Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hello there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says life and plastic.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. I'm Lauren Vocaba and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: our host Jonathan Strickland is not with us today. He
Speaker 1: had some important things to attend to, so Lauren and
Speaker 1: I are flying solo today, but rest assured Jonathan we'll
Speaker 1: be back with us very soon. So, Lauren, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you a story that I find curious to
Speaker 1: kick off our podcast today, and it's a story about
Speaker 1: how millions and millions of years ago, there were all
Speaker 1: these little ancient life forms living in the ocean and
Speaker 1: over the millions of years, what a life forms do?
Speaker 1: They die and they sank to the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and they, over millions of years and pressure and geologic
Speaker 1: action got turned into oil cool, the stuff we love
Speaker 1: today to its precious car blood. That is right, right sure,
Speaker 1: But it's not just precious car blood. It's also the
Speaker 1: stuff we used to make plastics, which sounds so crazy.
Speaker 1: Well it's crazy, and it's sort of an irony because
Speaker 1: The word plastic is something we often use as sort
Speaker 1: of a synonym for artificial or not alive, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of fake synthetic, like the plastics from from the
Speaker 1: epic Mean Girls. Oh of course, there you go, But
Speaker 1: if you go back, it comes from life. Isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of a beautiful story and a strange irony? It is.
Speaker 1: It is both of those things. Although I guess I
Speaker 1: mean the plastics that we make from that oil are
Speaker 1: very man made and and artificial. There are all so
Speaker 1: naturally occurring plastic esque substances. Okay, yeah, like maybe sort
Speaker 1: of like tree rubber, sure, sure, stuff like that. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but but we have to process that oil type stuff
Speaker 1: a whole lot in order to get what we know
Speaker 1: is plastic out of it. Yeah, what what are plastics?
Speaker 1: What does that word actually mean? I know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually mean fake. It just means something that can be
Speaker 1: shaped or molded basically. Um, oh that makes sense. So,
Speaker 1: like when we talk about the neuroplasticity of the brain
Speaker 1: means the brain can be reshaped, it's changeable, and plastics
Speaker 1: can take on many different characteristics. You know, we can
Speaker 1: we can make something that's very flexible or something that's
Speaker 1: very rigid. We can make something that folds under pressure
Speaker 1: or that's really good at maintaining its shape, all out
Speaker 1: of basically the same polymers and um, it's really easy
Speaker 1: to mass produce compared to a lot of other traditional
Speaker 1: materials like stone or wood. Easy to mass produce, an
Speaker 1: easy to uh cut and join in shape and reshape.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine that might have something to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that we already have an industrial pipeline that's supplying
Speaker 1: us with lots and lots of oil, the raw material
Speaker 1: you used to make plastics, right, right, Because during what's
Speaker 1: called the cracking process of refining oil, you get some
Speaker 1: useful chemical byproducts. UM. For for example, here raw hydrocarbons.
Speaker 1: These things can be processed further to create hydrocarbon and
Speaker 1: and other carbon monomers, which can be further process to
Speaker 1: create polymers. And Okay, that that the molecules in plastic
Speaker 1: are called polymers, which is a chain of smaller molecular
Speaker 1: units called monomers. Um. They're they're like the individual links
Speaker 1: in a polymer chain. Yeah, they're like really long sequences
Speaker 1: of repeating the same unit over and over right, right exactly. However,
Speaker 1: all of this processing requires a little bit of experimentation
Speaker 1: with different types of monomers, and by binding them in
Speaker 1: different amounts and arrangements, you can create all of these
Speaker 1: different types of plastics that we've been talking about, right,
Speaker 1: because I'd imagine the plastics that make your polyester suit
Speaker 1: are different from the plastics that make your grocery bag
Speaker 1: and the plastics that make the hard things that fit
Speaker 1: on parts of your car. I would I would imagine
Speaker 1: so as well. Although some of them are really weird
Speaker 1: and tricky and and and kind of flow together in
Speaker 1: ways that you wouldn't expect them too, but most of
Speaker 1: them are chemically inert, which is a really important factor
Speaker 1: here because it means that you can put plastic up
Speaker 1: next to other stuff and not have it interact with
Speaker 1: that stuff. Oh right, So like you wouldn't want to make,
Speaker 1: say a beverage containing container out of stuff that might
Speaker 1: react with the beverage you put in it. That would
Speaker 1: be generally speaking bad. Yeah, um and okay, So so
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry too much about it. There's
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of controversy and study and worry
Speaker 1: that many consumer plastic, especially soft plastics, which make up
Speaker 1: a large amount of the consumer plastic continuum. Um do
Speaker 1: in fact leach chemicals into surrounding materials, and sometimes toxic chemicals,
Speaker 1: but that that is probably a whole other different podcast
Speaker 1: um and and hey, okay, so even if plastics do
Speaker 1: not interact with the stuff around them, that lack of
Speaker 1: reaction isn't all good all the time, because the same
Speaker 1: stability that makes plastics so useful for holding stuff and
Speaker 1: carrying stuff and not wrinkling even after you've put it
Speaker 1: through the washing machine will also make it resistant to decay,
Speaker 1: which means that plastic tends to stick around for a
Speaker 1: really long time in landfills. Joe, you looked into how
Speaker 1: long this is? Yeah, okay, so there's a statistic you
Speaker 1: see floating around. Not a statistic, it's just a number.
