Translator: Juli G Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
All right
Imagine,
living the rest of your life on an island.
Sandy beaches, a clean house and absolutely no pollution,
whether that's air pollution or water pollution,
but I'll get to that later.
Nothing stops you from waking up in the morning
and doing whatever you want.
Whether that's going for a jog, a swim
or even hanging out with your family and friends.
That sounds perfect, right?
Like I said, you can get away for the rest of your life,
for a week, ten days, as much as you want.
Because there are people, scientists and architects,
who have decided to create this kind of concept.
But there's a twist to this whole island.
It's all made of plastic.
Ever since the 1990s,
awareness for environmental issues has spread globally.
For example,
the UN unprecedented Earth Summit in 1992 in Río,
that addressed to the world
the behaviours and attitudes towards sustainable development
and thus this adopted the Agenda 21 plan.
A voluntary action,
to implement actions towards sustainable development.
Or the Kyoto protocol in 1997,
that said carbon emission amounts to be reduced within the next ten years.
And not to mention Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth in 2006,
that addressed to the world with factual IPCC data,
the issue of global warming.
All of this is great.
It helps us to raise awareness.
It helps us as humans on the micro and macro scale
to think about what we're doing towards the environment.
What our impact is towards the environment.
But how green really is green?
What level of conservation satisfies our minds
to think that we are actually saving the planet?
The WHIM or W-H-I-M Architecture firm in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
has come up with a plan to create what they call "Recycled Islands."
I know what you're thinking: "Recycled" and "Islands".
These two words sound pretty surreal when put together,
but it's all about a new perspective.
"Recycled Islands" is a concept
that incorporates environmental responsibility and sustainability
with innovation.
WHIM has a vision to create man-made islands
around the oceans of the world, that are made of plastic,
and to accommodate life, just like on natural land on earth.
But the even more unique and interesting concept about this project
is to accommodate and embrace
habitable, comfortable, as well as luxurious lifestyle.
This will all be achieved, while achieving sustainable development as well.
To give a definition of sustainable development
for those who don't know:
It's a concept that allows -
Where the present generation is able to use our resources
and meet our basic needs,
without compromising the needs of the future generations.
But like every project, you need resources
and you need materials.
Where will this all come from?
In three of the world's largest oceans are five areas called "ocean gyres."
These gyres aren't just any ecological or natural phenomenon,
but they are filled with rotating garbage
that builds up concentrations of waste, every single year.
Imagine the size of the UAE, right there.
Multiply that size by 240 times,
and you get the largest, most concentrated gyre in the world,
the North Pacific Gyre.
So just imagine,
22 million square kilometres.
I'll say that again:
22 million square kilometres of rotating garbage,
that's been used for not even a fraction of one's life,
dumped in the oceans like no one's business.
From an optimistic point of view, however,
WHIM has decided to take advantage of these gyres,
to achieve their objective of sustainable development.
The first intended project is the recycled park
on the New Meuse River in Rotterdam, the Netherlands,
where it'll be a prototype and test of how this island will work.
The process to this:
there's a nine step process that WHIM has created
towards what the science is behind it.
Number one:
Gather all the materials from the gyres
whether that's any type of plastic.
Then sort the materials into containers,
bottles and all different types of plastics.
Obviously, there's going to be small, medium, large.
Then they'll shred these plastics,
wash them
and heat them to get rid of the bacteria and all the contaminations.
Reproduce them into the building blocks,
or the bases for the island.
Then construct the base,
then construct the plastic housing,
the residential buildings, the commercial buildings
and whatever they have not included.
And finally you get the creation of land,
that gives a brand new economic value towards these plastics
that were almost worth nothing when floating in the gyres.
In order to live up to its name,
the recycled islands plan to reuse and recycle their own waste.
So far they haven't revealed,
WHIM hasn't revealed how they will be recycled.
But we can see that, hopefully,
they will create new or existing systems, in order to recycle all the material.
Over here we can see that they have built a plan
to accommodate different habitats.
For example, sandy beaches,
sea weed cultivations,
urban living environments
and agriculture and forestry.
What it all comes down to now,
I've showen you the science behind it,
what the concept is.
But let's take a step back, literally and physically -
or figuratively -
If we look at small businesses with innovation such as WHIM,
they have hired contractors,
they have their own scientists and architects.
But we have bigger institutes,
we have bigger firms,
we have Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM,
just to mention a few.
We also have private and public institutions,
such as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, University of Cambridge,
not to mention many, many of them more.
We can build something even bigger than Recycled Islands.
I'm not saying,
"Let's cover the oceans with Recycled Islands."
What I'm saying is,
"Let's create something
that gives us humans the impact towards the environment
and making something even better than Recycled Islands.
Helping us to sustain our resources for the future.
To end off, I want to compare the Recycled Islands
to a very familiar island towards the most of us:
The Palm Jumeirah.
Both islands embrace luxurious lifestyle,
or potentially embrace luxurious lifestyle.
But we can see that the Recycled Islands,
as I mentioned, it's made of plastic,
it plans to reuse and recycle its own material.
Whereas the Palm Jumeirah -
its base is made out of sand,
it uses concrete to build its residential and commercial buildings,
it has over 40 hotels
and it has thousands of residential housing.
Which is good,
but if we look at the Recycled Islands,
how efficient with their resources is the Palm Jumeirah?
So, just imagine.
Next time you go to the Palm Jumeirah,
just imagine, you can have the same five-star hotels,
the same lazy days on the beach
on an [island] made of clean, processed plastic.
And you wouldn't even know it.
Thank you.
(Applause)