- 3 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:28Transcribed by ESO, translated by —
00:30Okay, this is my plastic bag consumption over months, a few months, which is pretty ironic because I go out
00:40of my way not to get plastic bags.
00:43So this is mostly packaging, actually.
00:48It's crazy to see it like this because you can really tell how ubiquitous plastic is.
00:56I mean, it's coffee, it's nuts, it's mail, it's frozen food.
01:02I mean, it's candy, it's noodles.
01:04It's overwhelming.
01:08Plastic. It's always been part of my life.
01:11But today, it's everywhere.
01:15From the highest mountains to the deepest oceans, from the food we eat to the air we breathe.
01:23Convenience and low cost have made plastic irresistible and omnipresent.
01:29Breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics, they never fully disappear.
01:37And now, we're finding them in the human body, in our bloodstream, in our organs, in our unborn babies.
01:46And we know that the chemicals in plastics create health problems like diabetes, fertility issues, and cancer.
01:55So how did we get here?
01:57And is there a way out?
02:19So good to finally meet you as well.
02:24How are you doing?
02:24I'm really good, really good.
02:26Yay! Well, I'm so pleased that we're finally getting together.
02:30Yes.
02:31And I have been dying to talk to you about plastics.
02:34So you have kind of a long relationship with plastics.
02:37You've been researching them for a while.
02:39Yeah, for about 17 years now.
02:4117 years.
02:42Yeah, believe it or not.
02:43You may remember when people started paying attention to what was happening in the gyres, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
02:49So I started to investigate the impacts of plastics then.
02:52That began the interest, and today it's really the invisibilization of plastic.
02:59You know, you think about all the plastic that surrounds us.
03:01The clothes that we're wearing are plastic.
03:03The furniture, everything from cigarette butts to chewing gum.
03:08If you and I take a sip of water, about 80% of tap water contains microplastics.
03:14We know that we're inhaling this plastic, we're eating this plastic, and it's toxic.
03:19So it's something that I think we need to pay attention to.
03:22Right.
03:22And, you know, you're talking about the fact that plastics are everywhere.
03:25And I was thinking about that this morning when I was washing my hair.
03:27I'm like, okay, where is the plastic?
03:29It is literally everywhere.
03:31In my shampoo bottles, in my makeup, in my toothpaste.
03:34And it's so ubiquitous that we almost don't see it anymore.
03:38Absolutely.
03:38And that's the thing that I'm interested in looking at.
03:42We know that planetary health ultimately is human health, right?
03:46What we put out into the environment ultimately will find its way back in.
03:50And, you know, we've all heard the saying that we're made out of stardust.
03:54And I think these days we're made out of microplastic dust as well.
03:57Oh, God.
03:58Not as inspiring.
03:59No, it's a little dirtier.
04:02So I'm going to go on a bit of an adventure and see and find out how much microplastic is
04:08in my blood.
04:09I'm going to be looking at my fecal samples.
04:13So you're going to test yourself?
04:14Yes.
04:15Well, thank you for sacrificing your own body.
04:18For our sake, I'm going to be waiting with bated breath.
04:21I don't know if I would be so brave.
04:24No worries.
04:24Good luck on your journey.
04:27It's going to be so interesting.
04:36At the University of Minnesota, researcher Mary Kosuth is finding microplastics everywhere she looks.
04:43In our drinking water, our food, even our air.
04:48Since people spend a lot of time at home, indoor air quality is something we really need to consider.
05:02Hey.
05:03Good to meet you.
05:04Hi.
05:04It's so good to meet you, too.
05:06At last.
05:07Yeah, come on in.
05:08Thank you so much.
05:09So tell me, how everywhere was it in my house?
05:12I sent you a bunch of samples.
05:14So this is from your house dust.
05:17Some of these are pretty easy to spot.
05:20To spot, yeah.
05:21And so those are very likely synthetic polymers.
05:24This is just a speck of dust.
05:26I know.
05:26So if this is from one speck, I can't even begin to imagine how much is in the house.
05:32Right, right.
05:32Yeah, it's hard to wrap your head around.
05:34I'm fortunate that I've been able to kind of test some things just for fun.
05:39This is some dried mucus from the nose of a small person that I happen to live with.
05:47This is a booger.
05:49Yeah, absolutely.
05:50Look at this.
05:51Look at all that.
05:52I mean, there's red threads in there.
