Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Ms Buffard's students
Hello.
Like many others, I grew up in a modest family
where nothing was wasted.
So in my family, everything was recycled or stored.
"Just in case," my mother would.
So my mother recycled everything,
so I spent half my childhood dressed in my sister's clothes.
Not all my sister's clothes.
Because I don't really have the legs for pleated skirts.
But as my mother dressed my sister
knowing I would have to wear her clothes,
my sister didn't get the clothes she wanted eihter.
That's the charm of large families.
Some of you must know what I mean.
Then the years passed, I grew up.
I experienced other forms of lifestyle.
For my environment had also changed a lot.
I, who came from the world of "we buy, if it breaks, we fix"
I discovered the world of "we buy, if it breaks, we throw away and buy new."
The world of consumable.
I admit I had trouble getting used to it,
to the point that an actor friend had nicknamed me "Just in Case".
That speaks volume.
What is most incredible is that I felt
real guilt about throwing something away.
And even today,
I am completely permeated by this education.
And when I see how
any foodstuff is over-packed,
I always have a moment of hesitation when I come home from shopping
place everything in the fridge,
and I'm already filling up the bin with packaging
even before I've started to eat anything.
It's scary when you think about it.
It's true that plastic is ubiquitous in our society.
Some even say that we are in the age of plastic.
But it is also because it has a positive effect on our daily lives.
To transport, to insulate, to protect.
Without plastic, we would consume much more energy.
Technically, plastic is not the problem.
The problem is waste management
that is never part of the equation.
When I started to make money,
I immediately used it for travel.
I wanted to see the world.
So I went everywhere
but especially in Africa and Asia.
And there I discovered sumptuous landscapes.
Some beautiful images of Nature.
But wounded by piles of materials,
garish and not really natural.
It was sad to see this.
Or that.
Besides, who would rejoice about it?
Surely not those who live there, believe me.
These sublime images of freedom and purity
wounded by the cold blade of modernity and consumable goods.
These magnificent countries are overwhelmed by a profusion of plastic
that they just can't contain.
Yet they know a lot about the "just in case" technique.
And much more than my mother.
In these regions, people do not waste.
Everything is transformed and reused.
It is even the realm of "just in case".
So why?
By what strange power did tree leaves
turned into plastic bags
and river beds into heaps of bottles?
To understand a little better what could have happened,
I propose to give you some figures.
Did you know that each year,
we produce 275 billion kilos of plastic waste?
Every second, 16,000 plastic bags are distributed.
That is to say 500 billion each year
that end up in sorting centers for the most organized cities,
in a landfill for the vast majority, and then in nature for the rest.
And these amounts will increase further in the coming years.
Why?
Why does a product so necessary to humanity becomes so harmful?
Because we are also at the age of consumable and performance.
What becomes useless, what doesn't bring money anymore,
is excluded from society.
And not just for consumer products.
But our plastic bag will continue to live his life.
Because it is tough.
Tougher than us.
Its life expectancy is much longer than ours.
400 years on average!
It makes you dream, doesn't it?
Well, mostly for those who have a good life.
And as it does not know what to make of its existence,
it wanders about, it looks for buddies
in the trees and the rivers,
where it meets its cousins, the bottles.
And together they will continue this long migration
that will lead them in the oceans.
And there, like social beings
they will regroup
in what is today called gyres or vortex.
It's the promised land for them, polypropylenes, polyethylenes,
vinyl chlorides, polyterephthalates,
I put that one at the end because it is the hardest to say.
But it's a big name for a fishy guy.
Yeah, I had to make that joke.
(Laughter)
For this family of polys consists
in five thousand billion people of all kinds and all sizes.
Five thousand billion!
Can you imagine?
A galaxy of particles quietly waiting to be swallowed
by a fish or a turtle.
Maybe even a bird if their size allows it.
But they also end up on our plates.
Scattered in the flesh of the fish we eat.
Or in the flesh of animals that ate fish meal
before we ate them.
It has become an international public health issue.
There is no border to protection us.
We are all concerned.
Well, only those who feed themselves.
So I thought back to this phrase my mother used to say when I was little.
"Just in case".
Just in case this waste had some value...
Would we throw them away?
