Transcriber: Hager Elbadawy Reviewer: Esra Çakmak
Plastic, what an innovation!
A dream for every designer.
We can transform it into every shape we imagine,
give it any look we want.
They once called plastic the material of the future.
The truth is, life seems impossible without it.
We are plastic addicts,
but today we know what seemed so perfect caused a global crisis.
Plastic leaches chemicals.
It sheds microparticles.
It contributes to climate change.
Today, we know.
Once plastic reaches nature,
it wanders around the world like an army of zombies,
leaving behind a deadly trail.
It breaks down and spreads like a virus.
It is in the air we breathe,
the water we drink, the food we eat.
Plastic pollutes our oceans, our forests, our cities, even our own bodies.
Every piece of plastic ever made is in some form still on our planet,
so it’s time to admit plastic is a design failure.
The solution looks so obvious.
Let’s clean it all up.
It’s hundreds of thousands of people around the world
to beaches, to rivers, to remote communities.
Let’s create a global network
and equip it with the best recycling gear.
Let’s turn this nasty waste into a new premium material.
Let’s give it a fancy name and declare it the new luxury.
Ocean plastic.
Palais Ocean plastic.
Yes, we trademarked it and created a lot of buzz collaborating with the best brands
the best designers, scientists, artists
and we mastered the art of upcycling.
Today ocean plastic is a super trend.
We are rapidly scaling it,
make it an end to end solution for governments and industries
where consumers are part of solving the problem by trusting our brand.
This sounds like a true success story.
But ocean plastic is still plastic
and only half of the solution.
A great first step.
A good Band-Aid to stop the bleeding,
but plastic is plastic and stays toxic, even if recycled.
So the ultimate next step is to let plastic go, to leave the toxic age behind,
to invent new materials.
For too long, we have been so arrogant.
We believe that we humans can improve nature.
But inventing synthetic materials, what looked so perfect,
so unbreakable is becoming our worst nightmare.
So it’s time to learn that nature is true high tech
with billions of years of research and development.
Nature knows how to grow, how to biodegrade.
How to keep resources in a true closed cycle.
But we are facing the worst crisis ever,
a crisis that could drive mankind into extinction.
We are also at the most fascinating moment in the history of our species.
We are about to unlock the true secrets of nature,
working with the engineers of the natural world programming cells,
extracting enzymes using proteins,
algae mammalian to grow what nature already does so well.
Perfect materials.
I believe the future is in collaborating with nature on eye level.
This will allow us to survive on this magical blue planet, which we call home.
For the oceans, climate and life.