This Sunday is the 49th annual Earth Day.
And to explore some recent planet-saving innovations,
we turn to Ronny Chieng for a special Today's Future Now.
-♪ ♪ -(cheers and applause)
Thanks, Trevor.
Sunday is Earth Day.
The one day of the year we pretend to care about the earth
by doing silly things like turning off our lights
and not flushing our pee.
Meanwhile, I never flush, every day, not even poop,
and I don't even get a "thank you."
Listen, there are lots of ideas out there
about how to save the environment, okay?
Some are stupid and some are really stupid.
Take plastic, for example.
We use plastic for everything:
bottles, office supplies, John Travolta's face.
So to solve the plastic pollution problem,
some genius came up with this idea.
NARRATOR: At this moment, 165 million tons of plastic
is floating in the world's oceans.
Waste that we now turn into this...
which we then use to make shirts.
Introducing the GANT Beacons Project:
Shirts with Tech Prep,
containing upcycled ocean plastic.
Finally, we can wear garbage
without having to shop at H&M.
Don't get me wrong.
I completely support the idea of recycled clothing.
For example, I got this tie at a funeral I crashed.
Don't judge me. It was open casket
and clothes are for the living.
My only problem is, one day,
you're gonna stop wearing that sea garbage T-shirt.
And then what happens?
You're gonna throw it out and it's gonna end up
right back in the ocean stuck in a dolphin's butt, okay?
Thankfully, we're not just banking
on wearing chewed-up straws to save the Earth.
Some scientists are working to destroy the plastic.
Scientists may have found a solution
to the world's plastic problem.
They've engineered an enzyme that can break down
a key type of plastic that's used
to make bottles and other products.
To have an enzyme evolved that actually eats
this manmade material is really stunning.
And enzyme that eats plastic.
Now, that sounds like a great idea
until the enzyme gets out of control
and develops a taste for human nipples.
All right? It's too risky.
We don't need enzymes.
What are enzymes? Nobody knows.
Let's just get teenagers to eat plastic
as one of their dumb viral challenges, all right?
Yeah, they're already eating Tide pods and snorting condoms.
I'm telling you, eating plastic will be the healthiest thing
they've done all year.
Look, saving the planet isn't that hard, okay?
Let's just do it the old-fashioned way.
Get Elon Musk to do it for us.
Tesla says the world's largest lithium ion battery
has been switched on in South Australia.
The 100 megawatt battery was built by Tesla.
CEO Elon Musk says it has the capacity
to power more than 30,000 homes
for an hour during a blackout.
Giant batteries are a great idea, okay.
If my wife had one of those,
she wouldn't have to keep changing the batteries
in her neck massager.
Every day she's always kicking me out of the bedroom
so she can use it again and again.
I mean, apparently her neck gets really sore
after we bang so hard.
Hey, what can I say?
I guess I'm just that good. (clicks tongue)
(laughter)
-So... yeah. -(applause)
Anyway, apparently all this tech stuff is going to, like,
clean up the earth or something. I don't know.
The only problem is, once we're done on Earth,
we're gonna have to clean up the mess we made in space.
The British satellite designed to clean up rubbish
in the earth's orbit, has been launched into space.
The Remove Debris project was on board
a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket,
which successfully took off from Florida last night.
The satellite, which features a large net to collect junk,
will be delivered to the international space station
before astronauts begin using it next month.
Wow. We've dumped so much garbage into the universe
that astronauts are gonna take off from Florida,
rocket into space,
and think they're still in Florida.
And why is there garbage in space?
How bad are you missing the trash can
that it ends up orbiting the Earth?
Also, what's the plan here?
We're gonna capture space junk with a net,
bring it back down to Earth, and then what?
Throw it in the ocean?
Make it into a romper?
Hey, at least up there, it was their problem, okay?
It's called Earth Day, not Space Day.
Clean up your own mess, aliens.
Ronny Chieng, everybody.