Transcriber: Chau Khanh Dang Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Plastic pollution.
Plastic pollution is one of the biggest issues of society today.
We have accumulated
approximately 9.2 billion metric tons of plastics.
And of this, around 5 billion metric tons ended up as waste in landfills.
Only 9% of it is recycled.
These quantities are equivalent to 650 kilos per person.
In just the last 20 years,
we have accumulated more plastics than in the previous 50 combined.
And this is expected to grow in 2050 when society will produce
around 600 million metric tons of plastic per year,
accumulating 34 billion or more than 2000 kilos per person.
This means
that there is eight times more weight in our planet
in plastic waste than in people,
and this will grow to 20 times in the next 18 years.
But I’m not here to discuss the harm that plastic causes our ecosystems.
By now, we all know it; what we don’t know is what to do with it.
Other industries like fashion are making a significant effort
on including recycled plastics in their production.
Like, for example, Adidas are at 50% right now,
and they’re aiming to get to 80% in the next two or three years.
But what happens with the construction industry?
To build a 100-square-meter house for around four people,
we use 137 tons of sand, cement, metal, wood, and other materials,
and around 1.5 to 2.5 tons just to furnish it -
equivalent to 375 to 625 kilos per person,
which is a similar number to our personal plastic traits in the planet.
This means that if we would furnish the houses
for every single human being out of recycled plastic,
we’ll completely eradicate plastics once and for all.
To give a closer example,
Spanish throw 125 tons of plastic to the sea every day,
which is insane.
Yeah. Feel bad.
And ...
this makes a total of 46k tons of plastic per year.
With that amount of plastic,
we could furnish my entire city, Avila, in only nine months.
It's a rather small city.
But we could even furnish Madrid in 45 years, which is not bad.
But if those numbers are striking,
the Maldives has a very similar plastic footprint
with 85 times less population,
which could be hosted in houses with plastic interiors.
in less than eight years.
3D printing emerges as a technology that not only allows
for the transformation of plastic outside an industrial setup,
we can do it at home,
but it also gives us the ability to create almost anything almost anywhere.
However, it has always been limited to small objects
such as toys or household items,
which suppose a very small part of the elements surrounding our homes,
and therefore, make a very reduced contribution to cleaning our planet.
But what if we could scale up this technology and the products we make
to radically increase that contribution?
What if we could develop machines that transformed plastic
that is now spreading in our oceans and landfills
into larger, beautiful objects.
And we could do it without producing any stock,
making only the products we need when we need them.
And making them closer to the consumer, not only minimizing time and cost,
but also reducing the CO2 emissions coming from long-range shipping.
We could even make these micro-factories mobile,
taking them to where and when the demand is,
bringing one machine that can create an infinite number of products
to where those products are most needed.
We’ve tested this model recently in London and Glasgow for COP26,
aiming to transform the way we produce and consume,
envisioning the stuff of the future to be more sustainable,
and the products we make to be closer to those who use them.
When 3D printing becomes larger,
we can bring previously inconceivable shapes and textures
to our everyday furniture,
such as chairs, tables, lamps, and all those objects
that not only bring functionality and character to our homes,
but also make them unique.
And we could do so
while considerably increasing the amount of plastic waste
that we take out of our ecosystems
and that is brought to a new life in the interiors where we have it.
But what if we could go even larger
and create interior partitions and personalized walls
or micro-spaces that become new atmospheres.
If we can reimagine the most mundane objects
that have surrounded us by centuries like a door or a toilet,
we could increase the amount of plastic waste used in our homes
for around 60%.
But we could go beyond furniture and interiors.
We could create a structure
that pulls the imagination to unknown territories
that become sculptures that previously were inconceivably slow to make,
or simply impossible.
If we could create a three-and-a-half- meter unique column in just 48 hours,
how could this reshape the world of design and architecture?
But more importantly,
imagine how this increase in demand for recycled plastics
would speed up the cleaning process
of all that waste we’ve accumulated over decades.
This will make cleaning our planet not only dependent
on government regulations and environmental organizations,
it will naturally happen as the demand scales.
We all know how plastic harms our ecosystems,
but this is still a unique material with many benefits.
It’s cheap, versatile, lightweight, and resistant,
and unfortunately, today, an almost unlimited material source.
If we could apply it to our facades
or to our floors and ceilings,
if we could truly use it in architecture,
if we could build buildings out of waste,
how fast we can take this waste out of where it is currently accumulated?
We could not only build faster and more affordably,
not even just more sustainably,
we could majorly help to decelerate the consequences
of the senseless behavior that we’ve had in the past,
and in the near future, establish production chains
where cleaning, upcycling, and building becomes one,
where our own waste is immediately brought to a new life,
where the mistake of the past becomes the material for a brighter future.
Thank you.
(Applause)