I'm a garbage man. And you might find it interesting that I became a garbage man, because I absolutely hate waste. I hope, within the next 10 minutes, to change the way you think about a lot of the stuff in your life. And I'd like to start at the very beginning. Think back when you were just a kid. How did look at the stuff in your life? Perhaps it was like these toddler rules: It's my stuff if I saw it first. The entire pile is my stuff if I'm building something. The more stuff that's mine, the better. And of course, it's your stuff if it's broken.
Sem smetar. In mogoče se vam bo zdelo zanimivo, da sem to postal, ker absolutno sovražim odpadke. Upam, da bom v naslednjih desetih minutah spremenil vaš pogled na veliko stvari v vašem življenju. In rad bi začel na začetku. Pomislite nazaj na svoje otroštvo. Kako ste gledali na stvari, ki so vas obkrožale? Mogoče po teh pravilih, ki veljajo med malčki: Stvar je moja, če sem jo prvi videl. Cel kup je moj, če nekaj sestavljam. Več stvari ko je mojih, boljše je. In seveda, tvoje je, če je zlomljeno.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Well after spending about 20 years in the recycling industry, it's become pretty clear to me that we don't necessarily leave these toddler rules behind as we develop into adults. And let me tell you why I have that perspective. Because each and every day at our recycling plants around the world we handle about one million pounds of people's discarded stuff. Now a million pounds a day sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's a tiny drop of the durable goods that are disposed each and every year around the world -- well less than one percent. In fact, the United Nations estimates that there's about 85 billion pounds a year of electronics waste that gets discarded around the world each and every year -- and that's one of the most rapidly growing parts of our waste stream. And if you throw in other durable goods like automobiles and so forth, that number well more than doubles. And of course, the more developed the country, the bigger these mountains.
Po dvajsetih letih v reciklažni industriji mi je postalo jasno, da teh otroških pravil ne opustimo vedno, niti ko odrastemo. In naj vam povem, zakaj tako mislim. Ker čisto vsak dan v naših obratih za reciklažo po vsem svetu predelamo okoli 500.000 kilogramov stvari, ki so jih ljudje odvrgli. 500.000 kg na dan se sliši veliko, a gre za kapljico v morje trajnih artiklov, ki jih vsako leto odvržemo po vsem svetu -- še manj kot en odstotek. Združeni narodi ocenjujejo, da na leto nastane okoli 42 milijard kilogramov odpadne elektronike, ki jo odvržejo ljudje po svetu -- kar je eden najhitreje rastočih delov našega sistema odpadkov. In če dodate še drugo trajno blago, kot so avtomobili in podobno, se ta številka več kot podvoji. In seveda, bolj razvita ko je država, višje so te gore stvari.
Now when you see these mountains, most people think of garbage. We see above-ground mines. And the reason we see mines is because there's a lot of valuable raw materials that went into making all of this stuff in the first place. And it's becoming increasingly important that we figure out how to extract these raw materials from these extremely complicated waste streams. Because as we've heard all week at TED, the world's getting to be a smaller place with more people in it who want more and more stuff. And of course, they want the toys and the tools that many of us take for granted.
In ko vidite te gore, vas večina pomisli na smeti. Mi vidimo rudnike na površju zemlje. In to zato, ker je v njih veliko vrednih surovin, ki so jih porabili za izdelavo vseh teh stvari. In vse pomembneje postaja, da ugotovimo, kako surovine spet pridobiti iz teh izjemno zapletenih sistemov odpadkov. Kajti kot smo ves teden poslušali na TED-u, svet postaja vse manjši, na njem pa je vse več ljudi, ki hočejo vedno več stvari. In seveda, hočejo igrače in orodja, ki so bila za mnoge od nas nekaj samoumevnega.
And what goes into making those toys and tools that we use every single day? It's mostly many types of plastics and many types of metals. And the metals, we typically get from ore that we mine in ever widening mines and ever deepening mines around the world. And the plastics, we get from oil, which we go to more remote locations and drill ever deeper wells to extract. And these practices have significant economic and environmental implications that we're already starting to see today.