Speaker 1: And I wondered where it came from. You've probably heard this.
Speaker 1: The plastic grocery bags you get at the store, it
Speaker 1: takes them five hundred years to decompose in a land. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. From what I write, Uh,
Speaker 1: it looks like so the polyethylene you find in the
Speaker 1: grocery bags will take a really really long time to decay.
Speaker 1: We we know that, Uh, the five hundred years thing
Speaker 1: from what I've read, that's more just kind of an
Speaker 1: estimate that stands in to say, a really really long time.
Speaker 1: We don't know how long. And the reason it takes
Speaker 1: so long is that we're really not getting any help
Speaker 1: from the biosphere in decomposing this product. Plastics like that
Speaker 1: are not biodegradable. So when you put say a chunk
Speaker 1: of wood or paper or food waste into the garbage dump,
Speaker 1: all the bacteria is say, hey, just free lunch food,
Speaker 1: and they go in and they eat it up, and
Speaker 1: they decompose it and turn it down into lots of
Speaker 1: different little chemical constituents, and it gets recycled into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and the soil and stuff like that, the whole
Speaker 1: circle of life. Right. Biodegradable is basically a really fancy
Speaker 1: word for bacteria like to eat it out. But plastics
Speaker 1: like pet are not food for these bacteria other microbes.
Speaker 1: They're not interested, not delicious. They see that, they say,
Speaker 1: not delectable. I turned my nose up at it, and
Speaker 1: I will go munch on this, you know, pile of
Speaker 1: feces over here. So so how do you how do
Speaker 1: you plastics, I mean, do plastics breakdown at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they undergo not biodegradation, but something called photodegradation. So
Speaker 1: when you shine sunlight on plastics, the UV radiation breaks
Speaker 1: the plastics down into smaller and smaller pieces over time,
Speaker 1: and this is how plastic floating in the ocean breaks
Speaker 1: down over time. Unfortunately, depending on the chemical composition of
Speaker 1: the plastic, the smaller pieces might also be toxic. Also,
Speaker 1: if you're burying plastic in a landfill, which is what
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, you're burying it away from the sunlight.
Speaker 1: You're probably not helping the photodegradation process along. However, if
Speaker 1: you're looking for biodegra a dation, not all plastics are
Speaker 1: the same. For example, by adding biodegradable additives to normal plastics,
Speaker 1: you can make them more appetizing to the microbe. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might substitute just one percent of the
Speaker 1: volume of a plastic resin load with pellets of biodegradable additive,
Speaker 1: and if they work as advertised, they can make that
Speaker 1: so that the bacteria look at that and say yumm,
Speaker 1: and get in there and eat it up. So there
Speaker 1: are questions there about well, okay, so if you put
Speaker 1: this additive in there is the plastic going to perform
Speaker 1: just as well and in its industrial use or in
Speaker 1: its consumer use, and generally I think we're pretty good
Speaker 1: at that now, Like we can get it pretty much
Speaker 1: working the same with these additives that make it yummy.
