So, I'd like to spend a few minutes with you folks today imagining what our planet might look like in a thousand years. But before I do that, I need to talk to you about synthetic materials like plastics, which require huge amounts of energy to create and, because of their disposal issues, are slowly poisoning our planet. I also want to tell you and share with you how my team and I have been using mushrooms over the last three years. Not like that. (Laughter) We're using mushrooms to create an entirely new class of materials, which perform a lot like plastics during their use, but are made from crop waste and are totally compostable at the end of their lives.
我希望花几分钟时间和你们聊聊 想象下一千年以后我们的星球看起来会是怎样的? 但在这之前, 我需要告诉你像塑料这样的花费巨大的 人力物力来制造的合成材料, 因为它们存在的废弃处理问题, 正在逐渐毒害我们的地球。 我也想与大家分享 我和我的团队 如何在过去的三年中使用蘑菇。 不是那样子(笑声) 我们正使用蘑菇来创造一种全新的材料。 使用起来和塑料一样, 但是是以农作物废料来制造的 并且在他们的使用寿命结束后完全降解于大自然中。
(Cheering)
(欢呼)
But first, I need to talk to you about what I consider one of the most egregious offenders in the disposable plastics category. This is a material you all know is Styrofoam, but I like to think of it as toxic white stuff. In a single cubic foot of this material -- about what would come around your computer or large television -- you have the same energy content of about a liter and a half of petrol. Yet, after just a few weeks of use, you'll throw this material in the trash. And this isn't just found in packaging. 20 billion dollars of this material is produced every year, in everything from building materials to surfboards to coffee cups to table tops. And that's not the only place it's found. The EPA estimates, in the United States, by volume, this material occupies 25 percent of our landfills. Even worse is when it finds its way into our natural environment -- on the side of the road or next to a river. If it's not picked up by a human, like me and you, it'll stay there for thousands and thousands of years. Perhaps even worse is when it finds its way into our oceans, like in the great plastic gyre, where these materials are being mechanically broken into smaller and smaller bits, but they're not really going away. They're not biologically compatible. They're basically fouling up Earth's respiratory and circulatory systems. And because these materials are so prolific, because they're found in so many places, there's one other place you'll find this material, styrene, which is made from benzene, a known carcinogen. You'll find it inside of you.
但首先, 我需要和大家聊下我认为在 可降解塑料中最差的品种。 你们都知道有一种叫做泡沫塑料的材料, 我认为这种一种白色污染。 当你购买电脑或者大尺寸的电视机 大约会带有一立方英尺的泡沫塑料- 它们对能源的消耗相当于 一升半的石油。 经过几周后的使用, 你把这玩艺扔进了垃圾筒, 它们不仅仅被用作包装材料。 每年大约200亿美元的泡沫塑料被生产出来, 用来制造各种产品包括建材,冲浪板 到咖啡杯和桌面。 它们也不仅仅只出现在这些产品中。 根据环保署的估算,在美国, 按体积来算,这种材料占据了4分之一的垃圾填埋场。 更糟糕的是当它进入我们的自然环境- 出现在路边或者河边。 如果不被人回收,比如我们, 它就会再那待上成千上万年。 更坏的情况是 当它们进入到海洋中,就好像太平洋上的庞大的塑料漩涡, 这些材料被机械化地 粉碎成无数小碎片, 但是它们并没有消失。 它们也不与自然兼容。 它们基本上就是在堵塞 地球的呼吸循环系统。 这些材料的量太大了, 它们几乎无所不在, 还有一个地方你会发现这种材料,苯乙烯 它是由苯制成,一种已知的致癌物。 你会在你自己的身体里发现它。
So, for all these reasons, I think we need better materials, and there are three key principles we can use to guide these materials. The first is feedstocks. Today, we use a single feedstock, petroleum, to heat our homes, power our cars and make most of the materials you see around you. We recognize this is a finite resource, and it's simply crazy to do this, to put a liter and a half of petrol in the trash every time you get a package. Second of all, we should really strive to use far less energy in creating these materials. I say far less, because 10 percent isn't going to cut it. We should be talking about half, a quarter, one-tenth the energy content. And lastly, and I think perhaps most importantly, we should be creating materials that fit into what I call nature's recycling system. This recycling system has been in place for the last billion years. I fit into it, you fit into it, and a hundred years tops, my body can return to the Earth with no preprocessing. Yet that packaging I got in the mail yesterday is going to last for thousands of years. This is crazy.