In iz česa nastanejo igrače in orodja, ki jih vsakodnevno uporabljamo? Gre predvsem za različne vrste plastike in kovin. Kovine ponavadi dobimo iz rude, pridobljene iz vedno večjih in vedno globljih rudnikov po svetu. Plastiko prdobivamo iz nafte, ki se nahaja na vedno bolj oddaljenih lokacijah in v vedno globljih vrtinah. Vse to ima pomemben ekonomski in ekološki vpliv, ki je danes že dokaj viden.
The good news is we are starting to recover materials from our end-of-life stuff and starting to recycle our end-of-life stuff, particularly in regions of the world like here in Europe that have recycling policies in place that require that this stuff be recycled in a responsible manner. Most of what's extracted from our end-of-life stuff, if it makes it to a recycler, are the metals. To put that in perspective -- and I'm using steel as a proxy here for metals, because it's the most common metal -- if your stuff makes it to a recycler, probably over 90 percent of the metals are going to be recovered and reused for another purpose. Plastics are a whole other story: well less than 10 percent are recovered. In fact, it's more like five percent. Most of it's incinerated or landfilled.
Dobra novica je, da začenjamo pridobivati materiale iz predmetov, ki niso več uporabni, in pričenjamo reciklirati neuporabne stvari, posebej v regijah, kakršna je Evropa, kjer obstajajo politike na področju reciklaže, ki predpisujejo, da je stvari treba reciklirati na odgovoren način. Večina recikliranega materiala iz neuporabnih stvari, če te sploh pridejo v reciklažo, so kovine. Naj ponazorim -- vzemimo jeklo kot predstavnika kovin, saj gre za najbolj uporabljano kovino -- če vaš predmet pride v reciklažo, bomo verjetno preko 90 odstotkov kovin pridobili nazaj in uporabili v nov namen. Pri plastiki je drugače: povrne se veliko manj kot 10 odstotkov. Gre bolj za kakih pet odstotkov. Večina je zgori ali se jo zakoplje.
Now most people think that's because plastics are a throw-away material, have very little value. But actually, plastics are several times more valuable than steel. And there's more plastics produced and consumed around the world on a volume basis every year than steel. So why is such a plentiful and valuable material not recovered at anywhere near the rate of the less valuable material? Well it's predominantly because metals are very easy to recycle from other materials and from one another. They have very different densities. They have different electrical and magnetic properties. And they even have different colors. So it's very easy for either humans or machines to separate these metals from one another and from other materials. Plastics have overlapping densities over a very narrow range. They have either identical or very similar electrical and magnetic properties. And any plastic can be any color, as you probably well know. So the traditional ways of separating materials just simply don't work for plastics.
Večina ljudi misli, da je to zato, ker je plastika odpadni material, ki nima vrednosti. A v resnici je plastika vredna nekajkrat toliko kot jeklo. In po svetu se glede na prostornino vsako leto proizvede več plastike kot jekla. Zakaj torej ta razširjen in vreden material ni recikliran niti približno v taki meri kot manjvredni materiali? Predvsem zato, ker je kovine zelo enostavno ločiti od drugih materialov in eno od druge. Imajo zelo različno gostoto. Imajo različne električne in magnetne lastnosti. Celo različnih barv so. Tako jih človek ali stroj enostavno loči eno od druge in od drugih materialov. Različne vrste plastike imajo podobno gostoto v zelo ozkem razponu. Imajo enake ali zelo podobne električne in magnetne lastnosti. In plastika je lahko kakršnekoli barve, kot verjetno dobro veste. Tako tradicionalni načini ločevanja materialov pri plastiki enostavno ne delujejo.