Speaker 1: But as we introduce this, part of the appeal of
Speaker 1: plastics is that they're not yummy tomcro, and that they're
Speaker 1: not easily reactive. Right. Sure, so you're so you're changing
Speaker 1: part of what we liked about the thing in the
Speaker 1: first place. Um, but but hey, another issue you involved
Speaker 1: with the waste products that are made of plastic. Some
Speaker 1: landfills don't just bury their waste, they burn them, and
Speaker 1: incinerators too. So so how how do plastics fair when
Speaker 1: you apply fire to them? Well, I have burned lots
Speaker 1: of plastic army men as a child and stood over
Speaker 1: them breathing the delicious fumes. And that's not good for you,
Speaker 1: is it? No? That is that is bad? Well, especially
Speaker 1: if if you're doing it at low enough temperatures, and
Speaker 1: by low enough temperatures, I mean like below eight fifty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius a k a sixteen hundred degrees fahrenheit ut
Speaker 1: rocket I think under that I could be I could
Speaker 1: be incorrect. Um, but but yet nasty chemicals can be
Speaker 1: released during that process. Um. There's these carcinogenic toxins called
Speaker 1: dioxins that will break down under high enough temperatures. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but but it can be released into the
Speaker 1: air or leached from ash into the vironment if you
Speaker 1: go down below that threshold that I mentioned a minute ago.
Speaker 1: And even if you're doing it properly, which landfills do. Uh,
Speaker 1: some some toxins can still be released as the emission
Speaker 1: gases cooled down. Even if you are Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: that you're doing it totally correctly, you're not worried about
Speaker 1: dioxins anymore. You do still have to worry about carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: Burning plastic creates more carbon dioxide then would be produced
Speaker 1: if you just let it decompose in a very sunny landfill,
Speaker 1: all of all of those sun landfills, right yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know that there are some like high
Speaker 1: efficiency energy recovery systems that recapture some carbon dioxide and
Speaker 1: can use it as fuel, um, reducing your carbon footprint
Speaker 1: from burning plastics. But that's a really specific case. Not
Speaker 1: not all landfill systems have this sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so i'd imagine if you're talking about traditional petro plastics,
Speaker 1: probably one of the best things you can do with
Speaker 1: them is recycled, the recyclable ones, right, Oh, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: lots of them can be recycled. I mean it very rarely.
Speaker 1: It's considered more expensive than is really worthwhile. But plastics
Speaker 1: are one of the things that that most recyclers really
Speaker 1: enjoy working with because you get a pretty good return
Speaker 1: on on investment. Um. However, lots of plastic just doesn't
Speaker 1: get recycled. According to Harvard's Wiss Institute, which will come
Speaker 1: up again in just a moment, only three percent of
Speaker 1: the three million tons of plastic that we produce every
Speaker 1: year worldwide is recycled. That's that's terrifying. So what happens
Speaker 1: to the rest? They just throw it and garbage patch
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, either either in the ocean
Speaker 1: and landfills, it gets burned, etcetera, etcetera. I think I
Speaker 1: read that garbage patches like mostly plastic, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: have not read anything about it, but I am extra terrified. Now. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it makes perfect sense that you
Speaker 1: know that that people are I mean because especially since
Speaker 1: any many other kinds of waste are going to either
Speaker 1: decompose or have been taken out forehand. Like, no one's
Speaker 1: gonna put steel in the middle of the ocean because
Speaker 1: steel is valuable. You're going to take that out first,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to float. Yes, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we have a really good group on science here on
Speaker 1: this show. Now that'd be at the bottom would be
Speaker 1: the Great Pacific Garbage Pile. Yes, okay, But but so
Speaker 1: aside from the Great Pacific Garbage Pile, there are some
Speaker 1: other answers to to what to do with all of
Speaker 1: this plastic, or or how to perhaps lessen the amount
Speaker 1: of plastic that is going out there. Lauren, are you
Speaker 1: telling me that there is a sweeter, more environmentally friendly
Speaker 1: way to make plastics? Yes, you can make bioplastics. It's
Speaker 1: made of smiles. Oh wow, Well I should have probably said, uh,
Speaker 1: debatably friendlier and sweeter version, right, Yes, I mean, because okay,
Speaker 1: bioplastics do come from biological sources um which supply polymers
Speaker 1: used to create essentially very similar plastic products. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe I've I've drank out of bottles before that said
Speaker 1: they were made with corn. Oh yeah, yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of the most common ones. It's called p l A
Speaker 1: or polyactide, which is which is usually made from corn.
Speaker 1: It's starch based and is commonly used in product packaging
Speaker 1: and clothing. It was invented back in the year two
Speaker 1: thousand as a collaboration between a couple of chemical companies.
