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So imagine, you're in the supermarket,
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you're buying some groceries,
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and you get given the option
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for a plastic or a paper shopping bag.
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Which one do you choose if you want to do
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the right thing by the environment?
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Most people do pick the paper.
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Okay, let's think of why.
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It's brown to start with.
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Therefore, it must be good for the environment.
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It's biodegradable. It's reusable.
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In some cases, it's recyclable.
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So when people are looking at the plastic bag,
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it's likely they're thinking of something like this,
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which we all know is absolutely terrible,
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and we should be avoiding at all expenses
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these kinds of environmental damages.
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But people are often not thinking
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of something like this,
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which is the other end of the spectrum.
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When we produce materials,
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we need to extract them from the environment,
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and we need a whole bunch of environmental impacts.
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You see, what happens is, when we need
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to make complex choices,
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us humans like really simple solutions,
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and so we often ask for simple solutions.
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And I work in design.
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I advise designers
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and innovators around sustainability,
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and everyone always says to me, "Oh Leyla,
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I just want the eco-materials."
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And I say, "Well, that's very complex,
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and we'll have to spend four hours talking about
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what exactly an eco-material means,
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because everything at some point
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comes from nature,
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and it's how you use the material
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that dictates the environmental impact.
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So what happens is, we have to rely
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on some sort of intuitive framework
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when we make decisions.
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So I like to call that intuitive framework
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our environmental folklore.
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It's either the little voice at the back of your head,
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or it's that gut feeling you get
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when you've done the right thing,
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so when you've picked the paper bag
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or when you've bought a fuel-efficient car.
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And environmental folklore is a really important thing
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because we're trying to do the right thing.
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But how do we know if we're actually
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reducing the net environmental impacts
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that our actions as individuals and as professionals
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and as a society are actually having
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on the natural environment?
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So the thing about environmental folklore is
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it tends to be based on our experiences,
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the things we've heard from other people.
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It doesn't tend to be based on any scientific framework.
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And this is really hard, because we live
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in incredibly complex systems.
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We have the human systems
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of how we communicate and interrelate
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and have our whole constructed society,
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We have the industrial systems, which is essentially the entire economy,
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and then all of that has to operate
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within the biggest system,
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and, I would argue, the most important,
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the ecosystem.
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And you see, the choices that we make
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as an individual,
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but the choices that we make
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in every single job that we have,
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no matter how high or low you are in the pecking order,
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has an impact on all of these systems.
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And the thing is that we have to find ways
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if we're actually going to address sustainability
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of interlocking those complex systems
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and making better choices that result
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in net environmental gains.
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What we need to do is we need to learn
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to do more with less.
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We have an increasing population,
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and everybody likes their mobile phones,
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especially in this situation here.
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So we need to find innovative ways of solving some of these problems that we face.
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And that's where this process called life cycle thinking comes in.
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So essentially, everything that is created
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goes through a series of life cycle stages,
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and we use this scientific process
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called life cycle assessment,
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or in America, you guys say life cycle analysis,
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in order to have a clearer picture of how
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everything that we do in the technical part of those systems
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affects the natural environment.
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So we go all the way back
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to the extraction of raw materials,
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and then we look at manufacturing,
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we look at packaging and transportation,
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use, and end of life,
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and at every single one of these stages,
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the things that we do
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have an interaction with the natural environment,
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and we can monitor how that interaction
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is actually affecting the systems and services
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that make life on Earth possible.
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And through doing this,
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we've learned some absolutely fascinating things.
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And we've busted a bunch of myths.
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So to start with, there's a word that's used a lot.
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It's used a lot in marketing,
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and it's used a lot, I think, in our conversation
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when we're talking about sustainability,
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and that's the word biodegradability.
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Now biodegradability is a material property;
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it is not a definition of environmental benefits.
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Allow me to explain.
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When something natural,
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something that's made from a cellulose fiber
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like a piece of bread, even, or any food waste,
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or even a piece of paper,
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when something natural ends up
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in the natural environment, it degrades normally.
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Its little carbon molecules that it stored up
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as it was growing are naturally released
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back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide,
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but this is a net situation.
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Most natural things
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don't actually end up in nature.
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Most of the things, the waste that we produce, end up in landfill.
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Landfill is a different environment.
