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00:00Imagine a brand new city for Ireland 25 years from now home to a quarter of a
00:13million people where science has helped solve some of the biggest issues facing
00:19our country today
00:21that is Futurville and this is how we make it happen we have a plan to reimagine Athlone
00:31as a city of the future with brand new neighborhoods transport networks and a
00:41vision for what life will be like here we call it Futurville it's entirely possible
00:47and now it's more important than ever coming up in our Athlone of the future
00:53we put nature on your doorstep when is the best time to plant a tree yesterday
00:59when is the second best time today how at the big game everyone can be part of the
01:05action I am registered blind for if that technology was there definitely yeah I'd
01:11go tomorrow I guess the young scientist hoping to save us from the danger of
01:17microplastics we are the people who are eating and ingesting those plastic and
01:22it will cause harm to all of us and in Futurville emergency rescue will come
01:29out of a box
01:34but first I'm on the hunt for a future food for Ireland protein is essential to our
01:44diet but producing proteins from animals can be energy-intensive I am told it's somewhere
01:51right here
01:53yes this is yes
02:03in Futurville finding new sources of protein especially from plants could be key to making
02:11our islands resources go as far as possible
02:18I can't believe I'm doing this
02:20let's do this okay now lovely really nice now I'm told apparently the best stuff is out in the middle okay
02:45okay so why am I standing waist deep in a pond well because of this duckweed it could be what our protein intake will look like 25 years from now
03:00in University College Cork professor Marcel Janssen is researching how this unappetizing weed could feed us all
03:07there are not that many good plant protein sources we are very dependent on soy imported soy which comes with an enormous carbon footprint just think about the food miles bring it from South America to to Ireland and at the same time we have something potentially in this country which could replace soy almost on a
03:27one-to-one basis and that's very attractive in the context of sustainability
03:34Marcel's alternative is duckweed Marcel what exactly is duckweed so duckweed is a small aquatic plant native to Ireland floating on rivers lakes small ditches and actually I brought you some in a in a petri dish this is one of the smallest
03:42duckweeds and here in this petri dish you see thousands of plants and here in this petri dish you see thousands of plants and I fish out a few with a pen so here you see 10-12 plants each about a millimeter across so each little globe is an entire plant
03:49what makes duckweed so special is the speed at which it grows every two days you double the amount of plants you have got which is incredibly fast so essentially I get a lot of plants in the
03:51This is one of the smallest duckweeds.
03:54And here in this petri dish you see thousands of plants.
03:57And I fish out a few with a pen.
03:59So here you see 10, 12 plants, each about a millimetre across.
04:04So each little globe is an entire plant.
04:08What makes duckweed so special is the speed at which it grows.
04:12Every two days you double the amount of plants you've got,
04:16which is incredibly fast.
04:18So essentially I could now eat half this petri dish and two days later it's full again.
04:25What is different about duckweed in terms of other plant proteins?
04:28What are the main key parts of it that make it an attractive source of protein?
04:33What makes a protein a good protein is the amino acids.
04:36So these are the building blocks that make a protein.
04:39And duckweed is very rich in essential amino acids.
04:42And that's why it can be such a good meat replacement or soy replacement for that matter.
04:47100 grams of dried duckweed can pack 20 to 45 grams of protein,
04:53putting it in the same league as lean beef.
04:56The idea is that duckweed could help us to eat less meat by providing us with the same level of protein.
05:10Duckweed is already popular in South East Asia and by 2050 it could be a store cupboard staple in Ireland too.
05:18So I want to make a mid-week meal of the future using my duckweed.
05:22Not the duckweed from the pond which could be contaminated,
05:25but this duckweed which Marcel has kindly sterilised ready for human consumption.
05:30Now because I'm a basic cook at best, I'm going to be getting some help from an AI app.
05:37Don't judge me, this is beautiful.
05:40Hi AI, I would like to make dinner for a friend of mine.
05:44Can you suggest a recipe that would use duckweed as the protein?
05:48That's a great idea.
05:49How about we make a dish based around duckweed pesto?
05:52Sounds good, can't wait.
05:54OK, what do I do now?
05:55All right, let's do this.
05:57So, you'll need some millet.
06:01Add it to a hot pan.
06:02Give it three minutes.
06:06But shake it so it doesn't burn.
06:09Add two cups of water.
06:14Lovely.
06:15OK.
06:16And now we can make the duckweed pesto.
06:18Let's do it.
06:19So take your duckweed, your garlic, your lemon, and your olive oil.
06:27Salt and pepper.
06:30And blend it to a green paste.
06:34I've got my hands on two other protein-packed foods we could be eating in the future.
06:40Now, sticking with the pond theme, this is spirulina.
06:43It's a blue-green algae and it's really high in protein.
06:46Hey AI, can I add spirulina to the pesto?
06:49You bet, just a spoonful will really up the protein count.
06:53Oh, that is strong.
06:58It's earthy.
06:59But it looks great.
07:02Now, this is insect flour.