Speaker 1: The very earliest one, however, was celluloid, which was developed
Speaker 1: all the way back in the eighteen sixties, made from
Speaker 1: cotton that have been dipped in acid along with camphor
Speaker 1: from the camphor laurel tree. Oh wow, Okay, so I
Speaker 1: can see in the root of that word that might
Speaker 1: come from cellulose, like, isn't cotton is basically just cellulose? Right?
Speaker 1: Plant plants stuff, the cell walls of plant cells are cellulose.
Speaker 1: That's it exactly. Um. Cell of fane, you know, clear
Speaker 1: plastic sheets that we use mostly for food packaging, is
Speaker 1: another bioplastic that was invented in the early nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, and that cell tho stuff. All of these
Speaker 1: having the same root. It's it's an organic compound. That's uh. Polysaccharide,
Speaker 1: which is which is the stuff in cell walls of
Speaker 1: green plants. Yeah, that's cool. So what else can we
Speaker 1: make bioplastics from soybeans? Back in the nineteen thirties, Henry
Speaker 1: Ford actually started making auto parts out of soybeans, and
Speaker 1: in one unveiled an entire soybean car, which was a
Speaker 1: bioplastic body on a on a steel frame. And but
Speaker 1: but you can use basically any any plant, I mean,
Speaker 1: lots of starchy stuff, cane, sugar, wood, bark, switch grass,
Speaker 1: and possibly even food waste can go into bioplastics. UM
Speaker 1: Like I said that most common one is made from
Speaker 1: corn um. But uh, like I said, sugarcane p ET
Speaker 1: a version of polyethylene tetrafthalate. I think I said that correctly,
Speaker 1: um can be made from sugarcane instead of the usual
Speaker 1: petrochemical process. Common, isn't it? Oh yeah yeah? Um? And
Speaker 1: uh toyota and a T and T use a bioplastic
Speaker 1: version of p ET in interior trim, and also cell
Speaker 1: phone case components, you know, respectively. Right right, My, My
Speaker 1: very favorite kind of bioplastic is pH B and that's
Speaker 1: polyhydroxy bey rate, which is made from bacteria. And okay,
Speaker 1: so if you get the right kind of bacteria into
Speaker 1: a fermentation tank. It'll churn out biopolymers like lactic acid
Speaker 1: and polyesters, which can then be processed into monomers, into polymers,
Speaker 1: into plastic. So these are made in these big bioreactor things,
Speaker 1: like bioreactors, Right, Yeah, I just love to get inside
Speaker 1: one of those. I don't think you would. I think
Speaker 1: it would be warm and stanky. I don't think I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a place for Joe. Okay. Uh So
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that it's debatable, but that bioplastics might
Speaker 1: be net benefit for the environment over petroplastics. What what's
Speaker 1: the deal? Why might they be better? Well, some are biodegradable,
Speaker 1: so they will eventually break down under the right conditions,
Speaker 1: and those conditions depend upon the type of bioplastic. Okay,
Speaker 1: But the important thing to say there is that they're
Speaker 1: actually biodegradable, not just not just they break down into
Speaker 1: smaller pieces under the sunlight, but that bacteria will actually
Speaker 1: eat them, little animals eat them up, and tournamento chemicals. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and and those those conditions range from regular old landfill
Speaker 1: conditions um, although that is certainly not ideal um, because
Speaker 1: you you really need oxygen in the process of biodegradation
Speaker 1: and landfills are not where oxygen is hanging out most
Speaker 1: of the time. Um to. Some can be biodegraded in
Speaker 1: home com posting, which of course would depend on you
Speaker 1: knowing which things of yours you can are bioplastic. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and also you actually composting. Um. I am certainly too
Speaker 1: lazy to compost, which I feel pretty bad about. Actually
Speaker 1: sometimes I do some accidental composting. Um. But but there's
Speaker 1: there's also industrial composting, which is definitely a really great
Speaker 1: way to get bioplastics to biodegrade. However, not everyone has access.
