own progress on those issues, and it led me to learn a lot on the history of Labor, the struggles for Socialism and Anarchims, and involve myself politically on that front.
Anyway, it's not a political channel, but you seem to have a good perspective, it would be great to know more about your political views.
Especially if it can be framed in the need to go beyond Capitalims to save our burning planet. I think you did a video that touched on it, but I don't remember that it was very developped on how we could achieve this (depends on your political affiliation, the tactics you prefer).
If you'd like books that explore this, I'm currently reading "Toward a New Socialism", by the economist Paul Cockshott, and it's very good. "The people's Republic of Wal-Mart" showed how we could plan our economy (crucial for a coordinated green transition). The book "Less is More", by Jason Hickel, alluded to some of the things we need to do, which goes into a Socialist direction, but could be implemented within a Capitalist framework (it does admonish the notion that we can continue with "Green Growth"). Basically, it was:
- No more planned obsolescence (could reduce our production needs by a lot).
- No more induced demand (ads). People would be happier too, less consumerism.
- Restoration of the commons. Land trusts. Public transport. Walkable urban landscape.
- Things should be repairable. Uniform standards. Easily swappable components. Made to be recycled or re-used (end-of-lifecycle in mind). A circular economy.
... there was a lot more, it was a bit too reformist for my taste, but I'd add:
- Planned directly democratic production. Because I don't see how to tackle climate change unless our economy is geared to satisfy our needs, not for profit by exploiting ourselves, creating externalities. This imply the end of Capitalism, and the method on how to get there vary. But the important part is the need for direct democracy.
Anyway, I could explain a lot more, but I was curious to hear from your perspective.
I would love to have more productive discussions on politics but I feel this wouldn't be the right channel for it.
That's just my two cents. Thanks for bringing up these ideas though, and sharing those books.
By the way, besides those book recommendations, do you follow any UA-cam channel that do cover these topics? I'm assuming you follow this content already, and I'm interested to check it out.
Hi DeathToMockingBirds. Thanks for your feedback. In fact if you go right back to video #1 about four years ago, you'll see that the channel was actually started specifically to focus on the climate emergency and has developed more technical videos along the way. The strapline of the channel is "The Climate and Sustainable Energy Channel". As for my politics, I would say I am a pragmatic socialist. I thought 'Capital' was extremely technical and very hard going. I only got about half way through and gave up. In general terms, I recognise that we need the three legs of the stool - Government, Commerce and the Public to make a success of climate mitigation.
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you for your answer. I also stopped Capital halfway, both from Piketty and Marx. Ultimately it boils down to keeping Capitalism or not, with direct democracy in the workplace or not. To me, I have trouble imagining the green transition we need while Capitalist incentives keep driving decisions regarding the production of goods (which is the main contributor to climate change).
Your channel is the main one I recommend when it comes to available solutions, it's a matter of having a system in place that has an active interest in the well-being of all, not one built on exploitation.
@@bhcs I follow way too many political channel, but here's a few that influenced me:
- Second Thought: ua-cam.com/video/H787Dj4oMWU/v-deo.html
- Democracy at Work: ua-cam.com/video/Pp06rcwYNdg/v-deo.html
- WhatIsPolitics: ua-cam.com/video/2UlCw3cvatQ/v-deo.html
- Anark: ua-cam.com/video/uTwxpTyGUOI/v-deo.html
- GravelInstitute: ua-cam.com/video/2mI_RMQEulw/v-deo.html
- Viki1999: ua-cam.com/video/KOttlyRHD8k/v-deo.html
- Re-Education): ua-cam.com/video/KU_Ppjol0Tc/v-deo.html
- Mexie: ua-cam.com/video/u_Z0Srfpd2s/v-deo.html
- Radical Reivewer: ua-cam.com/video/WW7toetAkYI/v-deo.html
- ThatDangDad: ua-cam.com/video/WoMRzx3o31I/v-deo.html
- SomeMoreNews: ua-cam.com/video/UZhW1k_m7OY/v-deo.html
- MarxistPaul: ua-cam.com/video/7Z8yTTkDLuk/v-deo.html
- Thought Slime: ua-cam.com/video/z6njzAq7ttA/v-deo.html
- Saint Andrewism: ua-cam.com/video/-1ZK2-viyAo/v-deo.html
- Vaush: ua-cam.com/video/ksoYsz5JS0M/v-deo.html
- Hakim: ua-cam.com/video/vk2yCePYs90/v-deo.html
- Shaun: ua-cam.com/video/UBc7qBS1Ujo/v-deo.html
- 1Dime: ua-cam.com/video/Hd_HIGMMKDA/v-deo.html
Economists/philosophers:
- Richard Wolff: ua-cam.com/video/IkNNQihOrNA/v-deo.html
- Michael Albert: ua-cam.com/video/WfuEqLI5wLc/v-deo.html
- Paul Cockshott: ua-cam.com/video/kTl4b0w6mpk/v-deo.html
- Slavoj Zizek and Yanis Varoufakis: ua-cam.com/video/Ghx0sq_gXK4/v-deo.html
Podcasts:
- Revolution Now: ua-cam.com/video/fTNzUvIusEQ/v-deo.html
- World to win: ua-cam.com/video/ZOhQSB7VXuc/v-deo.html
- Fight Like an Animal: www.againsttheinternet.com/post/1-the-biology-of-the-right-left-divide-pt-1-why-political-arguments-don-t-change-people-s-minds
Thank you for giving me a glimmer of hope. We could speed up this evolution by taxing the hell out of plastics made from virgin materials. But that would require a functional democracy.
