Translator: Yasmine Wong Reviewer: Elena Montrasio
(Applause)
Once there was a stone age,
a bronze age,
and now, we are living in the middle of the plastic age
This is what once a young man said
who was standing
on a very similar stage
to the one where I am standing today
and this young man
was Boyan Slat,
who was talking about
how the oceans
can clean themselves from plastic.
When I first saw
his TEDx talk in Delpht in 2012
I first started thinking
about the whole problem;
and I noticed he was right;
we are living in the middle
of the plastic age.
Have a look around you
everything is made out of plastics.
Go in the supermarkets,
every single product
is packed in a plastic wrapper.
These cucumbers
or even worse,
candies and sweets of all kinds and sorts
are just two examples.
I am sure you will discover
many more examples
the next time you go in a supermarket.
But, I would like to show you
one more example
and this reaches the top of stupidity,
the top of packaging madness,
these pre-peeled and then re-packed bananas,
the ones the supermarket
tried to sell.
But, ladies and gentlemen
this isn't a joke.
It is reality.
Nature has spent billions of years
to produce the best natural wrapper
for its bananas
yet, we humans prefer
to pack it in plastic.
I try to avoid plastics
as much as I could
but I noticed
it isn't that easy;
just because you can't see it
doesn't mean it isn't there.
Because in our plastic age,
plastic is everywhere
It's even hidden in products
where we never expected it to be.
For example,
in our cosmetics.
Did you know that the industry
uses tiny, small micro plastic particles
to cause a peeling effect on your skin?
Yes. Like this.
Five hundred thousand kilos of plastic
end up in our cosmetics each year.
Five hundred thousand kilos.
But, five hundred thousand
is just the figure for Germany.
We can only estimate
how much micro plastic
is used in other European countries
in the USA or even in the whole world.
But, now
why is this such a big deal?
I'll tell you why.
If you use your shampoo under the shower
and flush it down the sink
you will flush away
all the plastic particles with it.
So, they go down the sink
into the waste water
But, they can't be filtered out
of the waste water,
so they go into our rivers
into our oceans
where small microorganisms like zooplankton,
for example,
ingest these plastic particles
because they think it's food
and this is how the plastic
becomes part of our food chain
and at the end of the food chain
there's always the human.
And I bet all of you
have once been sitting
in a very nice restaurant
ordering a delicious fish
but, you never thought about
that you might be eating
some plastic particles
that were once used
to wash somebody else's body.
Yes, this isn't only disgusting
it is even toxic
because plastics like polyethylene
for example,
absorb all kinds of toxins and poisons
and there are loads of them in the oceans
If microorganisms like zooplankton,
like this little fella,
he's called, canulus hegulandicus,
if he is ingesting these plastic particles,
he is basically dying
due to our plastic pollution
because he can't ingest
any other kinds of foods
and these toxic chemicals
have a huge impact on its body.
And as zooplankton
is the first part of the food chain
the whole food chain will be affected.
But now, can't blame you
for using the wrong cosmetics
because it's very hard to tell
whether your product
consists of any micro plastics.
The ingredients are always written
on the backside of your product,
they are always written
in very small letters,
they are always in English,
these chemical phrases
are really hard to understand,
and the worst part of it,
if you try to avoid polyethylene
for example,
the most used plastic in our cosmetics,
you can't be sure that there isn't
any other sort of microplastic used,
because there are loads and loads
of all sorts of plastics used in our cosmetics.
Polyethylene is just an example
So, now you see, we need to do something,
we need to change something.
and, my story of growth for today
is a little bacterium
that I got to know during an internship
here, in Münster, at the university
at the Institute
for Microbiology and Biotechnology
where professor Stein Buschell and his team
is working on this bacteria.
It's called Ralstonia Eutropha.
And Ralstonia Eutropha, while it's growing up,
it produces a biopolymer
that is called PHB.
PHB, PolyHydroxyButyrate.
And if you remember one thing from my speech
please remember these three letters
because PHB is a real cool thing.
PHB.
I will tell you more about PHB in a second,
but first,
in a picture that I took
during my intership
at the right hand side
you can see some cells
of Ralstonia Eutropha;
and on the left hand side,
you can see the PHB that we extracted
from these bacteria cells.
Now, my idea is,
let's use less conventional plastics,
less polyethylene,
lets use PHB instead.
Because PHB has got some major advantages.
I've already told you the first one,
first one is, it's really eco-friendly.
We don't need any mineral oils,
we don't need any toxic chemicals
to produce it
because these bacteria produce it for us;
we just have to take it.
Second, and most important,
it's biodegradable,
so as soon as you flush it down the sink,
all the plastic particles will be degraded
like a banana that you throw
in the environment somewhere.
Third, and also very important,
it's bio-compatible, so no human, no animal,
no bacteria will ever get harmed
by getting in touch with PHB for example,
we could use PHB for medicine purposes
If you break your arm, for example,
there could be screws made out of PHB
to fix your arm,
and by the time your arm is healed,
the PHB screw will be degraded
by your own body,
so you don't have to get it out again.
But, back to our cosmetics,
even the stability and the quality
would remain the same,
so the industry would be happy
if we use PHB in our cosmetics,
because as long as the PHB particles
are inside the bottle,
they can't be degraded,
because there are no de-composers
allowed in our cosmetics.
And if you flush it down the sink,
the many decomposers in the waste water
would be happy to degrade these particles.
But, now, what would all this cost?
Here's a graph
that shows that 1kg of polyethylene
did cost about 90 cents in the last year.
1kg, 90 cents.
If we produce the same amount of PHB,
so 1kg of PHB,
depending on the company that produces it,
costs about 3 €.
But, remember,
we don't need a whole kilo of PHB
for a single bottle of shampoo, do we?
Let's say one bottle of shampoo
costs about 2 €,
if we use 2 grams of micro plastics
in this bottle of shampoo,
polyethylene would cost about 0.2 cents.
If we use the same amount of PHB instead,
it would cost about 0.6 cents,
so the price doesn't change at all.
So, we have the knowledge
and we have the technology,
so it's time to change,
let's change something,
let's end the micro plastic circle,
and lets ensure that
we don't have to think about the strangers
standing in the shower
while we are eating our delicious fish.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)