And hubs are packaged in plastic. A for an e, you competition. A curriculum for graduate students took on a challenge. Could this evening be packaged in something non plastic and edible, maybe excels. 2 d as and i know not actually part of the eggs that we can see, but thats still an important resource for us. Because to us they also contain Interesting Properties that could help us create better Food Packaging people. Thats of the items often have for him come with a hard boiled soft roll. Fix it delivered in their own ideal packaging that tend to hold it for you, jim, and so low each 20000000000. 00 of them, so team edgy decided to focus its research on itself. From the university of horn high and they still got its one of the best in germany for food science with a life that makes all kinds of experiments possible. The team spent 9 months conducting intensive research into edible packaging. In that time they perfected the formula. Its made of fine. The ground excels. He didnt sanitize to be. I genic a vegetable protein on a binding agent. The exact composition remains a secret of water mix well then poured into a tray. Drawing that house in the oven creates a thin film that behaves like a plastic bag. I know the price to go property of the film is that it reacts to heat but can be fused together of with the contents of an audit. This means that can be sealed into separate portions. Its a very simple product, a cup of pasta on a seasoning sachet at home voltage on the substrate to solve in a split 2nd step of it all together. And thats it. An environmentally friendly snack without Plastic Waste winning edgy the 1st prize and the competition. The site and the packaging succeed in retail food markets. I would say the chances are 5050 right now. The situation is quite favorable because companies are looking for new solutions. And this is an interesting solution into the front of those on the students, the already hoping to get a commercial partner with a view to funding that really stovetop to sign until the following day. It was great to eat. My 1st bought needles with all the packaging texts, and evidently sustainable noodles sleep, create, sustain satisfaction. The we use it for food, water bottles, detergent, plastic is everywhere. But what is plastic exactly . What is it made up and why does it stay in the environment for so long . Its a material thats been part of our lives since we were born. Cheap stereo and practical plastic has assumed various rules over the decades. As toys, accessory use, utility product and a dream for innovative designers. Plastics consist of large molecules called polymers, which are generally manufactured from mineral oil. The oil is broken down into its constituent components, which are then recombined to create synthetic polymer change. The new material has very special qualities which like robust and can be molded into practically any stream you want. But plastics not as easy to dispose of this instead of polymers are almost impossible to break down and degrees extremely slow. The some need 500 to a 1000 years to fully decompose plastics of great from an acid production. But not all of them are made for an oil. The some polymers are naturally occurring and are used to make bio plastic, cohen, sugarcane and cellulose can be chemically converted into the killer chains with Comparable Properties to boil derived plastics. They degrade easier and even if it takes them time to do so, theres obviously a need for non fossil based solutions. 90 percent of plastics are manufactured from oil. The amount recycles core qualifying years, bio plastic is not even 10 percent so were just the plastic that doesnt get recycled and dump. A lot of it enters our rivers and from there its carried out to see our oceans are drowning and plastic. A team of scientists as analyzing what happens to the plastic left and the water these plastic tanks have been floating around in this water for almost 2 years now and theyll be there for at least another 8. 1 of the tanks is filled with fresh water. The other with c o 10, you can see its encoded with quite a layer of salt to see water, certainly having an effect because its part of a long term study being conducted at the university in east and gemini, and bodies of glee in this experiment. And were looking to see how plastic still composed in water, that in particular because we want to know whether they can be recycled after by young and water for years. Its like a fish. The researches from that defects university of applied sciences are especially interested in what long term would you exposure does to normal every day . Plastic waste. How does it change its structure . How the surfaces affect to the demonic is generally we concerned with what the material does to the eco system, the water. But were looking at what the water does to long plastic. Can we really get it out of the water and use it again . Because the, the office advocates the plastic is being exposed to natural influences and as many different environments as possible. These tanks have been floating and the voltage, 18 months does not. What does it play as a bond with pocono of your home, but we also have 5 homes that them and that see because you cant recreate that inner tax and wasnt enough to me the, the team of scientists hoping for lots of new insights, ones that will help us to better find the growing title, ways of plastic in our patients. New studies and warning of an exponential rise in the amount of trash you know, sees by 2050. That could be more plastic than fish in the sea. Swimming pool. Yeah. Every year, a total of about 300000000. 