Speaker 1: Most most home consumers do not have access to industrial composting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, how do you get it there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't basically, um, like like large enough contracts through
Speaker 1: For example, if a if a hotel uses entirely bioplastic
Speaker 1: containers for its i don't know, shampoos and water bottles
Speaker 1: and whatever else it sells, or a stadium. You know,
Speaker 1: any time that you've got a captive audience and you
Speaker 1: can pretty reliably get a whole bunch of bioplastics together,
Speaker 1: you can sell those or send them to a to
Speaker 1: an industrial composting thing. Okay, so let's say we're in
Speaker 1: one of those places where you just uh, you know,
Speaker 1: burn everything, burn it all. I get in that mood sometimes,
Speaker 1: I understand. Do they provide any real advantage over regular
Speaker 1: petrochemical plastics when it comes to incineration. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely worth saying that they can be incinerated. I've
Speaker 1: read part few things saying they can be incinerated. It's
Speaker 1: sort of considered a form of recycling. You're not recycling
Speaker 1: the material, but you're reclaiming energy. Sure, I mean, plastics
Speaker 1: are very energy dense, and so as a as a
Speaker 1: kind of post process fuel source, they can be pretty awesome. However, Uh,
Speaker 1: we couldn't find any sources that stated really definitively um,
Speaker 1: exactly what chemically happens when you burn bioplastics um. And
Speaker 1: this is partially because a lot of the sources out
Speaker 1: there are makers of bioplastics. While some pro bioplastic literature
Speaker 1: says that you can reduce the carbon emissions, like the
Speaker 1: bioplastics don't add to the net carbon emissions like the right,
Speaker 1: but we're not We're not entirely sure. Some some definite
Speaker 1: downsides to bioplastics. Most of these actually come in with
Speaker 1: kind of consumer misunderstanding of the product's life cycles, like
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, knowing whether or not this thing
Speaker 1: that you have should be put in your compost um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Number one is is bioplastics can create a lot of
Speaker 1: recycling havoc. Even a relatively small amount of bioplastic mixed
Speaker 1: in with regular plastics can contaminate an entire recycling batch,
Speaker 1: which is bad times for everyone involved. UM. Like we
Speaker 1: like we said, most bioplastics do indeed need to be composted.
Speaker 1: They will not fare very well in landfills. Bioplastics do
Speaker 1: produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas when they decompose,
Speaker 1: and is actually worse than CEO two. Yeah, yeah, it's well,
Speaker 1: everything's bad, but it's not. It's certainly not good. Um.
Speaker 1: Similarly to the CEO to collection process, landfills and other
Speaker 1: dumps can can collect methane and use it as a
Speaker 1: fuel source. But still that's only if they have put
Speaker 1: that in place. UM. And also, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: growing crops in order to make plastic, you're using fields
Speaker 1: that could be creating food for people or for livestock.
Speaker 1: In fact, the corn that goes into p l A
Speaker 1: S is generally a livestock feed, which is referred to
Speaker 1: if you're really interested in corn number two yellow Dent's
Speaker 1: number two yellow dent d n T dent. Yeah, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know. I've never honestly been that
Speaker 1: interested in corn. Maybe I should be. Maybe, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a whole world that I've never explored. You know, when
Speaker 1: a plant has a number in its name, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a pencil like like plant, more like a like
Speaker 1: a robot prototype. I'm sure that there is a long
Speaker 1: and interesting entomological reason for for that thing. Okay, but
Speaker 1: so um so, once once get away from from all
Speaker 1: of the types of bioplastics that we've been making for
Speaker 1: the past decade or two, which I mean are are
Speaker 1: pretty cool, Like like like we're being a little bit skeptical here,
Speaker 1: but we want to make it clear that this is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a giant pansia for for the future of plastics, right. No,
Speaker 1: but I encourage this research, oh absolutely so. So there
Speaker 1: so there's more research being done. Just in the spring
Speaker 1: of we are recording this. You may in fact be
Speaker 1: listening to this um Harford's White Institute for Biologically Inspired
Speaker 1: Engineering announced that they had created a bioplastic made from
Speaker 1: shrimp shells um, specifically from the polymer kitson, which is
Speaker 1: a form of kitan, which is the second most abundant
Speaker 1: organic material on the planet, being that it makes up
Speaker 1: crustacean shells, insect exo skeletons, some insect wings, other stuff
Speaker 1: like that. You know what, It would be great if
Speaker 1: you had a factory making this that was right next
Speaker 1: to a seafood restaurant, because what do you do with
Speaker 1: all those shells? It's always a shame when you eat
Speaker 1: shrimp and then on the edge of your plates, what
Speaker 1: do you do with them? Well, on an industrial level,
Speaker 1: what is done with that kind of stuff? Apparently it's
Speaker 1: made into all kinds of weird stuff, including makeup things
Speaker 1: I never knew about shrimp shells. Yeah, your face, it
Speaker 1: smells like the ocean. Okay, back back to back to
Speaker 1: this bioplastic. These these researchers from Harvard specifically combined this
Speaker 1: kiti sin with with wood flower, which is a byproduct
Speaker 1: of wood processing um, to help it maintain its shape,
Speaker 1: which was a cost improvement over the traditional beef upper
Speaker 1: for kiton, which is a protein from silk which is
Speaker 1: pretty expensive. Yeah, and and so the researchers say that
Speaker 1: it can be maths manufactured for using all kinds of
Speaker 1: objects like toys or cell phones or trash bags, packaging diapers,
Speaker 1: and that it breaks down in just a few weeks,
Speaker 1: even degrading into like plant friendly nutrients, Like if you
Speaker 1: put plants in stuff where this is buried, the plants
Speaker 1: will be happier and healthier. Okay, So for using this
Speaker 1: to make stuff like toys and cell phones and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, why doesn't it break down while you're using it?