07:05It's made from ground-dried crickets.
07:08It's also really high in protein and it's getting more popular in Southeast Asia.
07:13OK AI, just please reassure me, it is definitely OK to eat cricket flour, isn't it?
07:18Don't worry, cricket flour is definitely edible.
07:22Let's make a crunchy cricket crumble.
07:24Take some oil, add a splash of water, and make a paste.
07:29There is a strong smell coming off this.
07:32We'll keep going.
07:34Spread it thinly on a baking sheet and pop it in the oven.
07:38And for maximum plant protein, I'm going to add fried tofu.
07:47Drizzle of our pesto.
07:52And now we have our cricket crumble.
07:55Mmm.
07:56Some of our duckweed garnish, just to finish it off.
08:01And that is my 2050 protein bowl.
08:06That's Lally.
08:07OK, so we have some dinner.
08:09It's duckweed and spirulina pesto.
08:12Fried tofu.
08:13And I have some insect flour crumb on top.
08:16Mmm.
08:17OK.
08:18What kind of insect?
08:19Crickets.
08:20Full of protein.
08:21Let's give it a go.
08:23Mmm, OK.
08:24It's certainly different, but it's not crazy different to anything I prefer.
08:29It's really good.
08:30It's really good.
08:31You can hardly taste any difference with the pesto.
08:32It's kind of nutty.
08:33So could food like this really be landing on the dinner tables of Futureville?
08:36Could you imagine this being your kind of typical standard mid-week meal for a family?
08:412050, definitely.
08:42I think we have more need for protein.
08:44So I think different protein sources for sure, but it's going to make us more creative cooks.
08:50Where on earth did you get a recipe for this?
08:53Well, you'd be proud of me because I did consult AI for that.
08:57Mmm.
08:58What do you think?
08:59I think you're a woman of many talents.
09:11We can find duckweed growing on our doorsteps, or at least in our local duck ponds.
09:16And in Futureville, growing food as locally as possible will deliver fewer food miles and cheaper produce.
09:23In Futureville, every centimetre could help feed the city.
09:29Exactly what's happening here in Tipperary, where they're farming not horizontally but vertically.
09:35Vertical farm is controlled agriculture indoors.
09:39We are growing food indoors 365 days of the year.
09:45What we're growing here at the moment is we're growing basil.
09:48The magic of vertical farming is being able to grow crops stacked on top of each other.
09:54That gives Brian four times more space to grow his basil than in the same space outdoors.
10:01What you're looking at is a module.
10:03That's a module.
10:04Down here.
10:05Four high.
10:06Four tiers.
10:07And then plant-wise, you can grow up to 720 plants.
10:10That's your conventional pot plant.
10:12So here's your size.
10:1390% difference.
10:15The system uses low energy LED lighting and pumps that recirculate the water, making the
10:22whole growing process super efficient.
10:25A thousand litres once a week.
10:27That's all it's taken to grow the plants.
10:30So you're using 90% less water than conventional.
10:33That's your root system there.
10:35Does it work?
10:36Does it grow?
10:37Yes, it does.
10:38If you were a basil farmer in the tropics, you'd be happy with three
10:41harvests a year.
10:43Here in County Tip, Brian is doing way better than that.
10:47The whole growing process takes 40 days.
10:50So each module will turn over 16 crops per year.
10:52You'd look at that one module.
10:54That one module will give you 10 kilos of basil.
10:56We will harvest 240 kilos here next week.
11:00I'll go to a pestle maker.
11:02If we were to look at this on a yearly basis, the whole farm,
11:05that's the three modules working as it stands at the moment,
11:08we will do 23 and a half tonne of basil.
11:11And the great thing about, there's no waste here.
11:13That's the one thing about vertical farming.
11:16You don't have waste.
11:17With vertical farming, control farming, your taste a lot stronger.
11:20It's known to be four times stronger than conventional.
11:23So it's all taste and no waste.
11:25Pure licorice.
11:27If you look at basil, where it comes from, it comes from Kenya,
11:32Ethiopia, 6,000 miles away.
11:34That's not sustainable.
11:36I'm growing basil today and it's shipping it out to the customer tomorrow.
11:39So that's local.
11:41That's fresh.
11:42So vertical farms can be super productive in a minimal space.
11:46But they also make it possible to cut food miles with produce grown right where we need it.
11:52You can put a vertical farmer anywhere.
11:55You can put them into shop fronts.
11:57You could build them in the morning.
11:58If you look at Athlone, Athlone has a tonne of these old buildings along the channel.
12:03And then all you need is the modules, electricity and you have the water.
12:09It's a no brainer.
12:10So the future is there.
12:13In Athlone of 2050, communities will have space to grow their own fruit and veg,
12:19and farmers to sell their produce locally.
12:21But we'll go deeper.
12:23With vast basements used not as car parks, but as vertical farms.
12:28In Futureville, we'll harvest crops right beneath the city where they'll be eaten.
12:33Forget food miles, we can begin to talk about food meters.