00 metric tons of plastic is produced. We can just see me at least 10000000 tons end up in our ocean. So thats the United Nation is estimate. And you could say a truck load of plastic is dumped into the sea every single minute you have like a kicked plastic can take hundreds of years to break down. Its practically invincible. In water, it decomposes slowly into micro plastic and then often its not. It sinks down into the depths, the c mon shits, the fits, estimated that already 80 percent of plastic is already lying. Im a seabag and can no longer being removed. It slipped thought they would get eaten by worms and all kinds of organisms organism. And when to create, in short said lions back in our plates by the food chain via the fish, we dont can, i can and cannot become many green organizations trying to break this vicious circle. The Ocean Cleanup is probably the best known project. It uses floating structures to capture marine liter. The one is one ocean is consuming a similar goal. Using folks still gather up the plastic, salted, and recycle it. Then that is the of a wave project which involves trying to remove liquid from rivers before it can even get to the si se puede depending of heat and fire. On the one hand, these projects raise awareness of the issue. Warning us about our use of plastic him quinn stuff and fuck came to us on the other. They are a drop in the ocean shine by to the december coming in queen stores. We are currently dumping into the seas can be removed by any project or with any technology in the world and how school with it and kind of michel steiger agrees, but hes determined to do something to cook the plastic, as well as the big projects Service Small businesses like his attempting to recycle marine the to he and his team produce rucksacks made completely of plastic from the Ocean Pacific that they were already a lot of Great Projects out there thinking the more the better. And we think that all these projects combined are also having an effect on the environment. It was in the philippines, some 100. 00 people gather plastic from the waters off, one of the articles it goes on and the Pacific Ocean throws up a lot of trash on the beach is here. Most of the plastic is only being in the water for a few weeks or months. The creek and recycled about 20 percent of the other 80 percent is made up of plastic coated wrapping paper. You can recycle back to anywhere in the world, including germany. They are incinerating, this is the only currently existing way of getting rid of these materials. Only maureen, that if im close to the beach, its used to make his rock socks us. Its on clear how suitable plastic is this been out at sea for years. In the future assigned could shed new lights on that fucking mach to book the experiments currently being carried out until 5 much time as much as the so im, i know for the material is so contaminated for cleaning and preparing it to get to a point that it could be turned into something new. Its so much effort to 1000 the chances of sight in this trash of the songs. On the middle of this research on marie mitchell, they say its important to them. One thing in mind now is the stuff missing message, the message can be no problem. We can recycle it. We comp thats, thats done. It shouldnt end up the in the 1st place, seen on this stuff done this month. And we will need to keep on researching over the next few years to find out what we can do with the plastic. If it does end up that the, the ideal solution for the worlds waste problem would be a plastic eating pac man. Need a huge appetite, be able to eat fast, and i just plastics like p t thats used for water bottles. Amazingly, scientists have discovered an enzyme that can do just that. Researchers in the city of leipzig have found an enzyme that breaks down plastic very fast. But to work it has to be heated between 60 and 70 degrees celsius. Christiane and son and dick is Team Building is biotechnology. Holds the key to our plastic problem. Yes. All. And we look at how nature does things and then copy it. And now the tree uses enzymes to breakdown polymers. So thats what were doing. All the team heads down to one of live 6 main cemeteries. This is where they found their enzyme on a compost heap. Lets see what we find to the researches identified an enzyme that decomposes leaves and it can also break down p t plastic. So a lot thats not to worry. We always have a wax light coating formed by an outer layer of eugene, which is a polyester, is thats a polymer thats built up by a ester bonds. Just like would be t o by few buick and stuff. Its the same for many bio plastics to the and the enzymes are so non specific that they can recognise and break down a broader spectrum of polyesters and inductance. And thats the advantage were lucky to have a biological answer if you into our plastic problem. Opens up plastic of the infinitive. Christiane design and decor showed us how fast the enzyme works. As long as its capped at 60 to 70 degrees celsius. The p t packaging dissolves completely in one day. All that remains is the basic Building Blocks. The enzyme was a lucky fine for the researchers. We have all that paid show 7, see which stands for polyester, hydrolyzed slide 600. 