05:54That would definitely not be a human hair.
05:58There are so many different kinds of contaminants that are in consumer products.
06:02We just assume that they've all been completely tested and that they're completely safe.
06:07And we bring them into our homes and we just live alongside them.
06:11And we think that they're doing us absolutely no harm when that isn't necessarily the case.
06:15There's so little transparency.
06:18This is plastic.
06:20Yeah.
06:21We are conducting an experiment and the entire population is involved.
06:27We can try and kind of safeguard our home, but it's a global commons issue.
06:34It's everywhere.
06:34You go out into the world and you're going to be exposed to it.
06:38I've taken some samples of snow that's fallen in my backyard and found tiny fragments of plastic particles in it.
06:48And when I came home, I told my children to not catch snowflakes.
07:01Plastic is by and large a derivative of petrochemicals.
07:06So it's not a coincidence that many of the big plastics companies in the world are actually branch plants of
07:12big oil companies.
07:18We pump the oil out of the ground.
07:20We crack that oil into different types of chemicals.
07:25Those chemicals are polymerized so that those molecules are connected to create different types of plastic.
07:34That whole process creates its own pollution, including climate warming gases.
07:40Those many types of plastics are made into different products, are shipped worldwide.
07:48One of the things that's hard to wrap your brain around when it comes to the plastics industry
07:52is how astronomically huge the numbers are.
07:57Over 1.5 billion plastic bottles being bought around the planet every day.
08:04Two million plastic bags are used every minute on Earth.
08:11The end result of this is about 400 million tons of plastics that are created every year.
08:18Almost half of all plastic produced goes into single-use items.
08:26Today, even the biggest oil companies in the world are admitting that we're going to be using less oil in
08:32the years ahead.
08:33And if you can't burn oil in cars, if that market is disappearing over the next few decades, what are
08:40you going to do with that product?
08:43Well, increasing the plasticization of the human life is where the oil is going to go.
08:50Plastic companies are talking about tripling plastic use and production over the next couple of decades.
08:58So, it's a double whammy.
09:00It's a product that is contributing to the global warming problem and creating this toxic exposure problem.
09:14While Zaya is looking for microplastics inside the human body, I want to check their levels in the ocean.
09:20I'm going to start right on my doorstep in a place known for its rugged and natural landscapes, the coast
09:26of British Columbia, just south of Vancouver Island.
09:31Oh.
09:33This is a device that we designed to be able to go down through the water column and collect samples
09:39at depth.
09:39What is the deepest this machine can go?
09:42400 meters of depth.
09:43That's pretty deep.
09:44It's pretty deep, yeah.
09:46It's about 14 football fields.
09:48Wow.
09:52What's the most common microplastic you find in the ocean?
09:56When we look in the water column, we actually find a lot more microfibers.
10:02This is a filter that's been kind of like dried up a little bit.
10:06So, you see organic debris and like salt crystals from the seawater.
10:10But you can clearly see some of these blue polyester microfibers that we find.
10:15But these are the types of environmental samples that we're seeing.
10:18And then another one that we've been seeing a lot is tire dust.
10:22I can tell that that's a piece of tire.
10:26So, these are what we find in some of our samples, specifically closer to roadways or highways where water is
10:34kind of flushing on these roads and then flushing through these drainage pipes directly into the environment.
10:38Dust comes from somewhere and it ends up somewhere.
10:42And our tires, they don't magically disappear.
10:45That material is going somewhere.
10:47So, every few years when you replace your tires, it's something to think about.
10:50Like, wow, there's half inch of rubber that is no longer on my tires.
10:54Where did that go?
10:54And then expand that to the whole world of cars and trucks that are driving around.
10:58And you realize, wow, there's massive inputs of these toxic rubber compounds into the environment on a daily basis.
11:09It's hard to wrap your head around, but virtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists somewhere on Earth.
11:17In some stage of degradation, because this stuff never disappears, it just goes from being larger pieces of litter to
11:28tinier and tinier particles that become microscopic.
11:33Definition is just a piece of plastic less than five millimeters in size, so a pencil eraser and smaller.
11:39Somebody buys the bottle.
11:40The bottle is used for a few minutes.
11:42The bottle's discarded.
11:44Once it's in the environment, it's broken down by sunlight, by the action of waves, by the passing of time.
11:51It starts to degrade into these tiny particles that are so light, and they come down in the rain, they
11:56accumulate in our food, and we're absorbing them into our own bodies.