12:39So that's Wednesday night dinner sorted.
12:42But what about the match?
12:44Athlone has always been a soccer town.
12:46And Athlone's greatest ever day begins.
12:49Where fans still remember the day in 1975, when the local lads held the mighty AC Milan to a nil-all draw.
12:57The applause, I think, tells the story of how Athlone town has done Irish football proud.
13:04And in 2050, the soccer town will be a soccer city, where we'll make sure everyone can be part of the action.
13:12Especially if you're visually impaired.
13:15If I have a hard day in work, if I know I'm going to a match, I just switch into match mode.
13:22And getting to see the best team in Europe, that is always a tonic for me.
13:26That is always a tonic for me.
13:28You'd be hard pressed to find a more die hard football fan than Shamrock Rover supporter Brendan O'Connor.
13:34The house is here.
13:37Stadium.
13:38Right there.
13:39I could be over there in ten minutes.
13:41No problem.
13:43So we have two ex-players, where I actually won match balls.
13:47So that's an aerial shot of one of our European games here in Tallade.
13:52Oh, it's Spurs.
13:53Yeah.
13:54When Ronaldo plays his first game for Real Madrid.
13:56Oh, my gosh.
13:57I was there.
13:58Wow.
13:59I was there.
14:00It's going through those moments together, isn't it?
14:01Yeah.
14:02Losses, wins.
14:03Yeah.
14:04Going through it together.
14:05It's like an identity to me.
14:07I am registered blind.
14:08I do have 3-3 vision.
14:10I can see stuff in front of me.
14:12But if the ball is far away, I can't see it.
14:16Like, I can't even see the scoreboard.
14:19Tallade Stadium took a big step forward for fans like Brendan, when in 2020, it introduced
14:27live audio-descriptive commentary.
14:33It involves a live commentator sitting right beside Brendan and narrating the game for him.
14:46This lo-fi approach helps bring home games to life for Brendan, through the power of words.
14:51I just had a penalty area.
14:52Jack's under pressure.
14:53I'm doing it.
14:54And the roadie's offside there.
14:55I think it's gone to the side net, but it's offside anyway, yeah.
14:58But now a team of young scientists has found a way to enhance the experience even further,
15:04through technology and touch.
15:06They call it field of vision.
15:08How did you come up with the idea of creating this device?
15:11The idea came to us by seeing videos online of blind or visually impaired sports fans going
15:16to a football game and having a friend or family member explaining to them where the
15:20ball is on the pitch by tracing the position of the ball in the palm of their hand.
15:24And I thought, wow, as a football fan myself and an engineering student at the time,
15:29I thought this is something that really interested me.
15:31I reached out to visually impaired fans online, figured out how their experiences could be improved,
15:36and then we came up with field of vision.
15:39What they do is they put their finger in this magnetic finger piece,
15:44and they let the finger piece guide them around the pitch based on where the ball is.
15:49And how is it picking up where the ball is?
15:52So how it works is that there's AI cameras that are installed in most stadiums nowadays,
15:57and they can track all the key information from the game, such as passes, tackles, shots.
16:04And then we can translate this back to our device with less than half a second latency.
16:09Passes would be vibration for one team, and then for another team,
16:12there'd be a different type of vibration for passes and tackles and goals.
16:16Can I have a go?
16:17Yeah, go for it.
16:18Brilliant, okay, let's do it.
16:19Put my finger better in the hole, Omar, do you think?
16:21Yes.
16:22Yeah, okay.
16:23Wow.
16:24Those vibrations are passes now for one team.
16:26That's so cool.
16:27You can't really feel the vibrations.
16:28And then you're going to feel a goal now, soon.
16:30Wow.
16:31That's really, you can really obviously feel the difference.
16:33It's really strong for a goal.
16:35After years of research and testing, Omar and David's invention is now in stadiums across the world.
16:42We started out in Dublin trialling it in Bohemians FC.
16:46We tried it in Belfast also, Manchester City.
16:49And we're permanently installed and deployed in Marvel Stadium in Melbourne for Aussie Rules Australian Football League.
16:54And what's the feedback been like so far, David?
16:56My favourite piece of feedback so far has been from an Aussie Rules fan.
17:01She said that that was the first time I'd been able to tell someone else that a goal was about to happen.
17:05She felt like she could commentate a game for the first time ever, which was really great feedback for us.
17:09What are your plans for the future, Omar?
17:11What role can this technology play?
17:13So what we want to do is to have this in as many stadiums as possible, first of all,
17:17and then ultimately in as many homes as possible as well.
17:20What did you think?
17:35Brilliant. Immensely enhanced my experience by using the audio and then using the new technology which was brilliant.
17:42How excited are you about the future of this technology in sports?
17:46Definitely you would use it in the home.
17:48It means you don't have to sit up real close to the screen.
17:51I don't go to many away games because the technology's not there.
17:56But if that technology was there, definitely, yeah, I'd go to more away games.
18:01I'd love to see it in more sports in the future.