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In landfill, those same carbon molecules
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degrade in a different way,
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because a landfill is anaerobic.
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It's got no oxygen. It's tightly compacted and hot.
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Those same molecules, they become methane,
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and methane is a 25 times more potent
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greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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So our old lettuces and products
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that we have thrown out that are made
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out of biodegradable materials,
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if they end up in landfill,
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contribute to climate change.
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You see, there are facilities now
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that can actually capture that methane
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and generate power,
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displacing the need for fossil fuel power,
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but we need to be smart about this.
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We need to identify how we can start to leverage
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these types of things that are already happening
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and start to design systems and services
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that alleviate these problems.
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Because right now, what people do is they turn around and they say,
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"Let's ban plastic bags. We'll give people paper
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because that is better for the environment."
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But if you're throwing it in the bin,
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and your local landfill facility
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is just a normal one,
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then we're having what's called a double negative.
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I'm a product designer by trade.
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I then did social science.
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And so I'm absolutely fascinated
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by consumer goods and how the consumer goods
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that we have kind of become immune to
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that fill our lives
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have an impact on the natural environment.
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And these guys are, like, serial offenders,
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and I'm pretty sure everyone in this room
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has a refrigerator.
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Now America has this amazing ability
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to keep growing refrigerators.
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In the last few years, they've grown one cubic foot
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on average, the standard size
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of a refrigerator.
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And the problem is, they're so big now,
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it's easier for us to buy more food
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that we can't eat or find.
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I mean, I have things at the back of my refrigerator
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that have been there for years, all right?
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And so what happens is, we waste more food.
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And as I was just explaining, food waste is a problem.
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In fact, here in the U.S., 40 percent
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of food purchased for the home is wasted.
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Half of the world's produced food is wasted.
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That's the latest U.N. stats. Up to half of the food.
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It's insane. It's 1.3 billion tons of food per annum.
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And I blame it on the refrigerator,
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well, especially in Western cultures,
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because it makes it easier.
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I mean, there's a lot of complex systems going on here.
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I don't want to make it so simplistic.
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But the refrigerator is a serious contributor to this,
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and one of the features of it
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is the crisper drawer.
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You all got crisper drawers?
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The drawer that you put your lettuces in?
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Lettuces have a habit of going soggy
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in the crisper drawers, don't they?
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Yeah? Soggy lettuces?
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In the U.K., this is such a problem
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that there was a government report a few years ago
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that actually said the second biggest offender
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of wasted food in the U.K. is the soggy lettuce.
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It was called the Soggy Lettuce Report.
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Okay? So this is a problem, people.
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These poor little lettuces are getting thrown out
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left, right and center because the crisper drawers
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are not designed to actually keep things crisp.
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Okay. You need a tight environment.
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You need, like, an airless environment
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to prevent the degrading that would happen naturally.
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But the crisper drawers, they're just a drawer
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with a slightly better seal.
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Anyway, I'm clearly obsessed.
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Don't ever invite me over because I'll just start going through your refrigerator
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and looking at all sorts of things like that.
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But essentially, this is a big problem.
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Because when we lose something like the lettuce from the system,
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not only do we have that impact I just explained at the end of life,
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but we actually have had to grow that lettuce.
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The life cycle impact of that lettuce is astronomical.
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We've had to clear land.
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We've had to plant seeds, phosphorus,
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fertilizers, nutrients, water, sunlight.
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All of the embodied impacts in that lettuce
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get lost from the system,
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which makes it a far bigger environmental impact
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than the loss of the energy from the fridge.
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So we need to design things like this far better
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if we're going to start addressing serious environmental problems.
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We could start with the crisper drawer and the size.
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For those of you in the room who do design fridges,
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that would be great.
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The problem is, imagine if we
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actually started to reconsider how we designed things.
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So I look at the refrigerator as a sign of modernity,
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but we actually haven't really changed the design
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of them that much since the 1950s.
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A little bit, but essentially they're still big boxes,
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cold boxes that we store stuff in.
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So imagine if we actually really started
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to identify these problems and use that
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as the foundation for finding innovative and elegant
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design solutions that will solve those problems.
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This is design-led system change,
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design dictating the way in which the system
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can be far more sustainable.
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Forty percent food waste is a major problem.
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Imagine if we designed fridges that halved that.
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Another item that I find fascinating