When the gods granted King Midas one wish, he wished
that everything he touched would turn to gold. Midas was delighted. Trees,
rocks, buildings all gold. But soon he found in horror that his food turned
into gold as well. When he hugged his daughter to soothe his pain, he realized
his mistake too late. The richest man in existence was starving, heartbroken,
and alone.
Humanity got a similar wish granted when we learned
how to turn brown stinky goo into magic - plastic. Cheap, sterile, and
convenient it changed our lives But this wonder of technology got a little out
of hand.
Plastic has saturated our environment. It has
invaded the animals we eat and now it's finding its way into our bodies.
[Catchy intro music] What is plastic? For most of our history, humans used
stuff we found in nature to build the things we needed.
But the invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago
completely changed our world.
Plastic is made from polymers - long repeating
chains of molecule groups. In nature, polymers exist everywhere: the walls of
cells, silk, hair, insect carapaces, DNA. But it's also possible to create
them. By breaking down crude oil into its components and Rearranging them, we
can form new synthetic polymers. Synthetic polymers have extraordinary traits.
They are lightweight, durable, and can be molded into almost any shape. Not
requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic can be easily mass-produced and
its raw materials are available in vast amounts And incredibly cheaply, and so
the golden era of plastics began Bakelite was used for mechanical parts, PVC
for plumbing electric gears and cases, Acrylic is a shatter-resistant
alternative to glass and nylon for stockings and war equipment Today almost
everything is at least partly made from plastic. Our clothes, phones,
computers, furniture, appliances, houses, and cars.
Plastic has long ceased to be a revolutionary
material instead it became trash. Coffee cups, plastic bags, or stuff to wrap a
banana. We don't think about this fact a lot. Plastic just appears and goes
away. Unfortunately, it doesn't Since synthetic polymers are so durable,
plastic takes between 500 and 1,000 years to break down. But somehow we
collectively decided to use this super-tough material for things meant to be
thrown away. 40% of plastics are used for packaging.
In the United States, packaging makes up 1/3
of all the waste that is generated annually. Since its invention, we have
produced about 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic. 335 million tons in 2016
alone. More than 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic have become waste since
1907. Piled up in one place, that makes a cube with a side length of 1.9
kilometers. So what did we do with all this waste? 9% was recycled, 12% burnt.
But 79% of it is sticking around still. A lot ends up in the ocean. Around 8
million tons a year. That's so much plastic that it will outweigh all the fish
in the ocean by 2050. Because it's everywhere, marine animals keep getting
trapped in plastic and swallowing it. In 2015 already 90% of seabirds had eaten
plastic. Many animals starve with stomachs full of indigestible trash.
In 2018 a dead sperm whale washed up in Spain.
He had eaten 32 kilos of plastic bags, nets, and a drum While this is tragic
and makes for great magazine covers, there's an even more widespread, an
invisible form of plastic. Microplastics are pieces smaller than 5 millimeters
Some of them are used in cosmetics or toothpaste, but most result from floating
waste that is constantly exposed to UV radiation And crumbles into smaller and
smaller pieces 51 trillion such particles float in the ocean, Where they are
even more easily swallowed by all kinds of marine life.
This has raised concerns among scientists,
especially about health risks from the chemicals that are added to the plastic.
BPA for example makes plastic bottles transparent But there's also evidence
that it interferes with our hormonal system. DEHP makes plastics more flexible,
But may cause cancer.
It would be pretty bad if microplastics are
toxic because they travel up the food chain. Zooplankton eats microplastic.
Small fish eat zooplankton. So do oysters, crabs, and predatory fish, and they
all land on our plates. Microplastics have been found in honey, in sea salt, in
beer, in tap water, and in the household dust around us. 8 out of 10 babies and
nearly all adults have measurable amounts of phthalates, a common plastic
additive in their bodies. And 93% of people have BPA in their urine There is little
science about this so far and right now it's inconclusive.
We need a lot more research before panic is
justified. But it is safe to say that a lot of stuff happened that we didn't
plan for. And we have lost control Over plastic to a certain extent which is
kind of scary. But just to make sure we should simply ban plastics, right?
Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that. Plastic pollution is not
the only environmental challenge we face. Some of the substitutes we'd use for
plastic have a higher environmental impact in other ways. For example:
according to a recent study by the Danish government, making a single-use
plastic bag requires so little energy and produces far lower carbon dioxide
emissions compared to a reusable cotton bag, that you need to use your cotton
bag 7 thousand 100 times before it would have a lower impact on the environment
than the plastic bag. We're left with a complex process of trade-offs.
Everything has an impact somehow, and it's hard to find the right balance between
them.
Plastic also helps solve problems that we
don't have very good answers for at the moment. Globally, one-third of all food
that's produced is never eaten and ends up rotting away on landfills where it
produces methane. And the best way of preventing food from spoiling and
avoiding unnecessary waste is still plastic packaging. It's also important to
note where the vast majority of the world's plastic pollution is coming from
right now. 90% of all plastic waste entering the ocean through rivers come from
just ten rivers in Asia and Africa. The Yangtze in China alone flushes 1.5
million tons of plastic into the ocean each year.
Countries like China, India Algeria, or
Indonesia industrialized at an impressive pace in the last few decades,
transforming the lives of billions of people This development was so fast, that
the garbage disposal infrastructure couldn't keep up with collecting and
recycling all the new waste this brought If politicians in Europe and the US
want to address this issue, investing in infrastructure in developing countries
is just as important as fighting plastic pollution at home with campaigns and
redesigning products to minimize unnecessary plastic production.
The bottom line is, as long as we don't
address plastic pollution from a global perspective, we will not solve it.
Plastic pollution is a complicated problem. We found a magic material and we
had a really good time with it, But we need to be careful or just like Midas,
we'll end up in a world that we didn't wish for. Your individual daily actions
still have a huge impact. What you do matters! Refuse disposable plastics.
Convince your friends and family to do the same. Pressure companies and
politicians to take the necessary steps to keep our oceans clean and our food
safe. Together we can beat plastic pollution! This video was a collaboration
with UN Environment and their clean seas campaign. If you want to take action
to turn the tide on plastics, go to cleanseas.org and make your pledge.
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