Another consequence of metals being so easy to recycle by humans is that a lot of our stuff from the developed world -- and sadly to say, particularly from the United States, where we don't have any recycling policies in place like here in Europe -- finds its way to developing countries for low-cost recycling. People, for as little as a dollar a day, pick through our stuff. They extract what they can, which is mostly the metals -- circuit boards and so forth -- and they leave behind mostly what they can't recover, which is, again, mostly the plastics. Or they burn the plastics to get to the metals in burn houses like you see here. And they extract the metals by hand. Now while this may be the low-economic-cost solution, this is certainly not the low-environmental or human health-and-safety solution. I call this environmental arbitrage. And it's not fair, it's not safe and it's not sustainable.
Še ena posledica tega, da človek brez težav reciklira kovine, je, da veliko blaga iz razvitega sveta -- in na žalost, predvsem iz ZDA, kjer ne obstajajo predpisi o reciklaži, za razliko od Evrope -- gre v države v razvoju v poceni reciklažo. Ljudje tudi za le dolar na dan brskajo skozi artikle. Ločijo, kar lahko, torej predvsem kovine -- vezja in tako naprej -- tisto, česar ne morejo ločiti, pa pustijo, pri čemer gre predvsem za plastiko. Ali pa plastiko sežgejo, da bi prišli do kovin, kar se dogaja v takih sežigalnicah. In kovine ločujejo ročno. To je morda ekonomsko gledano poceni rešitev, nikakor pa ni poceni z vidika okolja ali zdravja in varnosti ljudi. Temu pravim okoljska arbitraža. Ni poštena, ni varna in ni trajnostna.
Now because the plastics are so plentiful -- and by the way, those other methods don't lead to the recovery of plastics, obviously -- but people do try to recover the plastics. This is just one example. This is a photo I took standing on the rooftops of one of the largest slums in the world in Mumbai, India. They store the plastics on the roofs. They bring them below those roofs into small workshops like these, and people try very hard to separate the plastics, by color, by shape, by feel, by any technique they can. And sometimes they'll resort to what's known as the "burn and sniff" technique where they'll burn the plastic and smell the fumes to try to determine the type of plastic. None of these techniques result in any amount of recycling in any significant way. And by the way, please don't try this technique at home.
Ker obstaja tako veliko plastike -- in, seveda, druge metode ne omogočajo pridobitve plastike iz predmetov -- ampak zato, ker ljudje poskušajo priti do plastike. To je samo en primer. Tole sliko sem posnel s strehe enega največjih slumov na svetu, v Mumbaju, v Indiji. Plastiko hranijo na strehah. Potem jo nosijo v majhne delavnice, kakršna je tale, in ljudje se zelo trudijo ločiti plastiko po barvi, obliki, na otip, s kakršnokoli možno tehniko. In včasih se zatečejo k tehniki "zažgi in povohaj", kjer plastiko žgejo in vohajo hlape, da bi ugotovili, za kateri tip gre. Nobena od teh tehnik pomembno ne prispeva k reciklaži. In poleg tega te tehnike ne poskušajte doma.
So what are we to do about this space-age material, at least what we used to call a space-aged material, these plastics? Well I certainly believe that it's far too valuable and far too abundant to keep putting back in the ground or certainly send up in smoke. So about 20 years ago, I literally started in my garage tinkering around, trying to figure out how to separate these very similar materials from each other, and eventually enlisted a lot of my friends, in the mining world actually, and in the plastics world, and we started going around to mining laboratories around the world. Because after all, we're doing above-ground mining. And we eventually broke the code. This is the last frontier of recycling. It's the last major material to be recovered in any significant amount on the Earth. And we finally figured out how to do it. And in the process, we started recreating how the plastics industry makes plastics.
