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PLASTIC IS EVERYWHERE.
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FROM THE CAMERA RECORDING ME RIGHT NOW,
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TO THE DEVICE YOU'RE WATCHING THIS ON,
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THE CLOTHES THAT WE'RE WEARING…
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THE GALLON OF MILK YOU DRANK STRAIGHT OUT OF THIS MORNING,
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AND THE FRIDGE THAT YOU POPPED IT BACK INTO...
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WHICH IS GROSS, BY THE WAY.
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BUT THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S A PRETTY AWESOME INVENTION.
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PLASTIC IS FLEXIBLE, DURABLE, TUNABLE,
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AND IT'S CHEAP.
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BUT FOR ALL OF PLASTIC'S SUPERPOWERS,
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IT AS AN OBVIOUS DARK SIDE.
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IT HAS A MASSIVE CARBON FOOTPRINT, WREAKS HAVOC ON OUR NATURAL ECOSYSTEMS, AND IS SO
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PERVASIVE THAT IT'S LITERALLY SHOWING UP IN THE FOOD WE EAT AND AIR THAT WE BREATHE.
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SOME WOULD ARGUE THAT WE JUST NEED TO QUIT PLASTIC COLD TURKEY.
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BUT BECAUSE WE'RE SO WRAPPED UP IN IT,
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THAT MIGHT BE EASIER SAID THAN DONE.
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BUT WHAT IF WE COULD UPGRADE TO SOMETHING BETTER?
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HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO REINVENTING PLASTIC?
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THE LIFE CYCLE OF MOST PLASTICS STARTS WITH
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PETROCHEMICALS, WHICH ARE USED TO FORM SOME KIND OF SOURCE MATERIAL, LIKE THESE PELLETS
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CALLED….
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I KID YOU NOT…
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'NURDLES.'
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- So you can have these plastic pellets that get melted into something like plastic packaging
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for instance, or maybe it gets blow molded into a water bottle...
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that bottle might go somewhere else, where a label gets put on top of it,
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where it goes somewhere else, where it gets filled.
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- Plastics are polymers.
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"Poly" means many, and "mers" means parts.
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So, basically small molecules which are chained together to make a really large molecule,
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or a macromolecule.
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Some of these macromolecules can be shaped using heat and pressure
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And that's what plastics are.
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So you can start with ethylene gas, you polymerize
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into polyethylene, which is a plastic.
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And you can use it in various shapes and forms.
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POLYETHYLENE IS JUST ONE OF COUNTLESS TYPES
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OF PLASTICS WITH DIFFERENT PROPERTIES,
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EACH PERFECTLY SUITED FOR THEIR APPLICATION,
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FROM SEALING A HOUSE, TO LINING A CAR
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SHIPPING A PRODUCT, WRAPPING PRODUCE,
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KEEPING YOUR SODA CARBONATED
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OR YOUR CLOTHING FROM CRUMBLING INTO A MILLION PIECES WHEN YOU SWEAT.
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(WHICH IS A DIFFERENT TYPE OF VIDEO).
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Packaging is the largest consumer of polymers, or plastics.
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We are interacting with them every day.
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AND THAT'S ONE MAJOR CHALLENGE OF RE-INVENTING PLASTIC.
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IT'S FINDING A REPLACEMENT THAT CAN DO ALL THESE THINGS.
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A MIRACLE MATERIAL WHICH POSSESSES ALL THE INCREDIBLE PROPERTIES OF PLASTIC,
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BUT IS STILL SUSTAINABLE TO PRODUCE, USE, AND DISPOSE OF,
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MEANING IT'S BOTH BIO-BASED AND BIODEGRADABLE.
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- Bio-based is, where does the carbon in the material come from?
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Is it rapidly renewable?
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So, if it's rapidly renewable, bio-based carbon, is it from plants?
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Is it from waste bio-gas?
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Biodegradable is what happens to a material at end of life.
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Can it be prone to enzymatic attack by microorganisms, by bacteria, by fungi?