18:05For millions of us, football is more than a game.
18:08And innovations like Field of Vision will make sure that in Futureville, no fan is left out.
18:15Still to come, bringing nature to the heart of Futureville.
18:19When is the best time to plant a tree?
18:21Yesterday.
18:22When is the second best time?
18:24Today.
18:25And having fun in Futureville.
18:27I go shooting some zombie pirates.
18:32We want Friday night in Futureville to be fun.
18:35And that could mean instead of going to the movies, we'll be in the movies and playing a starring role.
18:44To get an idea of what this might involve, I'm trying out the latest in virtual reality entertainment.
18:52This is Sandbox VR in Dublin.
18:53Thanks so much.
18:54The future of entertainment.
18:55We're probably all familiar with the traditional VR headset, but obviously this is so much more.
19:09So we have our motion trackers here, which was picked up from our 20 motion cameras within the studios.
19:14But then we also have here our haptic vests.
19:17And as you can see here, I've exposed one of these.
19:19And these all have different vibration plates.
19:22Haptics are devices that create life-like physical sensations.
19:26So the second you get whacked in the game, you feel a whack in real life.
19:31Virtual reality here is not just about what you see.
19:34It's about what you feel.
19:37We have a number of atmospheric fans.
19:39So if you're in a cold environment or a windy environment, they can kick in at certain points within the game.
19:45And we also have some of our props here.
19:48And these vibrate as and when you're using them.
19:50I know how convincing VR can be.
19:52So I can't wait to discover how much more intense, vibrating chess plates, atmospheric fans and weapons will make the experience.
20:00You must get really strong reactions, do you?
20:03It's really funny, actually.
20:04Some of the things, because people lose themselves.
20:06And they lose the sense of reality when they're in the virtual world.
20:10And it's a real kind of, you know, show-stopping moment for people when they take those headsets off and they're back to reality.
20:16And it's, wow, you know, where have I just been?
20:20Honestly, now I'm still a little bit just kind of like, is this the real world again?
20:24The whole, like, immersive thing with the vests and everything, you just, you really feel like you're there.
20:29It feels completely real.
20:31I can't wait to find out what they're talking about.
20:34I'm going to play alongside Stephanie as we attempt to steal a treasure chest from some angry zombie pirates.
20:43Love it.
20:44OK, I think I'm going to be her.
20:47Now look at yourself.
20:48Yay!
20:51This is exactly how I want to look every day.
20:53Wow, this is so good.
20:56You actually feel like you're on a boat.
20:58Looking out of the ocean, on a pirate boat.
21:01No!
21:03Ah!
21:05Ah!
21:06Ah!
21:07Ah!
21:08Ah!
21:09Oh, you little!
21:10Ah!
21:11The haptics in my vest vibrate with every blow from a zombie sword.
21:15Oh, I'm dead.
21:16Oh, can you feel it around your chest that you've died?
21:19That is so weird.
21:20And the fans kick in with every explosion.
21:24Oh, my gosh.
21:25You feel the wind.
21:26That is so weird.
21:28We're going in to get the treasure now.
21:31Oh, my gosh.
21:32This is so good.
21:34Ah!
21:35Oh, my gosh.
21:36They're right up the side.
21:37Yeah!
21:38Mission fail.
21:39No!
21:40Oh, my goodness.
21:41That was so good.
21:42That was so good.
21:43You actually felt like you were properly on the high seas.
21:45You have no concept of there being any other world.
21:46I already have such a rush of adrenaline that I just want to do it again.
22:01I think you've earned a mocktail from Tony.
22:04Oh, wow.
22:05No way.
22:06So, Tony is Ireland's only robotic cocktail and mocktail maker.
22:11What type of work rate does Tony have?
22:13So, Tony will turn out a drink in under a minute.
22:16We saw him there around 80%.
22:18So, if we turn him up to full fade, he can get a bit messy.
22:21Brilliant.
22:23Yep.
22:24On Friday nights in Futurville, we could all be queuing up for a virgin cocktail and some virtual zombie bashing.
22:29Cheers to that.
22:34We can look forward to exploring new virtual universes in Futurville, but we won't forget the real-life natural world right outside.
22:49We tend to look out of the window and we see the green and we hear the birds and we think, oh, well, you know, everything's grand.
22:58Nature's all still out there.
22:59But actually, if you scratch beneath the surface, it's not great.
23:03Professor Jane Stout is one of Ireland's leading ecologists.
23:07She studies the damage done to our environment and what we can do to repair it.
23:12We've been using pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides to try and control nature that's competing with our crops.
23:22We've been clearing for development.
23:25So, all of this, along with changes in climate, have driven biodiversity to the brink.
23:33So, we're seeing these severe and dramatic declines in things that used to be common.
23:40So, with about 30,000 different species of organism living in Ireland, 20% of those species are at risk of extinction.
23:4860% of our birds are in decline.
23:52When we look at our bees, a third of our bee species are at risk of extinction and over half of them are in decline.