Kaj naj torej storimo s tem materialom vesoljske ere, tako smo plastiko pač nekoč imenovali? Verjamem, da je vsekakor preveč vredna in je je preveč, da bi jo zakopavali ali sežigali. Pred okoli dvajsetimi leti sem se v svoji garaži začel ubadati s tem, kako naj ločim te med seboj tako podobne materiale in sčasoma sem prepričal veliko prijateljev iz sveta rudarstva in plastike, da smo začeli obiskovati rudnike po svetu. Kajti, konec koncev, ukvarjamo se z rudarjenjem na površju. Končno nam je uspelo razvozlati šifro. To je zadnja meja reciklaže. Je zadnji pomembni material, ki ga je na Zemlji mogoče reciklirati v pomembnih količinah. In končno smo ugotovili, kako to narediti. V tem postopku smo začeli poustvarjati način, na katerega industrija plastiko proizvaja.
The traditional way to make plastics is with oil or petrochemicals. You breakdown the molecules, you recombine them in very specific ways, to make all the wonderful plastics that we enjoy each and every day. We said, there's got to be a more sustainable way to make plastics. And not just sustainable from an environmental standpoint, sustainable from an economic standpoint as well. Well a good place to start is with waste. It certainly doesn't cost as much as oil, and it's plentiful, as I hope that you've been able to see from the photographs. And because we're not breaking down the plastic into molecules and recombining them, we're using a mining approach to extract the materials.
Tradicionalni način proizvodnje plastike je iz nafte ali naftnih derivatov. Molekule razdrete in jih na novo kombinirate na poseben način, da nastanejo čudovite vrste plastike, v kateri uživamo vsak dan. Rekli smo si, da mora obstajati bolj trajen način izdelave plastike. In to ne samo okoljsko trajen, temveč trajen tudi iz ekonomskega vidika. Dobro je začeti pri smeteh. Vsekakor ne stanejo toliko kot nafta, veliko jih je, kar upam, da ste uspeli videti na fotografijah. In ker plastike ne razstavljamo na molekule, ki bi jih potem spet sestavljali, smo uporabili rudarski pristop k pridobivanju surovin.
We have significantly lower capital costs in our plant equipment. We have enormous energy savings. I don't know how many other projects on the planet right now can save 80 to 90 percent of the energy compared to making something the traditional way. And instead of plopping down several hundred million dollars to build a chemical plant that will only make one type of plastic for its entire life, our plants can make any type of plastic we feed them. And we make a drop-in replacement for that plastic that's made from petrochemicals. Our customers get to enjoy huge CO2 savings. They get to close the loop with their products. And they get to make more sustainable products.
Naši stroški kapitala so veliko nižji, ko gre za opremo obrata. Prihranimo ogromno energije. Ne vem, koliko drugih projektov na planetu lahko v tem trenutku prihrani 80 do 90 odstotkov energije v primerjavi s tradicionalnim pristopom. In namesto, da bi zapravili več sto milijonov dolarjev za izgradnjo kemične tovarne, ki bi vseskozi izdelovala en sam tip plastike, naši obrati izdelajo vse tipe plastike, glede na surovine, ki jih uporabimo. In tako izdelamo nadomestke, enakovredne plastiki iz naftnih derivatov. Naše stranke imajo korist od ogromnih prihrankov ogljikovega dioksida. S svojimi izdelki zaprejo krog. In dobijo bolj trajnostno naravnane izdelke.
In the short time period I have, I want to show you a little bit of a sense about how we do this. It starts with metal recyclers who shred our stuff into very small bits. They recover the metals and leave behind what's called shredder residue -- it's their waste -- a very complex mixture of materials, but predominantly plastics. We take out the things that aren't plastics, such as the metals they missed, carpeting, foam, rubber, wood, glass, paper, you name it. Even an occasional dead animal, unfortunately. And it goes in the first part of our process here, which is more like traditional recycling. We're sieving the material, we're using magnets, we're using air classification. It looks like the Willy Wonka factory at this point.
