Transcriber: Zhaolong Hu Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
In the next 18 minutes
over 600,000 pounds of plastic will enter our ocean.
This is equivalent to 18 garbage trucks
pulling up to the beach
and dumping the entire load right in the water.
And sadly,
a garbage truck worth of plastic enters our ocean
every single minute of every single day.
Plastic is poisoning our oceans,
which in turn is poisoning our food chain.
But let's face it.
It's not the plastic's fault it enters the ocean.
I mean, plastic doesn't grow legs
and magically fulfil a life-long dream to go sit on a beach
or swim in the ocean.
And plastic doesn't reproduce
and make little baby plastics every single year.
(Laughter)
Ocean plastic is not a plastic problem.
It's a human problem.
And no, you're probably not the human dumping the plastic into the ocean.
You are the one with the power to help stop it from happening.
And your power goes well beyond the world of plastic.
So, how do you unleash that power?
By shifting your mind-set
and changing the way you think about consumerism.
In our modern world we are all consumers.
And it's your voice and your vote as a 21st-century consumer
that actually makes you one of the most powerful
and influential people in history.
And just like Ben Parker once told Spiderman:
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Every purchase you make is a vote for how a product was made
and a vote for the company who made it.
And you have the power to reward what you want repeated
through your purchases.
Blind consumerism is when we reward without research.
I'll admit,
for most of my life, I was a blind consumer,
until I came to realize
that blind consumerism is dangerous and unsustainable.
But consumerism doesn't have to be a dirty word.
As long as we use our consumerism with purpose.
The opposite of blind consumerism
is responsible consumerism.
And responsible consumerism is when you take an extra five minutes
to use your voice and your vote, to do a little bit of research
and learn a little bit more about your options and alternatives.
As responsible consumer,
you expand your definition of cost and value
to include the environmental and social impacts of your purchases.
And simply put,
as responsible consumer
you consider it your responsibility to make the responsible purchase.
So I'll ask,
Do you recall the last time
that you took an extra five minutes to make a responsible purchase?
Now, if something came to mind,
no matter how small that something may feel,
you should be proud of that something.
Because I am always amazed
just how often people completely underestimate the impact that they make
with just five minutes.
So, I'd like to share an example of using your voice and using your vote
to create consumer-driven change.
Four years ago,
I joined my business partner David Katz
on a quest to proactively stop the flow of ocean plastic.
(Applause)
We discovered that 80% of ocean plastic
starts on land in vulnerable regions
that have almost no existing waste management systems.
This is Peru.
Shortly after I took this picture,
all the plastic you see was washed into the river
as soon as it rained.
This is the Philippines.
And the Philippines is one of the largest sources of ocean plastic on the planet.
And this is Haiti.
And all around the world,
environments like these are more common than most people realize.
And in these environments,
people see plastic as something that has no value.
They see it as waste.
And it's actually common practice
to just throw plastic into the rivers, the canals,
in the ocean-bound waterways.
And they do it as a means of throwing it away.
But when we throw something away, it has to go somewhere.
And all too often, away means the ocean.
But after some research,
David Katz and I became confident
that we could create a self-sustaining business solution
to stop the root cause of ocean plastic.
We could make plastic waste too valuable to ever get thrown in the ocean.
First, we need to create a rewarding incentive system
that would transfer the value of the plastic
into the hands of the person who is collecting it.
We need to create a means
that anyone can just go out, collect enough plastic
that they could provide for their families and send their children to school.
Second, we need to get some of the world's largest corporations
purchasing social plastic to use in their manufacturing
and supporting the expansion of these social-plastic ecosystems
around the world.
And finally,
to make that happen, to get their attention,
we need to attract and inspire
a movement of responsible consumers asking for social plastic.
So, we started by creating a wave of mass media.
I was able to find a story teller
at just about every major media outlet
who's inspired to use their power to share our mission.
And after over 300 media features,
we started to attract the attention of responsible consumers.
And when responsible consumers see something of interest,
they take that extra five minutes
to learn a little bit more,
do a little research,
and look for a way to make an impact.
And we made it really easy.
We asked people to please like our Facebook page
tell prove the demand for corporations to use social plastic.
We didn't ask if they liked our company.
We didn't ask if they liked the product.
We asked if they shared a passion
and believed in our mission to reduce ocean plastic and poverty.
Now, you might ask yourself,
So what?
What difference does a single Facebook like make?
I can tell you this.
It starts with a like.
Then it becomes multiple likes,
then hundreds, then thousands.
Today, we have one million people
asking for corporations to use social plastic.