Agreed. I actually call and email my politicians once a month on this exact subject.
Sure, it kind of feels like screaming into a void, but I guess it’s better than sitting on my butt doing nothing.
That introduction was brilliant! You can feel right away that this video is going to go in depth about plastics, unlike the many "inspirational" videos which never go into the important details.
In 1978 I invented a way to recycle landfill plastics of the thermo-plastic variety vs the thermo-setting kind. The racially invidious professor gave me a terrible grade. Years later I saw my technique being employed to make park benches. Many roads degrade over time as the sun cooks the tar of which roads are made which makes them crumble. Combining recycled plastic with recycled glass would make much more durable roads than by using the current slurry of tar and rock aggregate. In fact a strategic use of such composite roads could be made into solar energy producers of EMF and/or batteries and/or electric roadways.
And driving on those roads further breaks down the plastic into nano plastic that is washed into out waterways.
Racially invidious?
Great idea!
@@incognitotorpedo42 Terms chosen especially for you.
Good news, thanks. The more work done at room temperature the better
Thanks for the weekly update!
As I see it the problem is that we produce too many different types of plastic, and a good recycling-upcycling technology that works for all of them is unlikely to exist.
The only two solutions that I see are:
1. Legislation that forbid putting on the market of all but a few plastic types.
2. We simply incinerate all plastic waste and develop technologies to sustainably produce plastic without usin fossil hydrocarbons.
It would be good to have a JHAT episode on incineration as a way of dealing with waste - good or bad?. Our local council built one (against the wishes of its future neighbours!), to avoid using land-fill (when the government made landfill very expensive a few years ago), but I'm fairly certain they no longer use this incinerator (why, I don't know and can't find out).
Easy its bad to burn it go camping and try it
Than gi camping and burn it with a propane torch Still bad.
Then claim to do electricity with your propane torch
Than cool down your propane fire with more garbage and add more propane. Then claim you produce electricity.
There easy
@@paulhaynes8045 Yes an episode on waste incineration would be interesting.
I've tested the emissions of a few of them in my previous job and they can be fairly clean, but for the sake of profit they don't do enough (imo) for the abatement of dioxins/PCBs/PAHs etc.
Incineration puts all the carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 and it is only feasible for certain polymers like PE or PP. As soon as you have chlorinated polymers in the waste like CPE, PVC, PVDC you're likely to get toxic products. But forbidding those would be a big blow as they are actually quite useful materials. Depolymerization ("Splitting") would circumvent such problems. (Which is why this is an interesting video).
The truth is that there is no simple solution. Progress can be made but it requires that more people become knowledgeable about all the little devils in all the details. Governments cannot leave that to the polymer industry. They will have to hire polymers people to sort it out independently form the industry. Otherwise they will make really dumb decisions.
Thank you Dave, I needed this video. I've been relying on those precious microbes to be even remotely positive about plastic waste. This zinc catalyst + methanol method could be another solution to reduce the vast plastic islands we've built up over the decades.
Cheers Andy. I'm glad it was OK.
If someone can figure out how to profit big from it, it will happen.
