What a load of trash | Karsten Plutt | TEDxEatonSquarePrep
hello my name is karsten plitt i am nine years old and i live in three different cities houston texas london uk and bacchus by jean they're all quite big cities located in different parts of the world have different climates different cultures but one thing they all have in common is garbage and i'm talking about a lot of garbage those three cities combined would generate over nine million tons of waste each year to put that number into perspective 9 million tons would be the 38th most wasteful country in the world bigger than the netherlands which has a population of over 17 million people since i moved away from houston texas when i was three please allow me to share a bit more of my story in bacon and london about garbage when i moved from baku to london i noticed they both had similar garbage problems which surprised me considering in bacoon you don't see recycling bins along the streets when you go to shops you get plastic bags and don't have to pay extra for them people seem to mostly drink out of their out of single-use plastic or glass bottles and the garbage collection is often impacted by high winds so garbage is scattered everywhere so it's common to walk around back home and sadly see garbage lying around on the other hand in london where i live now there are well-established recycling programs bins along the streets to properly dispose your garbage people seem to mostly use their own multi-use fabric shopping bags and you have to pay extra for a bag if you don't think you're discouraging the use of single-use plastic bags multi-use water balls are common like at school garbage is collected multiple times a week and yet you still see garbage on the streets and sadly in the river times the garbage challenges i saw in baku to i see in london made me think why is this happening in a city with so many programs to support proper disposal of garbage according to a report released by the department of environment food and rural affairs london collected nearly 3.7 million tons of garbage in 2016. to put that number into perspective 3.7 million tons of garbage would be equal to over 625 000 elephants that has a lot of garbage as i walked along the river tapes of my parents i noticed that many of the bins were full and not empty frequently enough so garbage often overflows also because the bins are full people just throw their garbage on the ground and over time the garbage ends up in the rivers and oceans this is a big problem for london and our planet as garbage enters rivers and oceans especially plastic it causes harm to sea life as they eat it right now is estimated that over 1 million plastic water balls are used every minute globally and over 90 of them are not recycled which means there's a chance for plastic to enter our rivers and oceans in fact over 60 percent of the litter collected in river tables cleanup projects are single-use plastic items since plastic has low density it floats and collects on top of the water did you know once plastic enters water over time it breaks up into tiny tiny little pieces called micro plastics micro plastics are harmful to fish as they eat it according to big blue ocean cleanup our river thames actually some of the highest levels of microplastics of any river in the world and over one third of the fish in the rivertains contain microplastics this sounds sad but we can do something about it here are some things we can do about it let's talk about this problem and educate everyone about the impact a small action of dropping a piece of plastic has on the environment the world bank unfortunately expects global waste to increase by 70 percent by 2050 if we don't do anything i'm hopeful that my talk can be part of that education process and make people aware of this global issue over the past year we have shown how we can come together as a global community and address this covered pandemic so we know we can fix our garbage problems next think about the garbage think about the plastic you use and waste you generate in your home how about count how many pieces of plastic you and your family throw away or recycle in a week can you make some changes to reduce the number for example when i go grocery shopping my dad we no longer use plastic bags or fruits and vegetables another thing you can do is reuse waste items as much as possible an example for me is i like to play lego so i reuse jars and containers to separate and store my lego pieces finally we can all pick up glitter when we see it and prevent it from entering our rivers and oceans when you see a bin that's full don't throw your garbage next to it but carry that piece of garbage until you find an empty bin these all may seem like small things but if we all do them they will add up and make a big difference thank you for listening