23:59But restoring native biodiversity doesn't need to involve lots of complicated science.
24:04On an abandoned farm in West Cork, it means doing as little as possible.
24:09The first time I walked this forest, I was completely choked up.
24:17What I was feeling was so strong.
24:20I had never seen anything like this.
24:23In 2009, artist Owen Dalton bought over 70 acres of farmland in West Cork.
24:2920 acres of it had been abandoned a century earlier and left to nature.
24:34In place of pasture, Owen now found a remarkable rainforest had grown up.
24:39Over the course of about a century, the farm essentially rewilded itself.
24:43And the farm that that took was mostly what we would now call temperate rainforest.
24:50The main thing that characterises a healthy Irish rainforest is just an overwhelming feeling of life.
24:59Buzzing insects, they're full of birdsong.
25:02The really sad part of all of this is that it's almost impossible to find that now in Ireland.
25:08Owen decided immediately not just to preserve the forest, but to help it thrive.
25:14All he needed to do was protect it from invasive species.
25:17It was in a terrible state.
25:20You had a large group of feral goats in the area, and you also had seca deer, both of which are invasive.
25:29The effect that they were having on the forest was absolutely catastrophic.
25:35The first thing I did was to fence out the goats and the seca deer.
25:40I set to work in my spare time getting rid of the rhododendron and all of the other eight or nine invasive plant species that were present.
25:48Then Owen left the forest to heal itself.
25:52Over the next 15 years, he looked on as nature rebuilt an ancient ecosystem before his very eyes.
25:59I just watched as the forest completely came to life.
26:03First off, you had a really rich ground flora.
26:07Tree seedlings started to pop up everywhere.
26:10And in some areas where all you had were barren grasses, within six or seven years,
26:17you had a complete transformation into young, closed canopy, native rainforest.
26:24It was just the most incredible thing to witness.
26:28This one is kind of special.
26:30It's kidney saxifrage.
26:32You find it growing in Ireland.
26:35And then you don't find it anywhere else until you get down to southern Europe.
26:40I was delighted to see otters start to come up the stream from the nearby sea.
26:47It's indescribably joyful to see all of this and to be a part of it.
26:56These places are teetering.
26:58And now is the time.
27:01It's now or never.
27:03We either start addressing this.
27:05And addressing it means not just somewhere else.
27:08It means right here at home in Ireland.
27:11Owen's Irish rainforest shows what one individual can accomplish in restoring an ecosystem.
27:18And in Dingle, an entire community is coming together to see what they can achieve.
27:23From giving up cars for electric buses, to changing how they farm.
27:29The Dingle Hub was set up to support community-based initiatives,
27:33with a look at trying to build a sustainable future for the Dingle Peninsula.
27:38We would have invited the farming community to meet with us in the Hub in the early days,
27:44to understand the challenges that they faced.
27:47And can we support them?
27:48Can we let them know that they are not alone in doing this?
27:51Can we bring people together?
27:53One farmer quick to join the initiative was Ginny Galvin.
27:56He's been farming in Dingle since he was 15 and has witnessed a complete change in approach to managing the land.
28:02We forgot the environment. It was just, you know, it was milk as many cows as you could.
28:07Get the land green, grow as much grass as you can.
28:10The biodiversity definitely wasn't mentioned when I was being trained to be a farmer.
28:15With encouragement from the Dingle Hub, Dinny looked at his farm with fresh eyes.
28:20He saw ways to help nature thrive again, while still making a living from his dairy herd.
28:25We had a little area here, about 300 square metres, and there was two springs inside of it.
28:31So I decided, yeah, look, I'll try and put a pond here.
28:35We've sat at all of an acre of wildflowers as well.
28:38We need the bees for cross-pollinisation.
28:41So you're not only catering for the bees, you're catering for hedges, the hedgehog.
28:46You have just the birds.
28:48We've too, I noticed with the last few days, there's two peregrine falcons here now.
28:52They're flying north-south here every day. It's lovely to see them.
28:56Help from the Dingle community has allowed Dinny to make bigger changes too,
29:00like replanting hedgerows and trees.
29:03We actually planted about 6,000 trees last spring.
29:07I think there's something like 10,000 trees being looked at for this spring.
29:12We had 16 people here helping me plant the trees in the month of March,
29:17all community volunteers.
29:19And I was delighted because this is something that would take me three weeks on my own.
29:24We come here to help him to, I suppose, improve the nature on his farm.
29:29It's good to have a bit of support.
29:31Through science, inspired individuals and the power of community,
29:36we can rescue and restore Ireland's natural diversity for the Futureville generation.
29:42I would love to see by 2050 that we have a diverse landscape.
29:49So we have fields for farming. We have patches of woodland.
29:53We have a diversity of plants and animals and fungi and microorganisms.
29:59So if we're building new houses, then it doesn't need to be houses or nature.
30:04You know, and houses and nature make sense.
30:07That is the world we can create in Futureville.
30:10We could have a radically different landscape by 2050.
30:15And by radically different, I mean radically better.