V kratkem času, ki mi je na voljo, vam želim približati naš pristop k temu delu. Začne se s kovinskimi reciklatorji, ki material zdrobijo na zelo majhne koščke. Ti tudi poberejo kovine in pustijo za seboj t.i. ostalino -- smeti -- kar je zelo zapletena mešanica materialov, a predvsem gre za plastiko. Izločimo stvari, ki niso plastika, denimo ostanke kovin, obloge, peno, gumo, les, steklo, papir, da ne naštevam naprej. Včasih na žalost celo kakšno poginulo žival. To gre v prvi del postopka, ki je bolj podoben tradicionalni reciklaži. Material presejemo, uporabljamo magnete, uporabljamo klasifikacijo z zrakom. Na tej točki izgleda kot Čarli in tovarna čokolade.
At the end of this process, we have a mixed plastic composite: many different types of plastics and many different grades of plastics. This goes into the more sophisticated part of our process, and the really hard work, multi-step separation process begins. We grind the plastic down to about the size of your small fingernail. We use a very highly automated process to sort those plastics, not only by type, but by grade. And out the end of that part of the process come little flakes of plastic: one type, one grade. We then use optical sorting to color sort this material. We blend it in 50,000-lb. blending silos. We push that material to extruders where we melt it, push it through small die holes, make spaghetti-like plastic strands. And we chop those strands into what are called pellets. And this becomes the currency of the plastics industry. This is the same material that you would get from oil. And today, we're producing it from your old stuff, and it's going right back into your new stuff.
Na koncu tega postopka pridemo do skupka mešane plastike: veliko različnih vrst plastike in veliko različnih stopen plastike. Temu sledi bolj prefinjen del postopka in resnično trdo delo, večstopenjski postopek separacije, se začne. Platiko zmeljemo na velikost nohta na mezincu. Uporabljamo visoko avtomatiziran postopek sortiranja plastike, ne samo glede na vrsto, pač pa tudi glede na stopnjo. Na koncu postopka pridobimo majhne plastične kosmiče: en tip, ena stopnja. Nato material sortiramo z optičnim pristopom. Zmešamo ga v 25.000 kilogramskem silosu. Material potisnemo v tlačilko, kjer ga stalimo, potisnemo skozi majhne luknje in napravimo špagetom podobne plastične niti. Nato jih razrežemo v tako imenovane pelete. In to postane valuta industrije plastike. To je enak material kot bi ga dobili iz nafte. In danes ga proizvajamo iz starih stvari in tako iz njega nastajajo nove.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)
So now, instead of your stuff ending up on a hillside in a developing country or literally going up in smoke, you can find your old stuff back on top of your desk in new products, in your office, or back at work in your home. And these are just a few examples of companies that are buying our plastic, replacing virgin plastic, to make their new products.
Torej, namesto da bi vaši predmeti končali na kakšnem pobočju kake države v razvoju ali pa dobesedno izginili v dimu, jih lahko najdete na svoji pisalni mizi v novih izdelkih v svoji pisarni ali pa pri vas doma. In to je samo nekaj primerov podjetij, ki kupujejo našo plastiko ter nadomeščajo novo plastiko pri izdelavi svojih artiklov.
So I hope I've changed the way you look at at least some of the stuff in your life. We took our clues from mother nature. Mother nature wastes very little, reuses practically everything. And I hope that you stop looking at yourself as a consumer -- that's a label I've always hated my entire life -- and think of yourself as just using resources in one form, until they can be transformed to another form for another use later in time. And finally, I hope you agree with me to change that last toddler rule just a little bit to: "If it's broken, it's my stuff."
Zato upam, da sem spremenil vaš pogled na vsaj nekaj stvari v vašem življenju. Navdih smo vzeli pri materi naravi. Mati narava vrže stran zelo malo, temveč praktično vse ponovno uporabi. In upam, da boste nase nehali gledati kot na potrošnika -- to oznako sem vse svoje življenje sovražil -- in razmišljali o sebi kot uporabniku virov v določeni obliki, dokler jih ne bo nekdo preoblikoval v drugo obliko, za kasnejšo uporabo. In končno upam, da se strinjate, da malce spremenimo zadnje otroško pravilo, v: "Če je zlomljeno, je moje."
Thank you for your time.
Hvala za vašo pozornost.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)