12:02One of the largest sources of microplastics into the environment is mismanaged waste.
12:07Aside from large items breaking into smaller items, one of the most common sources is paint from buildings and boats,
12:17tire dust from cars, bikes, planes.
12:22As we wear clothing that's increasingly plastic, those fibers shed, go down the drain, wind up in the local lakes
12:32and rivers, and those fibers are a big source of microplastics as well.
12:39There are estimates that suggest that anywhere from 10 to 20 million metric tons of plastic are leaving our land
12:46and going out into the ocean each year.
12:49Now, some of that will stay on the surface and float and travel quite far.
12:52Some of it, as it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, can go up into the atmosphere and travel
12:57globally that way.
13:00Some of it will sink to the bottom.
13:04It is eaten by almost every level of the food chain.
13:08And now we're starting to understand that microbes colonize it.
13:12And so in and of itself becomes this habitat.
13:15So it's atmospheric currents, global dust cycles, the water cycle, the carbon cycle.
13:20It's sort of become part of these planetary cycles.
13:26I'm just getting ready to go to Rochester because they want some samples to test the microplastics in my body.
13:41This is the shit that I do for science, literally.
14:00I sent fecal samples to you guys to test for microplastics, and with bated breath, I've been sort of wondering
14:09what the results were.
14:11When we get a sample, the first thing that we need to do is add hydrogen peroxide.
14:16Hydrogen peroxide is going to eat away at the organics and leave the plastics.
14:21What we're looking at is the optical microscope right now.
14:25So you can see this grid.
14:26Right.
14:26And so this grid is three millimeters in size.
14:28So we get over here in the corner, this blackish, bluish type of fiber.
14:32A fiber as well, another one.
14:34Come into here and we can see this very small fragment.
14:37We're talking about in the order of tens of microns.
14:40It came up with a very clear fit to being polypropylene.
14:44So disposable masks.
14:46Candy wrappers, salad bags.
14:49Polypropylene tends to be the more crinkly stuff.
14:51So like this fiber that we saw here, it was cotton.
14:54So we're seeing a number of cotton ones come down here, and this is being rayon, a semi-synthetic type
15:00of fiber.
15:00Come down further here, and we have polyester, synthetic clothing, any fleece.
15:05It's pretty shocking because I, you know, I'm still processing the fact that this stuff is really in my body.
15:12Yeah.
15:13And we don't know how this came out, too.
15:16Right.
15:16So there may be some that was retained that we're not measuring.
15:19Right.
15:19Do you think everybody has microplastics?
15:21Yes.
15:21Oh, everybody.
15:22Yeah, no doubt.
15:23No doubt.
15:24No doubt.
15:25Because it's everywhere.
15:27So every single person is exposed.
15:32There are tens of thousands of chemicals in commerce, many of which are used to make plastics.
15:39And virtually none of these chemicals have been tested for safety.
15:45We don't really know how many are present in a plastic item.
15:48We don't know the types of chemicals that are present in a plastic because that's proprietary information for the business.
15:54And so these are all trade secrets so that people don't get the recipe from another competitor for what's in
16:00their plastic.
16:02That's what we're working on right now.
16:04We're looking to see if this particle ends up in this part of the body and we know that it
16:08has these kinds of chemicals with it, how much of a dose will we get?
16:12And, you know, what kind of impact would that be if we're continually dosing ourselves with chemicals like that?
16:18The study of toxicity of microplastics is in its infancy, but we're beginning to learn that they are a transport
16:27mechanism for getting bad chemicals into people.
16:33A key part of this story is the human endocrine system.
16:38We have glands in us that make hormones.
16:40And those hormones, they guide the development of virtually everything, how many fingers we have, is our brain wired properly,
16:49can we reproduce?
16:51There's an amplification process that can make one molecule have a signal that's up to 100,000, if not a
17:00million times bigger than the original signal.
17:04And that means that very small doses can have really big effects.
17:12Some chemicals in plastics hack that signaling system.
17:18So there's any number of chemicals that are deliberately put in different types of plastic that we know are disruptive
17:26to our hormones.
17:29Chemicals like phthalates, for instance, which are very, very common in plastics, they're actually, they're a softener.
17:35Phthalates will take a rigid material and they'll make it more flexible.
17:49BPA is a very well-known chemical now, still very common.