30:18We're only custodians of the land, so we're only trying to do our bit
30:22and hopefully hand it on to the next person.
30:24We can turn this little part of the world and hopefully the country of Ireland
30:28around working collectively together.
30:31And if we can do more of this, yeah, we can definitely turn the tide.
30:37Changes like these aren't just crazy what-ifs.
30:40They're requirements under European law,
30:42which says Ireland must restore 90% of our degraded habitats by 2050.
30:47That's woodlands, bogs, rivers and oceans.
30:52It's a very fine line between sort of the natural, the technological
30:56and this sort of future world that we might have.
30:59How can we best navigate that?
31:01We are part of nature.
31:03Our society is part of nature.
31:05Our economy is part of nature.
31:07We all depend on nature.
31:08We've been pulling and extracting from nature for so long.
31:11And it's like taking these threads out from this tapestry
31:14and the tapestry is holding together.
31:16But actually, if we continue doing it at the rate we have been,
31:19it's going to fall apart.
31:20And that means we have nothing left to depend on.
31:23Because if nature is not there as our foundational rock,
31:25that's our food system, that's our clean, fresh water, it's our air.
31:29This tapestry is something that we kind of need to start re-threading.
31:33So we're moving into Futureville, the concept of it, by 2050.
31:37Is there one thing that you'd like us to embrace to help ourselves move forward?
31:41So if we could all be mindful that we can plant more.
31:45And we can plant more pollinator-friendly plants.
31:47And we can plant more trees.
31:49There's a saying, I think it's Japanese actually,
31:51when is the best time to plant a tree?
31:53Yesterday.
31:54When is the second best time?
31:55Today.
31:56Today.
32:06Still to come.
32:07In a tight spot in Futureville?
32:09Don't worry.
32:10This drone in a box has got you.
32:12It's going to make everybody's lives easier
32:15and it's going to save more lives.
32:17And how one farmer's invention could do away with single-use plastic.
32:21And what does the cattle make of this?
32:23It's kind of sweet.
32:24You can taste a bit of it if you want.
32:25Today.
32:26We want Futureville to be a safe place to live.
32:37But if the worst does happen, you can be sure help is just seconds away.
32:44In a box.
32:50Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance Service, what's the emergency?
32:53Hiya, there's a family who's just gone into the water here.
32:55Okay.
32:56Don't attempt to go in after it.
32:57We're getting crews on the way.
32:58River rescue, river rescue, mail in the water.
33:02This is a training exercise to test the new technology in this box.
33:08It's a rescue drone.
33:09It's a rescue drone that could transform how first responders deal with emergencies.
33:14Okay, so the drone is now launched.
33:15Casualty was last seen.
33:16Somewhere up around Custom House, they went into the water at Buck Bridge.
33:20So if we can get eyes on in that location.
33:23These dock stations, a drone in the box, mean just that.
33:26They're actually located in a box provided with power and communications and can be operated from kilometers away.
33:33It's been developed by a research team from Maynooth University.
33:38A person sitting in their office can press a button.
33:41The drone is on scene now.
33:42Okay.
33:43And the drone can literally take off from the box and go carry out a mission.
33:47Casualty is just directly opposite Custom House.
33:50Okay.
33:51Delta November 21, Romeo 1, we have located that casualty.
33:54They are approximately mid-channel in front of the Custom House.
33:58The drone is equipped with cameras that send pictures to emergency response teams to help them locate victims.
34:06It can be quite difficult to see them with a normal camera because of the volume of water.
34:10But with the thermal camera, we can pick up the heat signature quite quickly.
34:13All that visual information has been fed back in real time and the decisions can be made on the back of that.
34:20What we're trying to do here is to take the human out of the loop, reduce risk exposure,
34:25and replace it with machines to move out, gather information,
34:29so that the person overseeing the actual emergency event can respond more effectively to carry out the rescue.
34:41Very often we can receive multiple calls for, say, a casualty in the water.
34:45Then it's to decipher is it one casualty, is it two casualties,
34:48particularly if they give differing locations.
34:50We don't know.
34:51Having a drone means that we have the intelligence straight there
34:54to be able to make the accurate and right and efficient decision
34:57to get to the casualties and to rescue them.
35:00In time, licensed drones like these could allow direct communication with victims
35:05and even deliver medical equipment.
35:07To be able to deploy defibrillators, lifebuys into a water rescue, etc.
35:11To be able to get a fixed location, to be able to give a message down to a casualty,
35:16to get more information from them.
35:18You know, as technology advances, it's going to make everybody's lives easier in the services
35:23and it's going to save more lives.
35:25You're out now, we're going to get you back to Droyland, OK?
35:29Get you warm, get you warm.
35:31Any injuries anywhere?
35:32No.
35:33OK.
35:35Today it's a simulation in Dublin city, but if there's an emergency in Futureville,
35:40rescue drones like these could be the first on the scene, whatever the situation.
35:44If we look forward into 25 years, these electronic devices will be ubiquitous.