Pure UNSCIENTIFIC bullshit. Changing this channel to "don't recommend channel" setting.
I have no particular plastic insights-
...Just wanted to say thank you for another well researched, well reasoned episode.
2:24 Hold on, i believe 8 billion tons of plastic is still far less than the total biomass on earth, right? If i'm not mistaken there is ~450 billion tons of carbon stored in all plants. But it might be comparable to the biomass of all animals, which would be the same order of magnitude if i remember correctly.
And of course that's still a dizzying amount of plastic, don't get me wrong...
Great post my friend. I always enjoy hearing about forward progress on the plastic dilemma. It is surely a sore subject.
Glad you enjoyed it
I try and avoid using plastic as much as possible. Or reuse it where and when I can. I believe I do a better job at it than most people, but it's not easy.
Agreed. I find that living a “low waste lifestyle” tends to mean swapping your own time and effort in order to produce less waste.
Hopefully, we start to make some changes to our economy where the low waste option is also the easiest one as well as the one that costs the least.
I’m excited for this, but I don’t expect it to take off until we seriously pull back on our fossil fuel production.
Until then, virgin plastic is insanely cheap because it’s coming from the excess of another process so it’ll be near impossible for anything to compete.
But this sure would be amazing…having a circular plastic system and no fossil fuel drilling? Where do I sign up for that future!
That's where government regulation could help.
We need more bribe money to keep the money system going, if the hippies win everyone will be dead from the factories shutting down leading to global total dying. Or as we know it, GTD, as refered to in the Bible: marc chapter 4 page 40 verse 5
@@matthewsaxe6383 yup I’m all for it. I actually call and email my reps once a month in order to remind them that I want a carbon tax put in place. Slowly but surely we seem to be getting there.
@Tommy Taffy That's economic nonsense. One person's subsidies are another person's taxes. Where do you think the money for the subsidies comes from?
@Tommy Taffy normally I’m all for subsidies, but this case is different for me. We already subsidize the fossil fuel industry which becomes evidenced when I compare the gas that my wife uses for her commute as a percentage of our budge vs a percentage of our carbon footprint.
The gas makes up a messily 1% of our budgeted expenses, but accounts for about 12% of our carbon footprint. So that’s why I’m in favor of increasing the cost of oil based products. I don’t mind if you call it a tax or a removal of subsidies or something else, the price needs to reflect the environmental impact.
Unfortunately with PLA, you have to have very specific conditions within the compost its in so that it can start degrading. And with 3d printing modfying the polymer for better durability, weather resistance etc, they chuck in more problematic chemicals into the compost that it would land in.
PLA is a dead end.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Maybe in terms of usefullness against plastic trash yeah, we just found a way to generate plastic if we run out of fosssil fuel lol
The conditions aren’t too difficult commercially, the main issue is lack of investment in the Municipal Solid Waste Management side, as well as lack of sorting/clear labeling.
@@DRakeTRofKBam Granted
- Electrolysis (For Hydrogen->Plastics/More Likely Use in Hydrotreating Parts of the Other Pathways Below etc)
- Gasification (For Syngas->Plastics)
- Pyrolysis (for Pyrolysis Oil as a replacement for Crude Oil / Some Fractions of Crude Oil)
Can all work as well as Non-Conventional Method Bioplastics (Like PLA etc), and the latter two can be done both with biomass, as well as with unsorted/degraded plastics as well as any other fractions in what is called “Refuse Derived Fuel” or RDF
AND All of the plastics made with these processes would use existing facilities (helping with the “Just Transition” to a decarbonized economy), and be a “Drop In Replacement” (ie be Nylon, or ABS, or Acetal, not something “nylon like” etc)
I remember a video whereby they said "You need to *make Virgin plastic more expensive* That way it will give companies incentive to use recycable plastics - - -then all that waste will be a valuable resource!"
Thank you for another informative video. I see cyclical systems as all important when we talk about sustainability. The earth is that type of systems and we are a part of the earth.
Agreed. A book I was reading recently kept pointing out how none of our current economic systems account for needing raw materials and disposing of waste. Hence, half the issues that we’re facing today.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet can I ask what book
@@matthewsaxe6383 donut economics. I bought it after hearing the lady give a Ted talk and be a guest on the Freakonomics podcast.