18:02We know that now there's a link between these chemicals and human disease, like breast cancer, prostate cancer.
18:12We know that a lot of these chemicals trigger obesity.
18:17Another condition that is now tied firmly to chemicals leaching out of plastics is infertility.
18:27If you simply take the data that they have gathered over sperm count and how much it's declined,
18:32and you just project it forward into the future, by 2045,
18:37a lot of young adult males will not be able to reproduce the normal, old-fashioned way.
18:45But there's another twist to this, which is that the plastics that are used during the process of artificial reproduction
18:52interfere with artificial reproduction.
19:09Microplastic exposure isn't great at any age, but new research shows it's especially dangerous at early stages of development.
19:18Dr. Ragusa is one of the first specialists to look at how it could affect the most vulnerable members of
19:25our society.
19:28The placenta has a fundamental function, it's an organ of transitorial, it's an organ of children, not of mothers.
19:36So we find women who gave us their placenta and gave us their placenta,
19:41and then we find in these four placenta 12 pieces of plastic.
19:45And then of these 12 particles, some were of polypropylene.
19:49Okay, the placenta is in the placenta, but where?
19:56And they discovered that the placenta is in the cellula.
20:01That is, the cellula, which is the fundamental part of life,
20:05and in its own time is made up by many smaller pieces.
20:10We discovered that when the microplastic is in these smaller pieces,
20:14the cellula, which is close to the cellula, it destroys them.
20:21And this is very sad if it happens to a child in formation.
20:26Because it changes the way of expressing the DNA of the DNA.
20:35The problem is not the plastic.
20:36The plastic is an extraordinary instrument, very useful instrument.
20:40With the plastic we can do wonderful things.
20:43The prosthesis of the heart, the prosthesis of the heart, the prosthesis of the heart.
20:48In many instruments, the life of today on the planet would not be conceivable without plastic.
20:54The problem is how we use the plastic, how we use this wonderful resource.
21:08If we look at the world as a place that has resources to become rich,
21:15we do not see the beauty of this world anymore.
21:22We become part of the technique.
21:26We are useful until we can do something, until we are within the economic paradigm.
21:33That is, to change our way of seeing the world.
21:37That is, when the Coca-Cola, which has billions and billions of dollars of product,
21:43and they know what they are doing, because they know the truth,
21:46they destroy the world of many, of all of us, for the interests of few,
21:52we must rebel ourselves.
21:55The goal of our studies is rebellion, rebel ourselves.
22:05In the 20s and 30s, you had the rise of the petrochemical industry.
22:11Petroleum companies and chemical companies were aligning and wanting to figure out something
22:16to do with the waste products of processing of their products.
22:20That became the groundwork for the modern plastics industry,
22:25and the invention of most of the big plastics that we know today.
22:30Companies like Dow or DuPont had teams of industrial chemists,
22:35who were just noodling around with chemicals, trying to figure out cool stuff that they could do,
22:41coming up with materials for which there was no immediate need or demand.
22:50Come World War II, the military turns to that nascent industry.
22:54Faced with a critical metal shortage and unprecedented production demands,
22:59armament manufacturers immediately turned to plastics for assistance,
23:03and the kingdom of plastics responded with remarkable speed and ingenuity.
23:07The war ends, you have an industry that has vastly ramped up production capacity,
23:13and you have a consuming public.
23:16Bring these two trends together, and one of the results is you just get this explosion of plastic stuff.
23:30The first place that plastics go are into durable goods.
23:34They go into clothes.
23:37Textiles.
23:39Suddenly we have fabrics that don't need to be ironed or washed.
23:43Appliances.
23:44They go into things like vinyl records.
23:47They go into naugahyde furniture.
23:50Cars.
23:51And then in the late 40s, early 50s,
23:54the plastics industry starts to realize there's only so many cars they're going to build.
23:58There's only so many kitchen counters they're going to put in.
24:00So they start looking for new markets.
24:04And one logical, potentially infinite growth opportunity is in disposables.
24:12Life magazine ran this article, Throw Away Living.
24:14And to illustrate it, they had this family who have thrown all of these disposable things up in the air.
24:20And Life calculated at the time that if this wasn't throw away, that it would have taken the wife,
24:25because of course it was the wife, 40 hours to clean all this stuff.
24:29But, you know, thanks to plastic and throw away stuff, she didn't have to do it.
24:35What life ran was the picture of all the stuff in the air.
