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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-07-26
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbpacZJdx0
last night you slept on it many of you wearing it in bed and you stepped out onto it some of you need that'll net to take your first P. this morning many of you brush your teeth with it and some of your teeth by Stephen attains it some of you were looking at me through it you're all sitting on its its all around us a coffee
time talking about his I think and if you ever wanted evidence that we're in the middle a plastic epidemic just take a good look around you know we love it I don't we it's useful I mean it's all around us is versatile and it's flexible is is waterproof we use it for most of the products that we have it was developed in the nineteen twenties for
industry and by the end of the war by the nineteen fifties we were producing one point seven million tons of the stuff this year will produce well over three hundred million tons of the stuff I'm not figure set to double the next twenty years I'm gonna be quite to business success story or should be shouldn't it should be on the cover of all about mac well
they've run use in our newspapers and it probably would be if it weren't for the downsides to plastic production forty percent of all that we produce will end up in a landfill site taking up valuable space ten to twenty million tons of the stuff will end up this year in our oceans well see equivalent of one rubbish truck filled for the plastic driving up to ask
the side and dumping its contents into our oceans every year Vaclav stick well that's responsible for over a hundred thousand sealife animal deaths sea birds whales dolphins turtles all eating ingesting out plastic that we throw away I think getting washed up on national there's a study done by five John is that %HESITATION estimated that there were five trillion bits of plastic floating in our oceans today
five trillion I didn't think a trillion is a real number to go sample someone had made it up it's funny thing coal well not so funny as the case may be that every molecule the plastic this ever been produced still have on earth today it takes up plastics hundreds some of it thousands of years for it to deep right good news is it's not all about
the bad news I'll take that picture away from you because I really believe that there is another way I was in India a number of years ago working with a charity that I'm help pick because on a landfill site a pick is job is that given a long stick with a spike on the and then they go to landfill sites and they pick out various items
that can be reused or recycled by various people one guy I was hearing about he was known as the plastic man I thought was really cool you know like a superhero kind of title then he was buying up vast quantities of plastic bottles and when he was asked well what are you doing with those old plastic bottles he simply replied with saving lives I mean that's
a purposive Mary Jo business not just the title but he's actually doing the job as well I thought I'd like to know more about in may two thousand and fifteen India was hit by a severe heat wave which caused the death of a two thousand five hundred people and it left many suffering with heat exhaustion and I don't know if you like me to sometimes I
watch these things on the news the enormity of it is too much americana come up with any solutions I think a lot about the problems I mean I can't turn down the temperature in India I wish I could if if I could maybe I'll be cold from moment to moment something like I'm some sort of super hero night on many of the people that I've met
him into well they couldn't afford a cold drink let alone at conditioning units to cool themselves down but I guess to be a super hero to save lives we we have to think differently and that's exactly what our plastic man did and through a series of very simple experiments he came up with the ultimate solution that we share one of those experiments with you now if
you take out your hands and open your mouth wide and you're gonna breathe into the palm of your hand so Ifill how warm your practice now this time purse your lips and blow into the palm of your hand so Phil how much cooler that path is right well Bob plastic man simply replace your mouth with an old plastic bottle what he did was he took a
plastic bottle in a Cup the end of it away I've got the results of his experiments right here he took a plastic bottle cut the end off and put the end of the bottle that you might drink from into a window frame so what happens is the halter blows past font Paulton vocal and is blowing through the small part of the bottle cooling a room down
by up to five degrees saving lives we all plastic opal's this is my wallet aborted with me today I know uses a lot it's very useful to me but my wallet well is different from yours my wallet was made with this it sold Chris craft it with you and I might throw away after a one time use the people that made my wallet for me well
I saw this is something that could be turned into something useful again and for my wallet to I train it's the train is I'm wearing today are these on any old repair train is the strangest were made with waste plastics that they found floating around the oceans in the Maldives in fact eleven plastic bottles went into making my trains so it isn't just individual thinking that's
getting us to this level of changes large corporations that are thinking in this way too and I've noticed a difference a difference between those that come up with great ideas and somewhere along the line they get kinda lost in the problem I never get to turn it into a reality which I think is a universal problem isn't it versus those that come up with a great