I wouldn’t recommend it though because I think it’s targeted at Econ majors so 60% of it went over my head. But if you’re interested then I’d highly recommend the “is economic growth the wrong goal” episode of Freakonomics.
Seem like really great theories though so I hope it catches on.
You dont think the manufacturering of disposable plastic impacts the environment? I would argue that planned obsolescence is the biggest contributor to global warming. How many barrels of oil are used to manufacture plastic items that are designed to fail right out of warranty?
I like the new logo!
Also yeah, recycling not being as high quality as virgin plastic is a big problem that needs solved.
You said it again, " now we need to get the cost of the process low enough...." At the end of the day you can't escape the economic fact of life, that businesses cannot compete using a more expensive process. The solution to this imbalance is not to despair at ever making these good guy solutions cheaper, but to put more effort into making the bad stuff more expensive. The economic playing field will then slope in favour of the environmental solutions. The money then flows like water downhill into perfecting these technologies. How do we make the bad stuff more expensive? Tax it at source, -as the oil or gas or coal comes out of the ground. The trouble is that too many governments are very deeply in the pockets of the oil giants, they cannot legislate against their masters.
I hope to see those innovative new processes brought to a significant scale soon.
In the meantime individuals can reduce their plastic consumption by buying food items in bulk sizes which reduces the ratio of plastic to product mass.
One small scale simple idea is to bring your own bags to the grocery store. That way you reuse the bags multiple times. I do that, and the staff adjusted quickly to the idea. They don't a t like it's wierd...or that you are wierd.
Bulk consumption is cheaper, too!
@@julieheath6335 - In my area most businesses are open to customers bringing their own bag, or they encourage it. It is understandable that some businesses might be hesitant since such use can be seen as a potential for hiding and stealing merchandise.
I'd better buy a bigger plastic refrigerator, and more plastic storage boxes and bags, so that the extra provisions can be stored. Oh, and I'll have to use a car for carrying the goods home from the shops, in bigger plastic carrying bags. I'm being ironic, but these things do happen. Larger quantities often involve using thicker-walled plastic packaging, so it's not as linear a process as many people think.My wife discovered that, when she tried to buy 'biologically degradable' cleaning products, there were several downsides. Here are a few: They arrived in plastic packaging. They cost more. They were less effective at cleaning, requiring larger quantities of hot water, to prevent hygiene from suffering. They had to be bought from countries far away from home, via the internet, because local stores could not / would not sell them. The cleaning items were much less durable and had to be discarded sooner. All of the waste went into landfill, because the local authorities could not recycle most of it.
Manufacturers aren’t helping his ratio by downsizing their packages to disguise the fact they’re raising the unit (mL or g) cost by keeping the package price static and giving you less product. This also increases the plastic:product ratio, increasing plastic use.
For example, juice cartons went from 64 fluid ounces to 59 and are now 52. Ice cream tubs are worse - many went from 64 floz to 48. Oddly, milk cartons are often still 64 floz.
Another breakthrough with no commercial implementations yet? Throw it onto the pile...
Now this sounds very promising. I am strongly against changing from plastic. The problem is not the plastic but how we deal with it after use. A sensible recycling method would be perfect.
I always remember having to order some of those chemicals when I worked in a school. They were used as solvents for gluing acrylic.
Yeah your first sentence is quite narrow, you can broaden that to most of the world.
Thinking plastic isn't everywhere in the developing world too is just folly.
Looks great on paper! I'm hoping this is rapidly commercialised and industrialised. I reckon it'd help if plastic manufacturers were tariffed with recycling costs. As the producers, they are obligated to deal with the clean up.
Agreed. We need to stop letting companies side responsibility for downstream effects of their products.
Since a large quantity of plastics originate as packaging of products from.China.
A tariff is not going to do anything to a foreign company.
Consumers end up paying ALL tariffs.
Even imported products can be forced to account for recycling costs. Many items just would not/could not be sold if they had to include recycling costs. Many times, an otherwise excellent product could not be sold if it had to include recycling cost. That would mean that decisions about parts and packaging would be part of the product cycle, automatically paying for the recycling cost. It also would behoove major manufacturers to help pay for sophisticated recycling facilities to reduce their costs of production.
You can just burn the plastic. That is what would have been happened anyways in nature.