35:57They will be along the coastlines, in our towns, in our cities.
36:01They will help first-line responders to gather information, to reduce risk and ultimately save lives.
36:15By 2050, we will see this type of technology having drastically changed the emergency and rescue services in Ireland.
36:33Futureville offers us the chance to make things better, to find new solutions to age-old problems like single-use plastic.
36:40Look, they're in our fridges, they're in our coffee shops, it's just everywhere.
36:46In Ireland, we produce one million tonnes of plastic waste every year.
36:51That's about 65 kilograms each, more than double the EU average.
36:55Plastic could overrun our new city.
36:58In Futureville, we can't just reduce plastic, we have to rethink it entirely.
37:04Where it comes from, how we use it and what happens after we throw it away.
37:08People who walk along beaches like this often don't realise that they're stepping over millions of particles in every single step.
37:21And this is plastic.
37:22Fionn Vrera is a young Irish scientist from West Cork and a leading voice in the fight against plastic pollution.
37:30And this sparked in me a deep desire to not only understand this crisis but to actively seek solutions.
37:36At just 23 years old, my journey has taken me from kayaking with my dog India, noticing the microplastics.
37:43Every year millions of tonnes of plastic enter the ocean and very soon there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
37:51Plastics that were made from crude oil are really, really difficult to break down and often last hundreds of thousands of years and just fall into smaller and smaller particles but never go away.
38:03We are the people who are eating and ingesting those plastic and it will cause harm to all of us.
38:11Plasticisers and colourants inside plastic particles have been linked to cancers and Alzheimer's and a lot of other issues.
38:19The ingestion of microplastics has been seen to have effects on the production of blood cells and there's probably hundreds of thousands of particles in our bloodstream right now.
38:32Fionn's research shows how microplastics really are everywhere.
38:38This is water that we collected from Dublin Bay.
38:42So here we can see a prime example of some microplastic fibres in the water.
38:47And this microfibre probably came from a piece of clothing.
38:52There's a nurdle, the sphere, about a fiftieth of a millimetre.
38:56These pieces really show to me that the problem is one that's everywhere.
39:02Our next sample is a sample of tap water.
39:06Looking into this tap water we need to zoom a bit more and here we go.
39:12These are some plastic fibres.
39:13These particles are the ones that are so small they can go through a lot of water filters.
39:19Probably if you drink this glass of water you drink and could even end up inside your bloodstream.
39:25I think every time I do this and look through a microscope I'm always surprised by how much plastic I can find.
39:32For Fionn the answer to the problem of microplastics is to change how we make plastic.
39:40It's to try and find an alternative that breaks down quickly.
39:44Either a material that isn't plastic at all or a material that breaks down well and doesn't break into microplastics but actually breaks into something that's okay for the environment.
39:53And this will truly make an impact.
39:59In UCD scientists are researching how to do exactly that.
40:04By making plastic from organic waste.
40:08The project is called Biobic.
40:10We're trying to utilise better different resources including waste.
40:18We have to produce a lot of food which means that there will be a lot of waste associated with the production of a lot of food.
40:25Industry is looking into how can you dispose of this waste in a more sustainable way.
40:33And here you have an example where biodegradable, bio-based plastic was used to make this shoe.
40:40It started as a pineapple.
40:42When pineapple was harvested the leftover stocks that would be simply a waste were used to make this shoe.
40:50Here in Ireland we don't have heaps of pineapple waste but we do have plenty of waste from wood processing which, who knew, is rich in sugar.
40:59We can use that waste to grow bacteria in because bacteria love sugar.
41:06As bacteria consume the sugar in the wood waste they produce lactic acid which scientists here can use to make plastic.
41:14And we can make materials that are currently made with petrochemical plastic, we can make them using biodegradable materials.
41:23Tania and her team have used this method to produce a new bio-plastic.
41:26This material that I'm holding is called polyhydroxyalkanate, very tricky name.
41:33It is a material that we can use to make different products including products that are used for medicinal purposes like implants for example.
41:41The team's bio-plastic could also be used to make single-use items that just rot away in your compost bin.
41:48The challenge now is to make it affordable.
41:50There are a few teething problems that we need to solve. We need to solve the cost of production.
41:58We need to be better at producing this at high volume because we have a really large appetite for plastic.
42:05But I do see that we're going to be moving away from finite resource crude oil and we're going to use more and more biodegradable and bio-based plastic.
42:18It's not just scientists in university labs looking for a solution to our plastics problem.
42:24In County Clare, Paul Conlon is a cattle farmer.
42:27He's invented a bio-plastic to replace the black silage wrap used on farms around the country and he did it in his own kitchen.
42:37To my basic bio-resin mixture, I just dissolve this powder here and I get a kind of a gel consistency here.
42:47Paul wanted to help the environment by using less plastic and to protect his cattle from eating it.
42:54So he concocted an alternative. It's biodegradable and edible.
42:58I'm using mostly food that I've got in various supermarkets.
43:03To this one, I wanted to add a little bit of pine.