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Can they break it down and convert it into something else?
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- PLA is polylactic acid.
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It's one of the plastics which is bio-derived, biodegradable, and compostable.
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RIGHT NOW, PLA IS THE MOST WIDELY AVAILABLE “BIOPOLYMER” ON THE MARKET.
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AND YOU MIGHT ALREADY BE FAMILIAR WITH IT…
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FOR BETTER OR WORSE.
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- People always say, "Oh, I know what you're talking about! I used it in my straw
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in my coffee yesterday and it turned to a wet noodle."
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But one of the other bigger challenges is PLA generally will only break down in
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industrially compostable environments.
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It needs high heat and high pressure.
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INDUSTRIAL COMPOSTING IS A CHALLENGE FOR THE
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SAME REASON THAT RECYCLING IS: IT'S EXPENSIVE, BUT NOT PROFITABLE RIGHT AWAY;
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IT REQUIRES MASSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE TO BE BUILT FROM THE GROUND UP;
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AND IT DOESN'T CATCH ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T JUST WALTZ THROUGH ITS DOOR.
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SO, IF YOU THROW A RECYCLABLE SODA BOTTLE IN THE WRONG BIN OR A 'COMPOSTABLE' PLA CUP
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IN YOUR BACKYARD, THE PLASTIC IS STILL STUCK.
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IT'S NOT GOING TO GET BROKEN DOWN.
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THAT'S WHY MOLLY AND HER TEAM AT MANGO MATERIALS
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ARE FOCUSED ON A DIFFERENT KIND OF BIOPOLYMER.
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ONE THAT DEGRADES NATURALLY, BUT ONLY WHEN YOU WANT IT TO...
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AND ROLLS OFF THE TONGUE:
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POLYHYDROXYALKANOATES.
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- Polyhydroxyalkanoates are a family of naturally occuring biopolyesters.
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It's the way bacteria have evolved over billions of years to store carbon in case
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of famines coming.
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PHAs were identified in bacteria over a hundred years ago.
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The challenge has been how to commercialize them.
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TYPICALLY, USING BACTERIA TO PRODUCE PHA IN THEIR CELL WALLS
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REQUIRED FEEDING THEM SOMETHING LIKE SUGAR OR VEGETABLE OILS.
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BUT BECAUSE THOSE ARE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS, THE PROCESS CAN BE DIFFICULT AT BIG SCALES.
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BUT OVER A DECADE AGO, MOLLY AND HER RESEARCH TEAM AT STANFORD
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STARTED TO TOSS AROUND ANOTHER IDEA…
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ONE THAT HAS SINCE BECOME REVOLUTIONARY.
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What if instead, we used methane?
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There's naturally occurring methanotrophs, or bacteria that can consume methane,
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and could they produce PHA?
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It would make sense that they could because this is an ancient carbon storage mechanism
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in organisms.
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I'd say that was the Eureka moment if there was one,
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and now there's just been continual sort of successes as we validate,
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can you use waste methane?
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What kind of properties can you get from compounding or formulating the polymer correctly?
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How do you scale up?
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AND THAT'S BEEN THE MAJOR CHALLENGE FOR
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ANY KIND OF NEXT-GENERATION MATERIAL TO BE ABLE TO COMPETE WITH
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PETROLEUM-BASED PLASTIC PRODUCTS.
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- If you go to a dollar store, you see items which are about $1.
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So the product by itself has to be less than $1, along with the package.
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So the package has to be relatively very, very cheap
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in order to succeed in the market.
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TO DRIVE A COMPETING MATERIAL'S COSTS DOWN THAT FAR,
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IT WOULD HAVE TO BE SO EASY TO PRODUCE THAT IT WOULD BE LIKE
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PULLING IT OUT OF THIN AIR.
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AND ACCORDING TO MANGO, THAT THIN AIR IS THE DELICIOUS SMELL OF METHANE,
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WAFTING FROM THE LANDFILLS AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANTS
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RIGHT IN OUR BACKYARD.