It breaks my heart when I see in an ice cream shop server sick a plastic neon coloured spoon into the ice cream cone, or here where i live they sell cooked corn in the park, but serve it in a cup with a plastic spoon... or when I see my family use plastic single use earbuds, we've become so numb and careless...
Speaking of ice cream shops: it also kills me when I see them using plastic spoons for samples. So they literally use the spoon for one tiny bite and then discard it!
Didn't some scientists discover that some worm 🐛 was eating plastic? Not sure if the wastes was still plastic wormcast as crap
We've recently switched to having our milk delivered in glass bottles. A very small change, but rather inconvenient (larger plastic bottles are a much more efficient way of storing the milk in the fridge, and we have developed 'order anxiety' - a condition that causes stress the day before every delivery as we try to work out if we've got enough milk left to get us through to the next morning!). And it's also rather expensive (a 2 pint plastic bottle of organic milk from Sainsbury's costs £1.20, whereas a delivered pint of organic milk costs 88p - 47% more!). But at least that's a little less plastic being 'recycled' (I have strong doubts as to whether it really is recycled), and 12 kilos less that I have to carry up the hill each week. We are lucky that we're well enough off to do this - I suspect that most people, especially those with cars or who have their shopping delivered, would think we were daft.
I mention this, not to get a pat on the back for being green (or told that I am daft!), but to illustrate just how difficult it is to give up just a small amount of the plastic we use. We are fairly careful with what we buy and go out of our way to not buy plastic (in as much as we can), and we recycle and compost everything we can. But our non-recycling bin (collected every two weeks) is still pretty full each time it is collected, and it is almost entirely full of plastic packaging. But at least it's light to carry up the cellar steps!
It’s great that you try your best but why still consuming cows milk and I assume other animal products? If I may ask, as avoiding these products is one of the most impactful choices we can make as individuals to help the environment and the climate crisis.
@@ab-td7gq It's a fair question. If there were more plant-based products that were tasty and readily avialable it would make the choice much easier. But a cold glass of milk is a hard thing the substitute, isn't it?
You're doing your part and i salute you for that. We all have our part. Some of us small and others cause it's within their powers to do a lot more. If we all contributed as much as we can the world would be a happier, greener and cleaner place.. ... But you never know who you might inspire and how far your influence might go.
@@TheBricetune There are great alternatives these days and delicious plant based recipes on line. Its easier than ever before. Taste buds take only a few weeks to adapt to new foods. Milk is full of pus, blood, feces, hormones and often antibiotics so for me personally it wasn’t that hard to switch to soy milk.
@@ab-td7gq I much prefer oat milk. It’s also stable in hot drinks, whereas soy milk will curdle. I use the cartons cut in half as plant pots for my veg seeds.
incinerating it for heat energy would reduce our need to extract oil, and eliminate the waste. landfills seem like a lazy way of dealing with waste...the idea is just "out of sight, out of mind".
Incinerator is probably harder to make a profit unless there's exception to safety regulation like not needing to filter smoke stack (for toxin) or not needing to care for garbage truck traffic into the neighbourhood (waste sludge). The incinerator will be great if it can operate like coal power plant and have nothing to care.
Landfilling plastic keeps it out of the ocean and sequesters carbon. If the landfill is properly designed, leaching of substances from the plastic should not be a problem.
@@xponen Europe operates manly on a model where they have strict (Although in my opinion not struct enough) emission control regulations and thus are fine short of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. You can read up on their policy as well as existing “Incineration” and/or “Waste to Energy” (incineration with steam boiler+turbine) plants.
The main issue that needs to be solved in the Incineration model is Processing of Ash, as of now it is disposed of in landfills. Granted it isn’t as toxic as Coal Ash, especially if the Refuse Derived Fuel / Feedstock is sorted accordingly, but a problem we should avoid nonetheless.
Various Newer Combustion / Gasification methods can produce “slag” rather than ash which is essentially igneous rock which can be used as concrete or earthworks aggregate etc (i need to look into any potential leaching hazards more, but from what i have encountered they are supposedly inert)
Also ash reprocessing (done frequently with “Fly Ash” to make Cement, less common with “Bottom Ash”) could also solve the problem by “sorting” the ash into hazardous materials (any Mercury etc, although this should be FAR less than coal) and useful chemicals. Main issue is cost/complexity, but this may be solvable? I haven’t looked into the literature on this as much as other methods described here.
