Transcript

Plastics, the Environment and You | Ramani Narayan | TEDxMSU

[Music] good evening after that wonderful soul-searching music I assume your brains are ready for some serious societal talking we're going to talk about plastics today you heard about plastics I'm sure so let's learn a little bit more deeper into it so let's begin let's take a walk into a supermarket food store I'm sure all of you have visited one such store and there's chicken and what do you look at it say well how much do I buy what amounts do I need but think deeper there is a plastic tray that holds those chickens and then there is a packaging film that protects and preserves that chicken I'm sure you didn't think much about it except your mouth was watering for what's inside of that package let's walk further down and look at that aisle it's full of products food products and other kinds of products but the commonality in this all of it has got packaging associated with it walk down further these are the plates and the utensils and the napkins which you need for your party tonight right after this show but that's also in plastics packaged in plastics so I can bet you that if you went to any supermarket store in any aisle and found one item or one space which does not have sticks come see me after the show so there is more of the plastic packaging I talked about and then you wonder where does all this packaging go have you ever wondered about that it goes into what we call today a landfill this is a modern invention a hole in the ground where we bury garbage for posterity it's a travesty to put all these resources into it but that's what we do in the economically developed world of ours on the other side the emerging economic countries of the world China India Malaysia Indonesia name it they decided why waste making a landfill let's just dump it out and that is what we term mismanaged plastic waste and 80% of these land-based waste is what goes into our pristine oceans I'm sure you've heard about either through print media or your electronic media or your phones smartphones that the issues about plastics being found in the oceans and this is a quick snapshot of the world hope you remember your geography which you learned in school on the right hand side are on your left hand side the dark brown shaded our areas is the countries of China of Indonesia Malaysia Thailand this is the emerging developing countries and five million tons per year of plastics that mismanaged waste picture we saw is leaking into the oceans from that mismanaged country mismanaged waste from that countries go to the light Brown and you can see us North America on your right-hand side they're also from one to five million tonnes of plastic waste leaking into the oceans so the oceans do not recognize country's boundaries what you dumb or what leaks out in the Southeast Asian nation countries ends up in the North American plastic gyre comes up near Hawaii so clearly we need to do some things about it indeed if we did nothing think for a minute if we did nothing 618 million tons of mismanaged waste is going to be formed and about 200 million tons of this is going to leak into the oceans every year so by 2025 we're gonna have lots of plastics in the ocean so clearly we have a problem and I hope you start to think about this and the question then comes what do these plastics do in the oceans why is it a problem right I mean that's the question when a I'm sure you heard the story of this Boeing liner lost in the oceans and they couldn't find it for months and years around so what about a tiny micro plastic in the ocean should it be a problem I want you to learn about this that picture you see is a slide which contains Plankton's Plankton's are a food source for the other organisms present in the oceans that blue dots you see or plastic micro plastics and it is projected that if we continue to do business as usual plastics will be in the oceans much greater than plankton which means the food source for all the ocean marine organisms will not be there so that would create a problem but more importantly this is a picture of a micro plastic which has been colonized by microorganisms this is a source of food for the birds and for the fishes they only see the food which is growing around that plastic they consume it that microplastics gets carried up the food chain it goes into the fishes it goes into the birds and where is it going to end up unless you are an on fish eating person like me it's going to be in your stomachs at some point or the other so clearly we have a problem and we need to address this problem so what is the solution to something like this say knee-jerk reaction you can put up and say let's ban all plastics right but this is my first take-home message for you at least to think about it banning plastics is may create even greater problems then the presence of plastics is going to do we need to do a different fix on this why let me take you back to that wonderful chicken this is a fish packaged in that nice film carried in a tray that is preserving and protecting that product if you did not have it if it was in the open and hundreds of people had touched it with their hand felt it would you buy that there are some problems then right so clearly packaging is necessary to preserve and protect it all of you have had flu vaccines vaccinations are for everyone would you get yourself vaccinated with a with a syringe and a needle which has been reused many times over fact that was a serious problem in Canada only yesterday's news so clearly protection and preservation and hygiene or important attributes that plastics contribute of course your favorite iPhones and of course our favorite automobiles many of them now have plastics it makes it light just think for a minute if the plastics components are used in place of other materials that's a 50% weight reduction which translates to fuel reduction and a better fuel economy and one more factoid for you to take home one kilogram of plastic incorporated or if you reduce the weight of your product by one kilogram then you are going to reduce 10 kilograms of co2 being released into the environment and it's attributed global warming problems I and what about agriculture in one of the earlier talks you heard about food and the fact that population is going to double how are we going to feed it well plastic culture agriculture films like the one you see and one you if you walk on campus you can see provides the opportunity to double and triple our food growing potential growing vegetables growing fruits they also prevent weed and other kinds of pesticides which can happen so clearly plastics is necessary to the well-being and of the environment but also the well-being of humankind itself so what can we do we can't ban plastics we have a problem with plastics so in a laboratory like ours and I'm not saying we are the only ones but you will permit me to say that we are doing this kind of work we want to change the nature of plastics what the problem is the end of life what happens to it after use and what we are doing is we want to make it compost ball so learn this word I'm sure many of you are familiar with it but learn it from a different perspective compostable and bio-based bio-based means I'm going to use plants and biomass to manufacture my plastic products instead of petroleum and oil and I'm going to design into many of them which I use a single-use the property of compost ability making it food for the microorganisms present in compost so that it can be removed entirely from the environment here's an example these are products you see we use sunlight energy we grow corn we can grow soybeans we make a molecule called lactic acid now this is not going to be a lesson in chemistry for you except that lactic acid is a molecule that you produce when you do anaerobic exercise so I'm sure you're not going to forget it the next time you feel pain when you do an aerobic exercise we take this lactic acid molecule and put it together thousands of them to create a new polymer molecule a plastic-like molecule which has all the attributes and performance of today's products except it has additional attribute that it is compostable you're familiar with this drink up there in campus around there that's made out of PLA it looks exactly like any other cup but it is compostable bottles bottles can be made out of non-compostable plastics this one happens to be compostable plastic agriculture we talked about can be made out of compostable or biodegradable in soil like plastics carry out bags which you get in the store or the bin liners in your dorms or in venues they can be a compostable and the food this can be put forth composting so what I've shown your examples of changing plastics to meet the end-of-life requirement of compost ability and you may ask well is this really real I mean they really disappear look at that's a compost pile it's right there dem su you can see the snow behind it maybe some of you can recognize the background seen and this is a bottle which we saw just earlier in the slide and you see what happens to it it's completely gone within the time frames you're seeing there right completely removed from the environment by the microorganisms present in that compost system the bag with the food waste and all put it in a compost pile and you have taken care of the problem utensils have them put them in these bags put it in a compost pile they become a part of usable compost and this is not just a professor talking about it in a lab curiosity this system this zero waste using compostable products in conjunction with composting is now being used by the Portland Trailblazers Morris Center I hope you know who they are the Minnesota Twins and so clearly there is value in using compostable plastics in venues in events and in campuses like Facebook Google which is happening right so we propose that we have a solution and the question to you as you go back home tonight food for thought what are you going to do at MSU we do have some of these products so at your event at your venue at the Spartan Stadium let's make all products used outside compostable and make sure all of it is composted so there is zero waste rated which can either leak or go into a landfill thank you very much [Applause] [Music]