Translator: Irina Kuznetcova Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
My story starts only two years ago.
I was at my grandparents' house studying for my January exams
like every good student.
It's quite an intense study session;
however, at that time,
I was more into an intense procrastinating session.
(Laughter)
You know, that moment
where you watch so many videos about really interesting topics
that have absolutely nothing to do with what you actually have to study?
Well, that was me.
But it is during one of those intense binge-watching series of videos
that I stumbled upon one particular TED Talk.
A 23-year-old woman called Lauren Singer
that in the time of three years
had produced the equivalent of a mason jar,
like you saw,
of trash.
And I said I was ecological.
So imagine my face when I go downstairs
and I realize that I had been serving myself an orange juice a day
with a plastic straw in it for the past three weeks.
Three weeks times seven days -
that's a total of 21 plastic straws.
And it is the total of these 21 plastic straws
that made me realize one important thing:
If you want to change the world, you have to change yourself first.
Do not only ask what our politicians can do to help save the planet
but also what you can do to help save the planet.
I believe each one of us has the power to change the world,
and if not the world as a whole,
your individual world,
your individual community.
And it is the addition of those individual worlds
that will change the world as a whole.
Research - European research - conducted in the North Sea
found that 93 percent of the marine birds that had been analyzed
had injected plastic,
and that 43 percent of the litter that are found on European beaches
are single-use plastics.
Plastics that are only used once by us and then tossed away.
We don't realize it, but the plastic we produce daily,
it adds up to this big pile,
and the mere fact of throwing something away
doesn't mean it goes away.
It just simply goes out of your sight.
And it is when I realized this
that I needed things to change.
I'm telling you this, but we all know it, right?
We all know there is a plastic issue; we all know there is a climate issue.
How is it, then,
that we are only such a small amount of people
that are actively doing something about it?
Isn't it time we all do everything we can to change the situation around?
Ideas exist in everybody's heads,
and I'm sure that listening to all these TED Talks tonight,
you at least had one good idea.
The question now is,
What will you do with this idea?
Caught up in the short-term worries of life,
we tend to forget what truly matters to us.
Historian and activist Robert Swan said,
"The greatest threat to our planet
is the belief that someone else will save it."
and like I said,
caught up in the short-term worries of our individual lives,
we tend to forget what truly matters to us,
but also, we tend to forget the big issues,
leaving those to other people,
thinking that they will solve it.
Well, I'm here tonight to show you and to prove to you
that you can be that someone else from that quote,
you can change the world.
And it is when I realized
that however ecological I said I was, in theory,
I needed to put this statement into concrete actions.
The mere fact of having an idea is not enough.
So,
to share a little personal story, actually,
and the story that was the trigger to this realization,
the trigger to the action,
well, I'll share it with you.
One day, I get a call from my mom.
"Fanny, a 25-kilogram package was just delivered to our home.
Can you please explain to me what is going on?"
Yeah, my mom.
You must have seen her face when she realized
that this 25-kilogram package
contained 600 stainless steel straws.
(Cheers) (Applause)
And although you might think
that I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these 600 straws,
I really didn't know.
I mean, of course, I had an idea, but how I was going to implement it,
how I was going to realize this idea, I had absolutely no idea.
And it is when I told this little anecdote
to the girl sitting next to me at university -
that, by the way, I had never spoken to before -
that she saw the potential of this idea.
Manuela became the co-founder of our project called WAW,
which is the acronym of "What About Waste."
But why does she matter?
Because she,
instead of seeing the big pile and the big problems in the world,
she saw what you could do as an individual,
slowly but surely, every day,
to change our little community.
Now, what is WAW exactly?
Well, the base idea is really simple,
and it is something I realized along my journey:
people don't have the time, are simply not interested enough
to worry about the environment on an everyday basis.
So
we proposed to change this question around.
If people didn't want to be ecological or didn't have the time,
we would think about the ecology for them.
So we took the 600 stainless steel straws
and went to one restaurant, to the other
and proposed these little straws
as alternatives to single-use plastic straws.
Now, our solution:
Instead of using a plastic straw, you use a stainless steel straw.
But I'm aware that the single-use-plastic issue
is much broader than just single plastic straws.
But the plastic straw and the stainless steel straw serves as a symbol
to everything that people can do in their everyday life
to live a less wasteful lifestyle.
Our ultimate goal
is to make the sustainable and ecological lifestyle
easier and even cheaper than the wasteful one.
And I am convinced we will achieve this goal.
The mere speed at which the plastic-straw issue
has spread throughout the countries -
so many countries are talking about plastic straws, even media -
is proof that when we collectively take actions on our problems,
we can achieve significant results.
I'm honestly and truly surprised
when I think about the impact WAW has had.
It merely started one year ago,
and today, WAW has spread to three different countries,
seven cities,
and more than, actually, today, 90 restaurants
that together with us have decided to ban plastic straws from their restaurants.
But that's not all. I'm not only an entrepreneur.
I'm also - and very strongly - an environmentalist.
Think about me as being the "greenpreneur."
"Preneur" in French means "taker."
And I think it's important that each one of us takes action.
And yes, we have the power -
with our money, with the actions we do daily -
to show the big institutions that we want change,
that we are not content with what is happening right now.
Now, I want you to imagine something.
Imagine yourself after a long and hard day of work.
Not hard to imagine, right?
You go to your bathroom and you turn the tap of your bath
because you've deserved a warm nice bath.
Now, it's not very ecological, by the way,
so try not to do it too often.
But you turn on the tap, and you forget about that tap,
and you come back rushing into your bathroom
finding your bathroom completely flooded.
What do you do?
Do you first go and get buckets
and clean up the mess immediately,
or do you first close the tap and then start cleaning up the mess?
Raise your hand in the audience who would turn that tap first.
Yeah!
Of course, very sensible question.
I'd like to draw a parallel now.
Why don't we close that tap of plastic production first?
And I'm the biggest advocate of -
yeah, thank you - (Cheers)
And I promise you,
I'm the biggest advocate of beach cleanups
and fashion brands using recyclable plastics and fabrics
to create new products.
I'm actually wearing one tonight.
But -
but, and there's a big "but" -
yeah, not the "butt,"
the other "but": b-u-t
(Laughter)
But don't you think that in parallel, we should just close that tap?
(Laughter)
WAW does this by preventing people going to our restaurants
to use or to even give that option of using plastic straws.
You go to one of our partner restaurants,
your drink is automatically served without it.
But we need more WAW in this world.
Imagine if every single one of you in this room and in the world
who had a boiling idea of how to change the world
would put some concrete actions on them.
Imagine if you, monsieur, would create the WAW of eatable cutlery.
And imagine if you, madame, would create the WAW of takeaways.
Only imagine the impact we could have.
And I've created my WAW, the procrastinator I am,
so there is absolutely no reason why you cannot create yours.
Barack Obama said,
"We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change ...
but we are also the last one that can do something about it."
So let's do something about it.
Let's take action.
Thank you.
(Applause)