Also, at least if I remember correctly, pyrolysis produces no ash, only “Pyrolysis Oil” and “Char/Petcoke” (some char is retained in the pyrolysis oil forming a somewhat significant issue if used as a “drop in” replacement for crude oil, although this is addressable if I remember correctly.
Pyrolysis can allow for chemical recycling as mentioned ~6:30 which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions (in theory at least, this comment doesn’t have citations etc so refer to a proper paper for that) since plastic/chemicals are extracted rather than burned.
Also it can save energy in a similar manner. Doing a “Power-to-X” / “Power-to-Chemicals” process, as well as Gasification to an extent, would require more steps and energy to get to some hydrocarbon feedstock from hydrogen and/or syngas. With pyrolysis oil it is just a simple filtering/distillation away.
**IN CONCLUSION TO THIS WORDWALL:**
As of now there can be a Low Landfill Processes (bits of ash in a landfill, rather than barely compacted mixed MSW), and in the near term there can be *No Landfill, Low/No GHG Emissions Processes*
(All Char/Fly Ash Cement/Slag Aggregate/Pyrolysis Oil/Process Derived Chemicals)
@@incognitotorpedo42 It is less of an issue of “if” it will leak and contaminate groundwater, but “when”. Liners will fail eventually.
Also due to the lack of sorting, and processing they contain toxic Leachate/Solid Materials. Processing + Incineration/Gasification etc can reduce this l, *but in the end a pit of unsorted waste is a pit of unsorted waste, no matter how fancy*
@@incognitotorpedo42 On the note of carbon sequestration, i think burying near pure carbon, “washed” char/coke/petcoke/carbon black etc, in a deep stable area (as opposed to surface level biochar which has unclear stability due to various processes) in a sort of “reverse coal/graphite mining” could be a really neat and stable way of Carbon Sequestration, so i do agree on that note i guess!
Also just “Carbon Sequestration in Building Materials” (using bioplastics/carbon fiber/other carbon materials in permanent structures) can work too.
Plastic the curse of globalization, it is the shit out of the supply chain
The next thing is to make waste plastic worth something so in poorer countries you get people either recycling or just going out and collecting it because it gives them a wage. That would go a lot if not mostly all the way to stop it entering the oceans.
The single use plastic industry and plastic industry as a whole needs to be held accountable. Implement strick EPR and gradually stop/ban the use of Single Use Plastic as food & beverage container while implementing worldwide Zero Waste Sustainable Economy (Refuse, Reuse, Repair, Refill, Repurpose, Rot, etc)
Talk to the Philippines about not dumping their trash in rivers. This one small country is responsible for more than a third of all the plastic in the oceans.
@@incognitotorpedo42 It's not that they're intentionally dumping trash into the rivers. They lack a waste disposal infrastructure in general, so trash ends up on the ground, in the street, and eventually gets rained on and washed away. The effect is the same, just sayin'
@@incognitotorpedo42 are you that blind, most sachet and other single use plastic packaging are MADE AND USE BY BIG WESTERN COMPANY !!!! When they could be implementing Refill, you know LIKE THEY USED TO. But ever since oil price cheap n more drilling single use plastic becomes their choices that leads to todays situation. People become addicted and dependent of single use packaging because of their decision to cut corner and make more money.
Btw many grassroot in SAE country have been fighting againts the single use plastic by western multinational companies. And base on research by Jambek et al China is first then Indonesia second biggest plastic polluters that goes to the rivers and ocean.
Your opinion are exactly what the Big Polluter have been doing --> Shifting the Blame to the Consumer !
I've always thought the problem with plastics was not the plastics but us! If we kept everything collected and sorted at some point we would be able to do something even profitable with all that plastic waste. Humans are just slobby irresponsible pigs. :-(
I don't think I've ever, at least after the age of 6 thrown anything plastic out into the world, and mostly put stuff in the recycle bins they were supposed to go in. Doesn't take that much effort. In fact often I pick up other people's plastic.
Yeah. I pick up other people's trash too. Some people are irresponsible pigs. Quite a few of them.
Thanks for this update - much appreciated.
For plastic recycling, the technology developed by the Dutch Urban Mining Corporation is worth checking out. They can do amazing things.
ALSO... it's worth pointing out that the plastic waste problem is actually exagerrated. Yes, you read that right. Chris Dearmitt, an independent scientist and consultant, has worked hard to show the real extent of what is going on. See "plastic paradox" if, like me, you care about the facts.