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- We're able to pipe right off of the existing infrastructure
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that they have here.
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The tank that you see behind me here is called
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an anaerobic digester.
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And that is where there's organisms called methanogens that live there and eat the waste,
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and actually produce methane, hence the name "methanogen."
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Behind me, we have the fermentor where the
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bacteria live, grow, and make the biopolymer.
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It actually happens in two stages.
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So the first, we call reproduction, where we actually want the organisms to double, and
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then, we actually want all of those millions of organisms to transform, which means to
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take that carbon and build up the biopolymer, polyhydroxyalkanoate, inside of cell walls,
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Once they are fat and happy, we basically have to pull the polymer out of their cell
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walls through the harvesting step.
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We remove the cell mass, as we don't need that part - we really want the powder,
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which is actually in step six where we've removed the water, and you're left with the powder.
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But in order for it to be turned into various products,
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it needs to generally be in pellet form,
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which is step seven.
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- If we want to look at what the utopian future could be, in my book, it would be anaerobic
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digestion to materials, to fuels, to energy.
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So, we could take these local, decentralized, already-existing facilities - they're already
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collecting some form of waste. They can anaerobically digest it to methane.
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Then we are dealing with our waste onsite.
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And not only that, we are creating a more resilient economy, because we can actually
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use this material, that's seen as a waste, as a feedstock to the
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everyday materials and products we need.
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FOR MOLLY AND HER TEAM TODAY, THOSE PRODUCTS ARE
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FIBERS FOR TEXTILES, SMALL PACKAGING ITEMS, AND EVEN 3D-PRINTED TOOLS
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FOR USE IN SPACE.
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BUT BY SLOWLY BUILDING DEMAND AND IMPROVING THEIR PRODUCTION PROCESS, THEY BELIEVE THAT
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SOON THEY'LL BE ABLE TO WORK WITH SOMETHING LIKE PLASTIC BAGS.
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One of the amazing things about PHAs is they
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can be tailored for lots of different applications.
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So you can get different properties, whether it's mechanical properties, processing, or
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even end-of-life biodegradability properties.
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PHAs can also biodegrade in your backyard
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compost, so home compost, or even environments where no oxygen is present.
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It could give producers and other people in the value and supply chain reassurance that
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it won't be polluting indefinitely for hundreds or thousands of years.
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SO IF ALL WE NEED TO DO IS MENTOR SOME METHANE-MUNCHING
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MICROBES TO PRODUCE PHA AT SCALE USING WASTE FACILITIES ALL OVER THE WORLD, GRADUALLY BUILD
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THE CAPACITY WE NEED TO COMPETE WITH PETROCHEMICAL PLASTICS,
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AND SIT BACK AND WATCH AS OUR LANDFILLS BECOME GOLD MINES,
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HOW CLOSE ARE WE TO RE-INVENTING PLASTIC?
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- We are having a technological leap forward.
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So the technology of the next generation of plastics is already here;
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and it's the infrastructure that we have to develop around it.
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Whether it's bioplastics, compostable plastics, or whether it is processing
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once the infrastructure is in place, we'll have the next generation of plastics taking over.
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- So, we're very close to replacing petroleum and polluting plastics.
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These materials are already here.
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If everything just fell into place, we'd be looking at single digit years to get there.
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There's a sweet spot between technology and economics.
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Packaging and plastics play a very important role in the success of the supply chain.
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Sustainable plastics, they are going to grow from here on - there's no doubt about that.
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So once the cost of the production, the infrastructure lines up
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I see a very bright future for the bioplastics out there.
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Methane might stink, but our YouTube channel sure doesn't.
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Make sure to subscribe for all your science news
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check out our website at Seeker.com, our Instagram, @Seeker, our Facebook, /SeekerMedia,
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and, for more about plastic, check out this episode of Elements
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where we cover a team trying to pull it all out of the Pacific Ocean.
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It's a lot of work.
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Anyway, thanks for watching!
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See ya next time!