Transcriber: Jeremy Grover Reviewer: Ale Heredia Allegretti
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad you all are here with us tonight.
Now, before I start with my speech,
I would like all of you to think of something.
How many of you have interacted with something made of plastic today?
Indeed, plastic has become an inseparable part of our daily lives.
We use plastic in transportation, commerce delivery,
dining and countless other different contexts due to their unique
and stable properties. In fact,
the initial aim of the large scale utilisation of plastic is to ease
deforestation by acting as a replacement material for paper in containers
and bags.
However, despite the benefits that plastic has brought forth to humans
and just like almost any other thing in life, it has its negative sides.
Plastic and stone and paper does not have
a natural cycle of its own to be more specific.
It cannot decompose like rocks into soil or like paper into carbon dioxide
and methane. But stay in this form for over centuries, if not millennia.
Well, burning plastic seems to be
the most intuitive way to address this problem,
but more may arise as plastics burn.
They release toxic substances such as sulfur dioxide,
dioxins and heavy metals into the atmosphere,
making it deadly when inhaled.
Instead of continuing to ignore this problem,
I would like to propose several solutions.
One is to substitute plastic with other materials,
and the other is the incorporation of biodegradable plastics.
Now, imagine substituting plastic with another material.
Some would definitely feel that doing so would retract all of
the benefits plastic has caused to easing deforestation,
and it is certainly natural to associate
an increase in paper based products with an increased amount of trees being cut.
While in fact, copper is actually one of
the most sustainable resources that humans use today.
According to a 2016 article by our Auckland paper can usually be recycled
four to six times before its tissues become too weak.
Glass, on the other hand, may be more costly,
but they are certainly more environmentally friendly,
as they can be recycled into lots of other usable products
and will not lose any quality upon recycling.
The second solution that he proposed is biodegradable plastics.
The topic of my speech tonight biodegradable plastics are able to
naturally decompose into harmless substances such as carbon dioxide
and water, and are usually made of organic material.
This makes them especially advantageous when compared to conventionally made
plastics, which are usually derived from crude oil and other fossil fuels.
Now, I know that after listening to some of
the speeches that my classmates have made tonight,
you may be concerned that this process was further intensifying.
The greenhouse gas effects.
However, the aim of biodegradable plastics is to shift towards
a green way of production where
the carbon dioxide released upon decomposition
or chemically changed back to
the building blocks of those plastics through a series of different reactions.
This would ensure that this whole process will not worsen
the greenhouse gas effect, even when operating at a larger scale.
Implementing this inner lifecycle of carbon through
the plastic manufacturing process is
a huge step towards global carbon neutrality.
One example of biodegradable plastics is Polylactic acid or PLA for short.
And no, I do not want to overwhelm you with long,
nasty words that are useless outside of the field of chemistry.
PLA by its name is simply chains of lactic acid molecules that are formed
from the fermentation of cornstarch.
They perform similarly to conventional plastics and have
a wide variety of applications,
from disposable kitchenware to different kinds of packaging.
It can also be used for compost bags and floor mats.
Most importantly, it can be used as medical implants,
such as screws and place during surgery or therapy.
In addition to medical implants,
they can degrade inside one's body back into lactic acid molecules.
After a period of time and can be easily metabolized out of your body.
Certainly, if PLA is that effective,
why do we not see it all around the world today?
The truth is, PLA can be quite brittle, have rather poor mechanical properties,
and do not them well against intense heat.
This means that its scope of application will be limited.
Furthermore, the production of lactic acid the building block of PLA is not
yet time or cost efficient,
which means that the bulk production of PLA is unfortunately not possible
as of today, and PLA cannot fully address the problem.
Governments and large corporations need to take initiative into emphasizing
the importance of the innovation of other types of biodegradable plastics.
Take the Chinese government during the COVID 19 pandemic, for
example, Chinese companies Sinovac Biotech received
a funding of five hundred and fifty million R&D to invest in their
development of the CoronaVac vaccine.
Furthermore, mandates sent across China by the Chinese government to receive
the vaccines are increasingly effective, according to Xinhua.
There are already a total of more than one billion COVID vaccines administered
in China. If governments can be just as active as
the Chinese government when trying to mitigate
the effects of COVID when they are looking at
the production of biodegradable plastics,
I'm pretty sure that we will see this change very soon.
The issue of plastic waste is not to be overlooked by humans.
As some of you may know, plastic waste in the ocean have strips down to
the deepest waters of the Mariana Trench.
If we substituted non-essential plastic with reusable materials such as paper
and glass, and if governments encourage large scale adoption of biodegradable
plastics by making companies responsible for their own plastic waste
and plastic will soon join the environmental friendly club,
and many environmental burdens can be lessened.
There are always as many solutions as there are problems,
so let us all strive to solve plastic waste and make this world
an enjoyable place for as long as we can.