Speaker 1: Or is it just for burner phones? Probably that's it. No, Actually,
Speaker 1: a none of the reports that I read, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that the as of the recording of this
Speaker 1: podcast on MA I couldn't find the actual article in
Speaker 1: print that this research. This was all press releases ahead
Speaker 1: of print, so so this is kind of the pre
Speaker 1: release version. And I could not find any information on
Speaker 1: what exactly what kind of degradation process they were talking
Speaker 1: about here. Okay, So it might need to be in
Speaker 1: the presence of some other materials, or it might need
Speaker 1: to be in a composting situation, it might need to
Speaker 1: right some kind of chemical thing. I'm not sure yet.
Speaker 1: Well there, well maybe maybe whenever that publishes, we can
Speaker 1: throw up a blog post yeah, yeah, define discussing shrimp plastic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and they're not the only people obviously working on
Speaker 1: this kind of thing. That My other favorite story from
Speaker 1: the headlines is that a team of students from Imperial
Speaker 1: College London won an award in the International Genetically Engineered
Speaker 1: Machine Competition for a specific bioplastic manufacturing process. Um and
Speaker 1: and this this process of theirs was that they retooled
Speaker 1: the genetic code of ecoli, the bacteria, the bacteria, so
Speaker 1: that these critters can break down normal old landfill waste
Speaker 1: into bioplastic monomers, which you can process into polymers, which
Speaker 1: you can process into plastic. So we may in the
Speaker 1: future be turning trash into happy meal toys. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: might be turning old happy meal toys into new happy
Speaker 1: meal toys. Circle of Life. Yeah, it's kind of beautiful, right,
Speaker 1: So so I'm really hoping that that becomes a thing
Speaker 1: because because in the in the meanwhile, you know, but bioplastics,
Speaker 1: being that they come from a renewable resource, are a
Speaker 1: step up in the carbon footprint area from petroleum based plastics.
Speaker 1: For sure. Um, you know. But but but like we said,
Speaker 1: they are not absolutely perfect, and and getting rid of
Speaker 1: them is difficult, and plastics are so useful that it's
Speaker 1: it's also not viable to just get rid of plastics entirely, right, So,
Speaker 1: so what's the future of plastics? Well, I think this
Speaker 1: is one of those things where we're sort of coming
Speaker 1: in in the middle of a conversation about the supposed
Speaker 1: benefits of bioplastics compared to petroplastics, and we're just going
Speaker 1: to see how that turns out, I guess. But especially
Speaker 1: if there's ongoing research about new ways to make it, uh,
Speaker 1: that might have a big impact on what those pros
Speaker 1: and cons are in the future. Oh, certainly. And also
Speaker 1: research like this might help reduce the cost of bioplastics,
Speaker 1: which has been one of the barriers to introducing them
Speaker 1: more widely because they're more expensive, I mean, and and
Speaker 1: a range of more expensive. I think at the low
Speaker 1: end they might be more expensive than traditional plastics, and
Speaker 1: at the high end a lot more than that, depending
Speaker 1: on on what type of thing you're comparing to what
Speaker 1: other type of things. Okay, but yeah, so so you
Speaker 1: can you can find all of our stuff at FW
Speaker 1: thinking dot com. If you would like to further get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can email us. That is
Speaker 1: FW thinking at Discovery dot com and we are on
Speaker 1: many forms of social media including Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.
Speaker 1: Our handle again is FW thinking and we hope that
Speaker 1: we will hear from you either way. Who will hear
Speaker 1: from us again really soon? For more on this topic
Speaker 1: in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,