idea and they turned it into a one the full reality will for those people they ask question over and over again almost annoyingly for some of them they ask well what if what if there is a way what if there is a solution what if there is something that we can do differently what if and I thought I'm like if I go I quite like that
question what if next time I come up with a problem in my world I'm gonna ask wilted now I have a mother in law it's kind of the end of sentence really I'm I'm looking for sympathy from his we all the stuff I in truth my mother in law she lives just three miles away from my wife annoyed she likes to come on the road that
sits outside of our house it was full of potholes in my mother in law would come down to a house that you get the fake soul why does with me you get the see the face all it should start to complain she complained a car was filthy dirty because the potholes and then you go to join bill from the carriage because it broke in the suspension
on her car I turned to my wife and I and she said because of the poor quality of your road I'm not gonna come and visit you anymore now I thought this was not slightly marvelous idea was one of the best matches ever come up with a bill was but my wife will she disagreed on how to do something about it so I called a road
re surfacing company in and they gave me a crowd tonight I very quickly realized that I couldn't afford to do up the private outside my house and then I remembered something else that I'd seen in India because I have a pothole problem to in fact that whole problem is sometimes worse than our whole problem many of the people that I know in India they they drive
a bounce on scooters all my pets all bikes will took took's the thing is when those things hit a pothole it can be the difference between life and death and what they were doing is going to the landfill sites and taking out old rubbish plastic bottles backs they were sticking it into the pothole pouring petrol I've ripped something to lighten melting down the plastic in those
potholes and I forgot brilliant that is like a lot what if I did that on my road a high note and the way you guys if but the council's around us they frowned upon a sticking things in potholes and setting alight to them so I have to think differently again I have to use my what if question what if there was a solution and I got
together with a couple of my mates and between us we ask this what if question what if there was a way to solve the problems that we have with potholes and poor quality roads what if there was also a way that we could help solve the plastic epidemic that we all lived through died Andre teen months trials and tests we ask this what if question we
came up with our ultimate solution I waste plastic pellets where we can use up the waste plastic rubbish that we'll far away and I'll not waste plastic into our roads to replace part of the big chairman in the mix the pitchman's the fossil fuel and then we got the results back we couldn't believe it the results that we got back because that would not only are
we able to use up the white plastic in our roads to make our roads better but I wrote Sir up to sixty percent strong then the roads that you currently drive on because of the waste plastics we put in and they're up to ten times longer lasting and they don't poke a hole my mother in law was delighted I would have thought it of you know
your old rubbish can make a road stronger and longer lasting and the more that we ask this what if question the more that we found more solutions and councils came to us and they said we want to use your old rubbish in our roads because it strong and long lasting and now we have opportunities to go around the world and of course like anyone else it
wasn't just the what if question because we have the borrowers are people saying well that won't work because of they stole it because of hot but the more that we ask the what if question the more that we came up with more solutions my goal to spend school and calling Cumbria my two little girls and each week the parents were invited in to attend the school
assembly to SIAC its performance I remember this particular Sunday because it was based upon what lives in our oceans and the kids have painted a different picture of the teacher gathered the children around just outside children what they've seen on Russian one will go kind of set me miss me miss maybe they mean it she's very excited she said finish mass yes they live in a
Russian Spanish and the little boy put his hand up Wilson excite me said whales and dolphins miss Welles and dolphins they live in a rush never seen them they apparently huge and they live in our actions while bill put a hand up he said plastics mess and plastics that heaven erections and then like you the teacher kind of think of a little bit and step back
but in truth my little girl was right by the time my little girls of my age at the grand old age of forty it's expected that there would be more plastics in our oceans then fish themselves and I don't know about you but I don't want my little girls growing up in a world where this is the case so we must we value we must re
use and we chase a plastic epidemic that we all live through today by creating a consistent culture of what takes you can turn your greatideas into a wonderful reality it's our future and it's our responsibility what if just for a moment we'll take what if the what if question can help us create a world that we are proud to handle to generation still to come thank