(Applause)
Every single like
was part of a million person ask,
and when a million people ask for the same thing,
the world's largest companies,
they start to listen.
But it didn't end there.
A lot of people took an extra step
and started to ask the brands by name on Twitter
to use #SocialPlastic.
And as more people kept doing these tweets and asking brands to use #SocialPlastic,
they started taking pictures of these tweets,
and they sent them to those companies.
And when they got that email,
they saw the demand, they saw the tweets,
and more often than not, they responded immediately,
"You have my attention. Let's chat."
With just that five minutes of extra effort,
those responsible consumers helped us open some of the biggest doors possible.
We are now selling social plastic
to some of the largest companies on the planet.
And we are even having some of the most powerful partners
help us amplify this around the world.
For example,
IBM saw the opportunity to make a genuine impact,
and they are helping us
to literally turn plastic waste into a digital currency.
So, in areas that we operate,
it's such a vulnerable region
and it's dangerous for people to have cash.
At the same time,
people can't qualify for bank accounts.
So, we're creating a digital exchange and a digital currency system
that makes it safe for someone to transact,
for someone to earn a living through recycling.
And this is using advanced technology.
This is Blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric on LinuxONE,
which a fancy way of saying
this is an entreprise system meant to empower a billion people
to gather together to monetize waste.
And soon, anyone in the world will just be able to download an app
and start earning a living through recycling
or even just help to prevent ocean plastic and poverty from happening.
And I'm proud to say that in the next ten years,
we anticipate preventing over one billion pounds of plastic
from entering the ocean.
(Applause)
And all of that is possible
because a large number of responsible consumers
took an extra five minutes
to use their voice and use their vote
to ask for the change they wanted to see.
Now, I tell this story and I share these tactics
because pro-activity works.
And the concept of consumer driven change,
it's universal.
Tools like Facebook, Twitter, petition sites like change.org,
they're empowering you to cause genuine change.
And every year,
we've seen more and more successful examples of consumer driven change.
We're seeing more ethically sourced products,
more sustainably sourced products.
We're seeing more cruelty-free products.
And we're seeing more of these because more people are asking.
And more people are voting with their wallets.
So, the next time you see a problem or cause you care about
and you catch yourself saying,
"Somebody should do something about it,"
remind yourself that you are somebody.
And though the corporations have an epic power,
they no longer have all the power.
You do.
Because corporations only produce
what consumers buy repeatedly.
When enough people stop buying an item,
that item stops getting made.
With enough people stop buying from a company,
that company goes out of business.
And when enough people all ask for the same thing,
corporations compete to meet that demand
because corporations only exist
to meet the consumer demand.
And therein lies the secret to using your power to create epic change.
And every year,
it is getting easier for you to act like a responsible consumer.
In our interconnected online world,
we're taking trust and transparency to entirely new levels.
You can now take out your cell phone
and ask it to help you search the difference between two options.
And you can do it right from the grocery store.
And you can even use that same cell phone
to take a picture of any wrongdoing or injustice
anywhere in the world
as it happens.
It is getting harder for corporations to hide the bad
and easier for you to discover the good.
And if you think about it,
if you held two products in your hand
and they are the same cost and the same function,
but you know with confidence
one product will cause harm to the planet
and the other will make a positive impact,
I'm confident that you would make the responsible choice every time.
Because it goes against human nature
to want to do intentional harm with your purchases.
Just as it goes against human nature to change your habit overnight.
But I found, change is best done incrementally.
So my wife and I, we made a simple commitment.
Once a week,
we would sit down,
do a little research and improve one purchasing habit.
Every week, the same routine.
And this could be simple little things
like finding locally sourced food
or just ensuring that everything you buy
can actually be recycled in your own community.
These actions might sound small,
but over time,
incrementally improving your habits adds up to a huge impact.
And it's this incremental approach that really gets me optimistic.
Because I do not believe the world will change overnight.
But I do believe it can change over time for the better.
And this is what we are on the verge of seeing.
We're approaching this new era
in which the average person is actually starting to act
like a responsible consumer.
And the beautiful thing is
we don't need everyone to act this way for it to work.
We just need to get to the average
because once we get to the average,
we hit a cultural tipping point
where it no longer becomes a hippy thing
or a millennial thing;
it becomes a human thing to purchase responsibly.
And thankfully,
being human is the one thing we all have in common.
And know it's true,
since I started talking,
almost 18 garbage trucks worth of plastic has now entered our ocean.
But I know that you have the power
to stop that trend and others like it
by using your voice and using your vote
to ask for and create the change this planet desperately needs.
(Applause)