由于这些原因, 我认为我们需要更好的材料, 对这些材料我们有三个关键的原则。 首先是原料。 今天我们使用单一的原料,石油, 来加热房间,驱动车辆 制造绝大多数你周围的东西。 我们明白这是一种有限的资源, 而每次你拿到一个包装就把一升半的 石油扔进垃圾筒也很疯狂。 第二,我们真的需要大量减少 用来制造这些材料的能源。 我说大量减少,因为10%不会起什么大作用。 我们应该起码讲一半,或者四分之一, 甚至十分之一。 最后,我认为可能最重要的是, 我们应该创造能够适合 自然循环系统的材料。 这循环系统已经存在了上亿年的时间。 我能溶解于其中,你也可以, 一百年以后,我的身体可以不用处理就回归到地球。 而我昨天收到的邮件包装 则会待上千年。 这太夸张了。
But nature provides us with a really good model here. When a tree's done using its leaves -- its solar collectors, these amazing molecular photon capturing devices -- at the end of a season, it doesn't pack them up, take them to the leaf reprocessing center and have them melted down to form new leaves. It just drops them, the shortest distance possible, to the forest floor, where they're actually upcycled into next year's topsoil. And this gets us back to the mushrooms. Because in nature, mushrooms are the recycling system. And what we've discovered is, by using a part of the mushroom you've probably never seen -- analogous to its root structure; it's called mycelium -- we can actually grow materials with many of the same properties of conventional synthetics.
但是自然给我们提供了一个非常好的模范。 当一个树使用了它的叶子- 它的太阳能收集器,这些了不起的分子大小的光子捕获设备- 在季末的时候, 它没有把叶子包装好,送到一个树叶处理中心 溶解它们来制造新的树叶。 它仅仅是让叶子掉落, 这是到达地面最短的距离, 在那里它们会再循环进入明年的表层土壤。 让我们回到蘑菇。 因为在大自然中, 蘑菇是循环系统。 我们发现的是 使用蘑菇身上你可能从来没看见过的一部分- 类似它的根结构,叫做菌丝体- 我们可以生长出和传统 合成材料有着相同属性的材料。
Now, mycelium is an amazing material, because it's a self-assembling material. It actually takes things we would consider waste -- things like seed husks or woody biomass -- and can transform them into a chitinous polymer, which you can form into almost any shape. In our process, we basically use it as a glue. And by using mycelium as a glue, you can mold things just like you do in the plastic industry, and you can create materials with many different properties, materials that are insulating, fire-resistant, moisture-resistant, vapor-resistant -- materials that can absorb impacts, that can absorb acoustical impacts. But these materials are grown from agricultural byproducts, not petroleum. And because they're made of natural materials, they are 100 percent compostable in you own backyard.
菌丝体是一种很棒的材料, 因为它是一种自我组合材料。 它将被我们认为是废料的- 比如种子外壳或者木质生物质- 转化成角质状的聚合物, 这种聚合物可以被加工成任何形状。 在我们的流程中, 我们把它当作黏合剂来使用。 通过使用菌丝体作为黏合剂, 就可以像在塑料行业一样把东西塑造成任何形状, 可以创造许多种不同属性的材料, 隔音的,防火的, 防潮的,防蒸汽的- 防震的,还有消音的材料。 不过它们全都是从农作物副产品中生长出来的, 而不是石油, 因为它们是用天然材料制成, 它们是百分之百可以 在你的后院降解的。
So I'd like to share with you the four basic steps required to make these materials. The first is selecting a feedstock, preferably something that's regional, that's in your area, right -- local manufacturing. The next is actually taking this feedstock and putting in a tool, physically filling an enclosure, a mold, in whatever shape you want to get. Then you actually grow the mycelium through these particles, and that's where the magic happens, because the organism is doing the work in this process, not the equipment. The final step is, of course, the product, whether it's a packaging material, a table top, or building block. Our vision is local manufacturing, like the local food movement, for production. So we've created formulations for all around the world using regional byproducts. If you're in China, you might use a rice husk or a cottonseed hull. If you're in Northern Europe or North America, you can use things like buckwheat husks or oat hulls. We then process these husks with some basic equipment.
我想要和大家分享制造这些材料 所需的4个基本步骤。 首先是选择原料, 最好是本地的,在你的区域就可以获得- 本地制造。 下一步把这些原料放进一个工具, 把它们填进一个模具, 可以是你希望的任何形状。 接着就从这些粒子中生长出菌丝体, 这就是魔法发生的地方, 因为这个过程中主要是这些生物自己在工作, 而不是设备, 最后一部,当然就是形成最终产品, 无论它是包装材料,桌面,还是建材。 我们的愿景是本地化的制造, 就像本地食物运输那样生产。 我们开发了利用全世界各地的不同的 农作副产品的生产模式。 如果你在中国,你可以使用稻壳 或者棉籽壳。 如果你在北欧或者北美, 可以用荞麦皮或者燕麦皮。 接着利用一些基本的设备来处理这些谷壳。
And I want to share with you a quick video from our facility that gives you a sense of how this looks at scale. So what you're seeing here is actually cotton hulls from Texas, in this case. It's a waste product. And what they're doing in our equipment is going through a continuous system, which cleans, cooks, cools and pasteurizes these materials, while also continuously inoculating them with our mycelium. This gives us a continuous stream of material that we can put into almost any shape, though today we're making corner blocks. And it's when this lid goes on the part, that the magic really starts. Because the manufacturing process is our organism. It'll actually begin to digest these wastes and, over the next five days, assemble them into biocomposites. Our entire facility is comprised of thousands and thousands and thousands of these tools sitting indoors in the dark, quietly self-assembling materials -- and everything from building materials to, in this case, a packaging corner block.