24:38You don't see it all raining down onto the ground and creating this mess
24:42that is kind of a metaphor for the mess that we're dealing with today.
24:59Hello.
25:00Do you want to just take a seat for us, please?
25:02For sure.
25:03Take your car, take it off.
25:04OK.
25:05OK.
25:06So you're here to take my blood.
25:07Oh, yeah.
25:08I'm not a fainter, so you don't need to worry.
25:10Yeah, it's good to know.
25:12We're taking a smaller sample than you'd normally give it a blood donation.
25:15And then that will allow us to have a look and see what actually is in your blood sample
25:21in terms of particles, shapes, sizes, that kind of thing.
25:26We have 20 healthy donors.
25:29It is a blind study.
25:30We have completed nearly all of the 20 donors.
25:36So the next step is that we'll undergo an enzyme digest that's breaking down a lot of the biological material
25:42that you would find in there.
25:44Then they go on, actually, for a very long incubation at temperature.
25:48And then once that's complete, we can filter it.
25:51And then we can see what's actually in there that's remaining.
25:55We're then able to place it in this spectroscopy equipment.
26:00And Kat here has a sample of blood from one of the healthy donors that we have.
26:07This hair, this entire white object, that's the nylon, that's the microplastic.
26:12So that is nylon in human blood.
26:15Most likely from, I'm guessing, clothes or carpet or something like that?
26:19Textiles of some kind, probably.
26:21So what kind of polymers are you seeing right now?
26:25The nylon that we've seen today, polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate.
26:35And so what are you finding on average?
26:37In every sample, we found microplastics.
26:40It ranges from maybe one or two to like 11, 12, 13.
26:46So that's quite a lot.
26:4811 microplastics in a quarter of the sample and you're only taking 10 milliliters.
26:51That's a lot. That's a pretty big plastic burden.
26:56I guess it's inevitable these days.
27:00Microplastics are very different to other types of contaminants.
27:04There's not just the physical side, which is one issue and there's potential to trigger inflammation-type responses.
27:12There's also the chemical and the leachate issue as well.
27:18Both the plastics and the additives can be genotoxic, so they can change the DNA.
27:23They can be epigenetic, causing more higher vulnerability to cancer development later in life or even the next generation.
27:30But in general, the portal toxicity can cause inflammatory, low-grade inflammatory responses.
27:39In fact, we know that chronic inflammation is one of the biggest killers because it's a prelude to other, to
27:47many chronic diseases.
27:51It's worrying, it's alarming, because if it's in the blood, that means, you know, it can be transported to any
27:57other organ or tissue.
27:59From your bone marrow to your brain.
28:10In Turkey, a team of scientists and surgeons are conducting the first-ever study looking for microplastics in the human
28:19brain.
28:21Today, we will remove the anterior part of the frontal lobe, including the tumor.
28:32There are microplastics in all our bodies, but brain is quite different.
28:39It doesn't get in touch with the blood directly.
28:43There is blood-brain barrier.
28:46We are interested in microplastics in brain tissue.
28:50That's what we are looking for.
28:53If we find microplastics in the brain, then there are a lot of other questions.
29:00Does the microplastics cause any neuroinflammation?
29:03Does the microplastics cause any effect on neurons, which disrupts their working capabilities?
29:13If microplastics are accumulating in the brain tissue, at some point they should cause some kind of neurodegenerative disease, like
29:23Alzheimer's or dementia.
29:27We already have a couple of samples from last week.
29:31We will get those samples to set up.
29:34So, if you find microplastics in the brain, are you going to be scared?
29:40Yes, because if microplastics can transfer from blood to brain, it means it can transfer from everywhere to everywhere.
29:50So, there is no barrier, there is no limitation for plastics.
29:53Is there the potential of it staying in the brain?
29:55Yeah, there is no other way.
29:57You know, it will accumulate there, because the end point of the human body, there is no other places to
30:05go.
30:05We lost our connection with the nature, so we are living in a synthetic world, mostly made from plastic, made
30:15from oil and gas.
30:17The current situation, with those amount of plastic that we generate as a waste and as a pollutant, makes us
30:26homoplasticus.
30:27It's not a homo sapiens anymore.
30:36This is normal brain tissue.
30:38It's like a space.
30:42Nothing, just some nebula.
30:46Oh, yeah, look.
30:49You see? You see the shape?
30:52Yeah.
