by 2050 plastic eating drones will roam
the oceans collecting debris the same
way a Roomba collects dog hair in your
living room prototypes such as the waste
shark already exist
collecting plastics on the surface of
the water near coastlines earlier this
year
Dutch start-up ocean cleanup started
testing a giant parachute to collect
waste from the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch one of the world's largest
accumulations of ocean plastics it
estimates there is almost 80 million
kilograms of plastic in that patch
covering an area about three times the
size of France but relying on plastic
removal isn't good enough far better is
to stop dumping so much plastic in the
first place
today 8 million metric tons of plastic
flow from land into the ocean every year
the equivalent of one New York City
garbage truck dumping its contents into
the ocean every minute for a year the
industrial world also must learn to
recycle materials on mass rather than
shipping it to Asia in 2018 China
restricted imports on a variety of
recyclables almost overnight waste
centers went from receiving $300 per
tonne of sorted plastics to paying $50 a
ton just to get rid of it
innovations are needed to create a
circular economy in which used consumer
goods are shared or transformed into new
products we are only in the early stages
companies such as Rafi's make shoes out
of recycled plastics while wrench the
runway enables women to share one dress
rather than each purchasing an identical
one in the electronics world Dell says
it has recycled 2 billion pounds of
electronics waste by 2050 it says it
will be able to make computers entirely
from recycled parts eliminating the need
for mining last year Apple unveiled
Daisy a robot that can disassemble 200 I
phones per hour sorting the components
for reuse car makers are now being
incentivized to emphasize longevity
right now a car brand is only paid at
the point of sales but in the future
when autonomous Robo taxis roamed the
streets they could get paid per mile of
service
recalibrating businesses will not be
easy but there are plenty of
opportunities for those who think
differently
[Music]