我想与你们分享一段在我们的厂房拍摄的短片 能让你感受一下实际的规模。 你所看见的实际上是德州的棉籽壳。 这些是生产废料。 它们在这些设备中, 经过一个连续的系统, 清洁,烧煮,冷却, 对其使用使用巴氏消毒法消毒。 并不断将它们与我们的菌丝体接种。 这个流程提供给我们一个持续性的材料源 我们可以把它放进任何形状, 今天我们所做的是角块。 当把盖子掀开的时候, 魔法便开始了。 因为这个加工过程是这些生物。 它们开始消化这些废料 然后在接下来的五天里面, 将它们组织成生物复合材料。 我们整个厂房 由千千万万这样的工具组成。 它们在黑暗中安静地进行着材料地自我组装- 所有材料,从建筑材料到 在这个案例中, 包装用的角块。
So I've said a number of times that we grow materials. And it's kind of hard to picture how that happens. So my team has taken five days-worth of growth, a typical growth cycle for us, and condensed it into a 15-second time lapse. And I want you to really watch closely these little white dots on the screen, because, over the five-day period, what they do is extend out and through this material, using the energy that's contained in these seed husks to build this chitinous polymer matrix. This matrix self-assembles, growing through and around the particles, making millions and millions of tiny fibers. And what parts of the seed husk we don't digest, actually become part of the final, physical composite. So in front of your eyes, this part just self-assembled. It actually takes a little longer. It takes five days. But it's much faster than conventional farming.
我几次提到我们是生长材料。 不过具体发生了什么还有点难以描述。 所以我的团队 把典型的5天生长周期, 压缩到一段15秒的短片中。 我希望大家仔细地看 这些屏幕上的白色小斑点, 因为在5天里面, 它们将扩展至整个材料, 利用这些谷壳里所包含的能量 来建造这个角质聚合物。 这种混合物会自行组合, 在这些白点周围生长, 生成数百万的微小的纤维。 而没有消化掉的种壳, 最终也变成了复合物的一部分。 所以大家眼前看到的,是这部分刚刚完成自我组合。 实际过程会长一点,需要5天。 但是比传统的农业耕作要快很多。
The last step, of course, is application. In this case, we've grown a corner block. A major Fortune 500 furniture maker uses these corner blocks to protect their tables in shipment. They used to use a plastic packaging buffer, but we were able to give them the exact same physical performance with our grown material. Best of all, when it gets to the customer, it's not trash. They can actually put this in their natural ecosystem without any processing, and it's going to improve the local soil.
最后一步,当然就是应用了。 在这个例子中,我们生长出了一个角块。 一个财富500强的家具商 用这些角块来保护装运过程中的桌子。 过去它们使用的是一种塑料缓冲包装, 不过用我们的材料可以提供 与这些塑料一样的物理性能。 最棒的是,当顾客收到产品, 它们也不是垃圾。 它们可以无需任何处理就放进当地生态系统中, 改善当地土壤质量。
So, why mycelium? The first reason is local open feedstocks. You want to be able to do this anywhere in the world and not worry about peak rice hull or peak cottonseed hulls, because you have multiple choices. The next is self-assembly, because the organism is actually doing most of the work in this process. You don't need a lot of equipment to set up a production facility. So you can have lots of small facilities spread all across the world. Biological yield is really important. And because 100 percent of what we put in the tool become the final product, even the parts that aren't digested become part of the structure, we're getting incredible yield rates.
那么,为什么是菌丝体? 第一个原因是在本地开放性地获取原料。 我们希望能在全世界任何地方开展生产 而不用担心稻壳或棉籽壳价格攀升, 因为有多种选择。 第二是自我组合, 因为有机微生物担任着整个过程中的绝大部分工作。 你不需要太多的设备来建立一个生产中心。 所以我们可以在全世界 设立许多小的厂房。 生物产量是很重要的, 因为所有我们放进工具的原料都变成了最终产品, 甚至没有消化的部分 也变成了结构的一部分, 因此我们获得了惊人的收益率。
Natural polymers, well ... I think that's what's most important, because these polymers have been tried and tested in our ecosystem for the last billion years, in everything from mushrooms to crustaceans. They're not going to clog up Earth's ecosystems. They work great. And while, today, we can practically guarantee that yesterday's packaging is going to be here in 10,000 years, what I want to guarantee is that in 10,000 years, our descendants, our children's children, will be living happily and in harmony with a healthy Earth. And I think that can be some really good news.
天然聚合物,我认为这是最最重要的, 因为这些聚合物已经在过去的10亿年里, 在我们的生态系统中经历过考验, 从蘑菇到甲壳类的任何生物。 它们不会堵塞地球的循环系统,它们一直都很适用。 与此同时,今天, 我们能很肯定的说过去的包装 会持续10000年之久, 我想保证的是 在10000年里, 我们的后代,我们的孩子的孩子 会快乐和谐地生活在 一个健康地地球上。 而且我觉得这会是非常好的消息。
Thank you.
谢谢
(Applause)
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