Did you know that only 20% of plastic waste
is recycled in France?
The rest is burned with an average energy efficiency.
Progress is being made!
But at that rate, it will take 30 to 40 years
before reaching 100% recycling.
It is with this idea of giving back value
to plastic waste that I started thinking,
searching, meeting people.
Then I started to find tracks.
I read articles, I saw the filmed experiments
around the world in America, Asia, England too.
And from all this information gathered,
emerged a technical process that interested me more than others
for logistical and economic reasons.
Turn this plastic waste into something, but what?
Well, into oil.
Yes, that same oil whose simple fluctuation in share price
affect the global economy.
That oil that the poor lack much.
Oil. It's that simple.
Mind you, there is no question of doubting clean energy.
What I'm talking about is an emergency solution.
While we wait for science to progress.
But what is most desirable?
A beach polluted by plastic waste
or one full tank in an electrical generator
to illuminate an entire village?
This idea of giving back value to waste
has started to take shape.
It became real through an association
I called Earthwake.
First we thought about using Japanese high technology.
And then one day, in France,
I learned that an enthusiast in a small village in the Alpes Maritimes
was working in his garage on a strange machine.
So we went to see him, with all the Earhwake team!
The two of us.
(Laughter)
And this ingenious engineer actually invented
a machine that converts plastic waste into fuel.
The process is simple, but very technical.
It is based on the pyrolysis of plastics.
A process developed in the 70s
Plastic is heated at high temperature,
it becomes a gas which is cooled to bring it to liquid state.
You see, it's simple.
It's a bit come the still with which we make perfume.
Well, only the smell changes!
So simply put,
I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Fuel,
born here in France
who look very very happy to be with us today.
"Oh yes, we are really very happy. »
(Applause)
So we laugh, but it's real fuel
we made here with our machine, from plastic waste.
It's not olive oil!
(Laughter)
Besides, it does not smell very good.
You can put in the tank of your car.
It works. I know because we did it.
But hey, don't tell anyone because it is forbidden.
Free petrol, you can imagine...
Then, as they get along very, very well,
I'll put them back together,
hoping they make babies.
The purpose of Earthwake is to create a financial ecosystem
that benefits the victims of pollution.
We stimulate picking up
and collecting, buying plastic.
Then in the village, we transform this waste into fuel
that we sell to make a profit and buy more plastic waste.
And create a circular economy.
The aim is to go much further than the environment
creating jobs, income supplements
and a positive impact on health.
A kind of possible resonance between ecology and economy
where dividends are not financial but human.
That's why within Earthwake,
we took the decision to build a machine
that's not high-tech but low-tech,
to reduce costs and allow the project to be economically viable.
A machine that is robust and resistant to harsh climates.
An easy maintenance machine,
that can be transported on a truck or pickup.
But above all a human-sized machine
that does good to the women and men who are victims of this scourge
while they raise their children in the idea that we must not squander.
Today the team is operating.
There are engineers, researchers, designers
working with us to perfect this invention.
Sponsors who fund our first steps.
Associations who have field experience
and many others who in turn value the project
which gradually becomes reality.
So now imagine a world
where we give value to our waste
to turn it into a resource.
Imagine a world where we would clean the villages that have become dumps,
because it is the poorest who are most affected.
Imagine a world where we would fight against diseases like malaria,
yes, carried by the mosquitoes found in dirty water,
which are retained by plastic waste,
ideal breeding grounds for them.
But above all imagine a world
where we rid the oceans of the billions of plastic waste
simply because that's how human beings are,
that they never pass by anything valuable.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)
And especially thanks to my mom, whom I'm just heckling but whom I love
and thanks to all the mothers in the world who take the time
to teach their children that we must not squander.
(Applause)
Sorry, I have a lot oif endings.
(Laughter)
One last thing.
Since I started my talk,
eight thousand tons of plastic, waste of course,
Have been produced on our planet.
And I spoke quickly.
So there.
(Laughter)
The problem is posed.
(Laughter)
Einstein said: "People who never made mistakes
are people who have never tried anything new. »
So I take the risk,
because I am convinced that our solution can work.
I would really, really love it if we tried it together.
Just in case.
(Applause)