30:52Yeah.
30:53So, we can take spectrum to get rectangular, and then it means it's really focused.
31:04Here we go.
31:05Okay.
31:07Look, this is the first spectrum.
31:10So, is that plastic?
31:12Most probably. We should take more...
31:15Samples, more scans?
31:16Most scans, yeah. Are we sure? Because I will continue to investigate after you.
31:21Yeah, after I leave.
31:22Yeah.
31:23Are you surprised by what we just found already?
31:26Yeah.
31:27Because it's not something...
31:29That should be there.
31:30Yeah.
31:31Shouldn't be there.
31:34You know, it's a bit tragic.
31:37You are transferring microplastics, plastics, nanoplastics, and chemicals to your unborn generation.
31:56Siddharth, good to see you again.
31:58Yeah, good to see you. How are you?
32:00I'm good, thank you.
32:01So, it's been a little while.
32:04I just kind of wanted to get an update from you.
32:06What have you found?
32:08Yeah, but there is some good and bad news.
32:11It's good for, you know, in a scientific manner, but in reality, it's not really good news.
32:19In the tumor brain tissues that we analyzed, we found six particles, two of them are blue pigments.
32:27And those pigments used for production of plastics, specifically PVC plastics.
32:34So, those pigments are kind of additives, because plastics have many chemicals inside.
32:41It's like a chemical cocktail.
32:43One of the elements of this cocktail is pigments.
32:47It's really scary, but it's not surprising.
33:18It's really just a boolean plant.
33:21It's a little bit more colorful.
33:22It's really good to see the microplastics.
33:23It's a little bit more about, but it's a little bit more of a genealogy.
33:24It's a little bit more than a genealogy.
33:25And you can actually see the microplastics, as it's very powerful.
33:26You can see it.
33:27You can see the microplastics.
33:27plastic just about everywhere we look we found it in my blood we found it in my feces we found
33:32it
33:33in human lungs we found it in the placenta and uh really quite scarily we found it in the human
33:41brain
33:41so do all of us have plastic in us absolutely you do i do the air that we're breathing right
33:48now
33:48we are surrounded by it i wonder is there any way to tell how much of us are made of
33:54plastic
33:54you know there is actually a study that just came out and it was looking at plastic microplastic in
34:00the human brain and what they found is that the brains were 0.5 percent plastic they were 99.5
34:09percent brain and the rest was plastic another study actually looked at patients with alzheimer's and
34:16dementia and found that patients with alzheimer's or dementia have 10 times more microplastics in
34:23their brains than healthy patients can we say that there is officially causation for this or is this
34:30is this something else the science is too new but certainly the studies that are starting to come out
34:36are starting to show uh that it's very problematic i haven't come across any research that's like hey
34:41no problem yeah plastics turns out they're okay so okay this really begs the question it's it's in us
34:48it's all around us it's really difficult to extract ourselves right now from plastics can we get it out
34:54of our bodies that is the million dollar question we don't have any method of getting it out of our
35:00bodies right now unfortunately but there are things that we can do to prevent it from going in the first
35:05thing i did was i threw out my plastic chopping board right because i was realizing oh my goodness every
35:10time i use my knife i am chopping micro plastics into the food that i'm eating so there's a there's
35:15a few
35:15things that we can do as individuals but ultimately this is about policy this is about changes at the
35:21government level and it has to be that way because as individuals we're in a trap there's only so much
35:26we can do one of the things about the plastic problem that is positive i would think is that
35:33there is an alternative right we have lived for most of humanity without plastics we know we can survive
35:41and unlike some of the other existential threats that are facing humanity this one has a very solvable
35:48outcome right it is really heartening to know that there are solutions and they're quite feasible that's
35:54i think the best news story that we've got right now that there are people there are scientists and
36:00there are innovations out there that can provide us with solutions and provide us with alternatives so
36:06um that's an area that's really worth investigating so where do you go from here zaya i'm just gonna
36:13keep fighting the good fight i'm speaking to folks who are working on the plastic treaty delegates making
36:19sure that i get this uh you know two mps at the house of commons and just getting the word
36:25out how
36:25about you this is like my first foray into plastics really to doing a deep dive so i am going
36:30to try to
36:31meet some of the folks who are trying to mimic plastic use a different material and see if it
36:38can be scaled up and potentially replace plastic plastic fantastic at last the puns hey
36:47well you are so inspiring zaya i just can't thank you enough for all the amazing research you've done
36:52and how you are keeping people's feet to the fire and uh continuing on this huge mission so keep it
36:58up
36:59thank you kindred spirit i will