43:06And I let it dry for about four days.
43:09It's mostly a jelly that I'm actually making and adding certain additives to it then.
43:13Simple things like adding vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda.
43:16After months of experimentation, Paul landed on a formula for bio-plastic that even comes in a range of cattle-friendly flavours.
43:23This, I've used quite a bit of ingredients from the banana tree.
43:30Bananas. Bananas tree.
43:31Yeah, and you can see it's quite tough.
43:33Yeah.
43:34It's actually edible as well.
43:35Amazing.
43:36As well as being able to compost it.
43:37And it just tears off?
43:38Yeah, tears off and you can eat it.
43:39Is it kind of citrusy?
43:40Yeah, that's more the lemon.
43:42Once Paul got started, he could see the possibilities for bio-plastics were endless.
43:48So I ended up making a few products kind of by accident, I suppose, really.
43:51One of them is a disposable glove.
43:53When you're finished with the glove, you just wash your hands in water around 48 to 52 degrees Celsius.
43:58And it just turns back into sugary jelly.
44:00It feels like jelly that you're actually making and it starts to disintegrate.
44:03Yeah, you can really see it coming apart there.
44:05Yeah, yeah.
44:06So the plastics I've been trying out the back of the house at home, I can't actually find these bio-resins after a few days.
44:11They're gone.
44:12Yeah, gone.
44:13So in Futureville, silage beals could come in lemony flavoured wrappers. Sweet.
44:20But Paul did not stop there.
44:22Traditionally, silage beals are covered with a polyethylene net wrap.
44:26It just gets caught everywhere.
44:28You trip over it.
44:29No matter how meticulous you are, you'll see some animal with it in their mouth.
44:32And you have to try and go in and chase them nearly and you'll try and take it back out.
44:35About maybe up to 2,000 cattle can die a year from choking on this, especially calves.
44:38It was like there has to be something else and that's where it started from.
44:41So I am getting a reaction off the net, which I was hoping for.
44:46So what have you done?
44:47Tell me.
44:48So I've used a plant fibre instead that cattle can eat.
44:50This is banana fibre.
44:5185% of a banana plant is just wasted.
44:54So I'm using that waste.
44:55Oh, okay.
44:56Yeah.
44:57And what do the cattle make of this?
44:58It's kind of sweet.
44:59You can taste a bit of it if you want.
45:00I can taste this?
45:01Yeah, yeah.
45:02Have you tried this?
45:03Of course I have, yeah.
45:04Let me see.
45:05It's not too bad.
45:07There's no real taste to it.
45:08Paul's inventions are now being picked up by international industry.
45:13And he's already patents pending in America.
45:16So Paul, what do the next 25 years look like for you?
45:19What do you see your future in the work that you've been doing?
45:22We won't be using plastic net wrap ever again, including the silage wrap as well.
45:27I've been contacting farmers in lots of different countries and they're all geared up for this.
45:31Everywhere from Brazil, America, Australia, New Zealand.
45:34And so a field like this with hay wrapped using this type of plastic net wouldn't be here?
45:40Yes.
45:41No, it won't be, no.
45:42I'd make sure of it.
45:44Dr Brian Freeland is researching plastics and sustainability at DCU.
45:49Brian, great to see you.
45:50Great to chat to you today.
45:51Nice to be here.
45:52Nice to be here.
45:53He reckons turning organic waste into bioplastics will be big business.
45:58Really what we'll see in the future is development of bioeconomies, where we're using waste products from municipal waste, from agriculture and from industry.
46:08The likes of grass can be used, seaweed and all waste from brewing and distilling industries as well.
46:15It's kind of mind blowing, isn't it, that your grass or your grain can eventually be broken down and be hard enough to be durable enough to be a plastic?
46:22The new bioeconomy is projected to be worth two to four trillion euro yearly by 2050.
46:30So this is a huge new economy that Ireland could lead.
46:35In Futureville, we'll find new foods, new ways to farm.
46:41Inside and out, we'll discover ways to be kinder to our planet, so that nature can exist alongside our city, not in spite of it.
46:52Next time, how would you like it if this guy moved in?
47:05Are robots going to take over the world?
47:07No, we robots are here to help.
47:09And my trip to Helsinki to discover the future of food.
47:14So Solène can be of course many things, a bit like a potato.
47:18This is why you're a Michelin chef.
47:20Yes.
47:22That is great.
47:24That's Ric touchscreen movie.
47:25Maybe the village has not been with my family, but it cannot give you a nice system.
47:28I will ask you an hour of two.
47:29I will ask you about your help.
47:31Maybe there'sdin abroad.
47:32Think about it.
47:33Yes.
47:34I will be an hour of two.
47:36Then I'll make your house.
47:37Go ahead.
47:38If I go to Henry, we're going to wash.
47:39You.
47:40Didn't forget it.
47:41I got Dusk.
47:42It was an early music.
47:44And another reason that honestly's family can be a blast.
47:47What was theican food?
47:51You
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