00 on the 7th candidate out of the 9 that we found out that was the best performing enzyme. And this is what it looks like. They produced a 3 d printed model to show how the reaction works. I mean, it seems the enzyme and heres the key chain with the esther bond, the links that will be broken. No i, this is what it means. Im comes like a pac man, and it goes off the individual ester bonds, leaving the basic Building Blocks tara folic acid and ethylene glycol. And from them we can make new plastics. I was coming on the north bluff, christy on an deck his team have now moved on to the next step. They want to modify the enzymes, dna so that it eats plastic even faster. To do this, theyre experimenting with many different modifications. They analyze each variant individually selecting the most efficient ones for further study. Theyre also turning to modern technology and Artificial Intelligence to help bio technologist ronnie frank is assisting them. So give on, its also no one to scale up our technology. So we have our new prototype here that will allow us to analyze around 100. 00 ends. Im samples at once, and weve been studying multiple layers at the same time. Can i get the one stop . And again, that will generate the data, we need to feed our a. I to then train it to identify new, improved enzymes that can break down plastic. Theyre analyzing thousands of enzymes each day in search of a super enzyme. And they have a larger vision to yeah, well, any manufacture ultimately what to get the market to work more with polyester likes that are easy to break down with enzymes and damage that will allow us to develop really efficient circular economies in good enough for you. And we have no alternative because right now we can cope with the Plastic Waste of money. So were looking to the future and were having a vision of recycling, plastic waves, sustainable fluid is also not high just for me. So i think the most plastic is made from crude oil, which was produced long before we came along. Our norful keentonia from el salvador. Send us a question about that. How is crude oil made crude oil . Wouldnt it be possible without the smouldering animals and puffs clinton itself just food for Sea Creatures . The petroleum being extracted today, formed over millions of years, and tiny creatures just like these. As soon as clinton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. Since there is barely any oxygen at great to depth the plant and does not decay. Instead it mixes with different settlements, like clay and found on the sea, but these settlements flowed from rivers into the ocean. Together with you a gun at clinton, they formed decaying sludge, the souls for rock petroleum. Over the course of 10000. 00 to several 1000000 years supplementary lay is stuck on top of each other, becoming hundreds of meat as high. This process increases the pressure on the petroleum sole salt, a raises the temperature. When the temperature reaches 80 degrees celsius, the petroleum sol strong begins to transform alone chain hydrocarbons that make it up. But he can to show it to chains. This process is known as cracking the fine grains digested sludge transforms into viscous crude oil. What are the most complex organic compounds on our planet . To extreme pressure of force is the oil out of the rock. It my great stock boards and collects but need empower people. They use that salt mostly defined plate, creating an oil deposit today about 15000000000 liters of black gold are extracted from deposits every day. New crude oil is still forming all the time. As long as there is clinton, the substances needed to form petroleum, but it wouldnt be ready for millions of use. The petroleum has been hiring industry for the past 150 years and driving Climate Change to electricity is one alternative. But electric cars, for example, need rechargeable batteries, and theyre still full of precious raw materials. So scientists are looking into how to recycle them efficiently. The black box and inside chunks of old batteries, they might not look like it, but theyre very valuable. Inside are lots of rare metals, including the much sought after lithium. The company are correct and they failed. Germany has been recycling old batteries from across europe for more than 20 years. Engineer diagnose like a is a Battery Recycling . Probably in here, t things. Battery recycling has attempt to potential and not fix the market is used right now, but relatively few batteries are being returned because many countries still dont have the collection infrastructure. The contacts cause the awareness of how batteries are collected for recycling is not very pronounced here in germany. Either. This is within the best so some other countries have higher collection rates. A seated, but lots of batteries getting mixed in with electronic waste or theyre exported in such a way that were not able to trace their route so that so the overall return rates are pretty bad. Decent. In fact, less than half of all batteries get recycled. That causes big problems for recyclers, theres not enough demand to build the recycling machines needed to carry out the process. In this pilot plant, depleted lithium batteries are being heated to 550 degrees celsius design, not ones. I said we develop this treasure here ourselves and its a pilot plant, a larger one that will go into operation in a few weeks. Weve plants like this one dont exist anywhere on earth to get this means the batteries have only been on the market for 5 to 10 years. For the same demand for them went up quickly and now theyre being recycled to the recycling itself is still very young. And thats why pilot plans like this one are enormously important. If you want to recycle on a large scale in cost and last up to visit to large amounts of lithium ion batteries will be ready for recycling. Of these gold colored crumbs are Clay Minerals used to safely store lithium ion batteries, which are prone to catching on fire. Sorting batteries is still laborious. Manual work, their components are very different, but from the