Nature has now evolved to eat plastics. It happened far faster than they thought.
I got about 20 min into looking at Chris Dearmitt, and I am already very skeptical. The first website I came across read like a "one weird trick" scam. Next I started watching 'the great plastics distraction pt2' and immediately recognized tired old propaganda techniques. Once I saw that comments were turned off on the video, I stopped watching. Pretty sure this guy is a scam.
I think one of the best things we can do about plastics is make our governments (or perhaps just mine, 'cause I'm sure the U.S. is the worst) stop subsidizing the oil industry.
Couldn’t agree more. Don’t know if you’re already a part of Citizen’s Climate Lobby, but you may want to look into it. Get to meet semi regularly with like-minded people and call your reps regularly to encourage them to do stuff like this.
You should check out a Canadian company called Cielo Waste
Plastic has been around longer than the 1950s
We don't need new microbes to solve the plastic pollution problem. We need fair trade supply chains that create livelihoods for the urban poor. We can used plastic waste to reduce poverty.
That will not pay for itself, so you have to ask if there is a more efficient way to create livelihoods for the urban poor. Since we currently incarcerate large numbers of them, we could start by using prisons as schools that teach real job skills, then seal prison records for non-violent offenders as soon as they are released.
Sanity check here. The amount of biomass on earth is about 550 gigatonnes. That's a lot more than the total 8bn tonnes of plastic of plastic ever made.
Thanks. I didn’t think that particular star sounded right. Maybe it got confused with “human biomass” or something?
How about a law which requires the plastic manufacturer to pay for the clean up.
Check out "Extended Producer Responsibility", which has just been implemented in two states!
Always happy to see improvements in the plastics industry but we really need to look for alternative materials, whether green-plastics or something new entirely. This is because, no matter what, some plastic will always get into the environment, and more research is coming out to show how dangerous plastic is as microplastics as well as food container plastics both accumulating and leaching toxins.
Agreed. Better recycling products are great for the application where we truly need plastics…but it won’t coverup the rampant overuse of plastics which we currently do.
1:00 -- RIP Google+ (2011-2019).
All new plastic products need to be made from 100% recycled materials.
No new single use plastic should ever be made. Plastic litter is disgusting.
Why can't all new roofing be made from recycled plastic waste instead of using asphalt shingles.
Plastic roofing would last forever instead of asphalt shingles needing to be replaced every 20 years.
Manufacturers need to rethink their production methods and use more recycled materials.
All docks, piers, home decks, park seating and many other products can be made from recycled plastic materials.
There needs to be a market for recycled materials so that the cost of collecting, sorting and shipping can be recovered.
Most plastics degrade rapidly in sunlight. Plastic roofing is a terrible idea. We don't make plastic things out of 100% recycled material because it doesn't work. If we develop depolymerization technology as described in this video, then it could work, but it might still cost a fortune.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Home decking and piers for fishing and boat docks have been made of plastic composite for years.
He mentioned "compostable" plastics. Problem is, they can't be composted in backyard bins, instead, they require industrial composting facilities. How many of these facilities exist? What's the percentage of plastic waste is of the compostable variety, is it enough to make separating it out worthwhile?
More "green house gasses" gaslighting.
Well the issue of over enginered and escaped micro biology is actually quite a threat to the world. Moreover so because we cannot oversee the consequenses at this point. The bio cure might end up worse than the orriginal problem.. its a problem we humans created... lets not go for the quick easy fix without full comprehension of due consequences but rather do the right thing and fix it by upcycling it all without the aid of potentially dangerous micro biologic options.
I don’t know the extent, but it is a bit concerning to me to imagine a future where plastics can “rot” in the same manner as wood, which didn’t for a long while as well!
Reminds me of that scene in “The Andromeda Strain” where the microbes eat the hermetic seals!
Granted since it is an artificial material, by cleaning litter and limiting use, we can remove the evolutionary pressure and thus make the genes fade away, in a similar manner to antibiotic resistance.
Also phase out of landfills, and biosafety practices in the digestion facilities will remove/control (in respective order) those from the equation as well.
We know recycling was a big industry smokescreen since they prefer making new plastic. And most plastic doesn't even make it to recycling bins. It's absurd to rely on careless humans to recycle, so this video sounds like more pro-plastic propaganda.