37:17so full disclosure this is a prototyping machine so here we have our bio strong eta for compostability
37:28three to six months the materials that we use are intended to replace single-use plastics or any
37:34short-term products that's amazing so what are your products made of the products consists of uh
37:41different materials like wasted byproducts like hemp we use biodegradable compostable polymers such as pbat
37:48pga cellulose pha okay so i don't know what any of those pha pga like are these all biologically
37:57feasible additives or materials they're considered biodegradable compostable plastics uh for example
38:03pha is essentially derived from bacteria poop you can see here is a film made from pha okay and so
38:11the
38:11idea is to first identify uh the type of bacteria and figure out what that bacteria's diet is and then
38:20load it with its favorite foods but there are people out there who are doing something similar
38:26and they're incorporating this material called pla so pla is considered a biodegradable
38:32and compostable material but it actually only breaks down in industrial composting conditions
38:38and then when you go into those restaurants and have like compostable forks and knives
38:43do they have that's it wow yeah chances are that's it so i couldn't just throw the fork in my
38:49own
38:49compost and have it break down no our target is to produce the material which is home compostable
38:55and these uh home composting conditions here we maintain around 28 degree centigrade let's see
39:03and home composting what is the condition right now so right now you can see bacteria is making their
39:09colonies our expectation is within three months it should be gone so here also we have film okay so
39:16you can see yeah that it is started that whole process this film was this bag oh wow how long
39:25did that
39:26take it was like within 10 weeks 10 weeks yeah yeah wow this is like paper almost it's really decomposing
39:34yeah now if i were to put this in the ocean yeah would it have similar results it may take
39:41a little
39:42bit longer time because it depends on the how much bacteria we are providing i see in the composting
39:49condition a lot of bacteria is yeah in in water it is less population is less and the temperature in
39:55ocean is completely different yeah so but it will not generate any microplasty it will be completely
40:02converted to carbon dioxide moisture and biomass so if a fish came by and started nibbling on this
40:09no problem it would just digest it it will be digested yeah yes
40:16so the limiting factor isn't the material i mean it seems like there's many different
40:22types of bio waste that we can use now so what is the limiting factor here one there's not enough
40:28people doing this like like us the second layer is the actual manufacturers that make these types
40:33of products that you see on the table here these manufacturers especially in north america are not
40:38susceptible of new material they don't want to change they don't want to interrupt their their existing
40:43operations um and so for for that reason it's it's hard to make that transition for for businesses
40:55municipal governments also play a big role when it comes to solving the microplastic crisis my hometown
41:03of victoria for instance has made reduction of single-use plastics a priority as a city we actually
41:10monitor our waste disposal rates and some of the things we know are not necessarily good news like we
41:16know that every day people in victoria throat 17 000 single-use items which is not ideal but we know
41:26that data and now we can try to kind of stem the tide on all these single-use items do
41:32you feel like
41:33plastics might be an easier topic to kind of get your head around versus some of the the other ones
41:40like climate change which it's harder to pinpoint exactly where our problems are coming from or where
41:44emissions should stop these are two of the same problem it's all about consumption when we go out
41:51and buy something we're not just buying that product and trying to figure out a way of disposing of it
41:56we're buying something that has taken resources to make that has taken emissions to deliver and that
42:03will take energy to dispose of and that is all part of our waste footprint and our climate footprint
42:13there's no doubt it'll be hard to sever our connection with plastic it's become so intertwined
42:20with how we live but with planetary and human health now in danger it's time for a new approach
42:34we need to turn off the tap
42:38i think we need to dramatically reduce the amount of virgin plastic that gets produced
42:44we need to redesign hazardous chemicals in ways that reduce their toxicity we know enough now to do that
42:54we need to keep looking for microplastics in the human body to uncover how they might be harming us
43:03we know that our society can solve pollution problems our grandparents were exposed to pollutants
43:10that don't exist anymore because the human health effects became clear those chemicals
43:17were then banned and the population was healthier as a result we know what the problem is not rocket
43:25science so we need to get on with solving that problem in the same way that previous generations
43:31solve their pollution problems
43:33so
44:04we need to add extra
44:05we need to do
44:05we need to do
44:05we need to do
Comments