outside, theyre virtually in discernible. There is no description of which chemicals are inside, so each battery is a unique surprise. Right next door recyclers are working on a destroyed car battery. It might still have some residual charging it. Thats why special high voltage electricians are at work here. Engineer diagnose so like a says its worth the effort due to the value of the coveted contents. Been a lot of this, if we just focus on the metal lithium, its one of the metals thats most available on the planet, but its very finally distributed across the earths crust. Find a tie it in the costa. Here we get the material for free. Inside the lithium batteries, concentration of 234, or 5 percent 5 if you would since when testing. So these are of course and easily accessible source of a home, often not to why instructed very laboriously from nature when i can get it free of charge. When recycling fly, it can be for lithium. Recycling may soon become big business, but at the moment its still in the pioneering phase 2 back to the increments of steps the use of the batteries have just come out of paralysis. Well, weve removed the plastic, send it to use. It was from the image of im not so yeah. Now were left with the material mix of metals like steel aluminum, copper, and black mass. Meaning we now have to separate those metals as fonts. Most of them to be, were working closely together with our w t. H often on there to see how id often susan argued t age often is one of the lead eating institutes in germany when it comes to recycling use batteries. Scientists like pose up on i develop recycling concepts for all types of use batteries, including this use, the ion battery. The coveted raw material is in the black dust between the thin copper foils. The 1st step is grinding it all into a fine powder. Thoughts is the uh, the black part wouldnt be active mass, also known as black mask, contains all the valuable materials that you make up a battery from lithium to nick, goats and cobalt to gratified it. All of which are extremely rare, but critical according to europe and standard. So thinking thats why its very, very important that we can extract the individual elements out of the black mass of them into is currently 16, ph. D, p. Cs are being written the simultaneously on lithium recycling, lead me on to reach, had specialized and what is known as hydro metallurgy. In this process, the black masses stirred into water, the lithium dissolves into the water, but the other metals do not, which makes them easy to filter out. Lilian trees transforms the black broth into a clear solution. Around to 90 percent of the lithium contained in the black mask gets recovered this way. Its Laboratory Work on the verge of becoming an industrial process. Youre going to see them in the water here. Its aiyona and then we can recover it from the solution using environmentally friendly process is like membrane technology, your i and exchange is when we do that. So lets see, and we get looks like this. When you see a white powder, which is lithium carbonate, a products that can be sold in this form. It can then be used in the production of new batteries. Scientists and industry are predicting that that will be the case and the coming years, extracting elements like graphite, copper, iron, nickel, and cobalt from old batteries is way past the laboratory phase. Now the focus is on extracting lithium industrial, the, the white gold of the green energy transition. Blood is red. Why do you have a science question . Send it to us as a video, text or voice message. If we answer it on the show, well send you a little surprises the thank you. So come on just as the pencil for this weeks edition of tomorrow today. Joining us again next week for more science stories. Until then state curious by the, the the in good shape. When im preventative, health care to huntington checkouts lifestyle change. Why do men take stops, pull care of themselves . Easy, fix, change in good shape. In 30 minutes on d, w. Its time for new ideas. Its time to ask to save big giant, big, clean air or the habitat of many species are important climate protectors. But these forest giants are under threats around the world. Ready its time to recognize that there are just in 75 minutes on d, w. The project, cassandra re determined through our investigation that has below was operating like a global drug car. Not something you normally see terrace organizations. The objective to financially drain has gone up and bring them down suddenly we havent lost here to attack a terrace organization. Finance. The idea is the filed the money, the team agents from the American Drug enforcement agency. I was scared. I mean, as well as another whole life, they wanted to go after their money. I wanted to take down their findings. They had from lice themselves. We needed to reveal that so world and to their own people invited the Us Government suddenly shut down project cassandra in 2016. So the opportunity was was 1st our 3 pa documentary series on last day has paula starts may, 4th on d, w. The a business dw news live from val in a group of swiss pensioners wins of Key Court Ruling against the wrong gulf. Buick being called schumann writes of polls, the complaint that governments inaction on Climate Change, quotes and adverts about the quote throws out claims from people in portugal and from also coming up german government. Lawyers tell that you installed cost components support for israel does not preach international load. They argue a claim by nicaragua. The berlin is helping israel commit genocide and gaza is grossly biased. As applied to a for a hinge of flu