Transcripts For ALJAZ TechKnow The Problem With Plastic 202

ALJAZ TechKnow The Problem With Plastic July 12, 2024

Into the streets to end the unrest a power vacuum following sundays parliamentary election is still continuing but there are hopes in a move by 2 leading opposition leaders to join forces charles traffic is in bishkek weve now had a statement come through that is being made by the by speaker of Parliament Saying that parliament has to vote on the state of emergency in order for it to be legal we understand that the motions the session of parliament will be held tomorrow to do exactly that certainly the opposition are putting pressure on the government to follow the kind of legal parameters that this country is proud of setting up in recent years but as i say in the last few days the chaos that weve seen on the streets seems to suggest that all those legal parameters seem to be falling apart. Well talks are underway in a bid to end the conflict between army near in azerbaijan but the as area leader is ruled out making any concessions but the escalation meeting is the 1st diplomatic contact between the neighbors since fighting broke out nearly 2 weeks ago the dispute centers on the. Region an ethnic amini an area that belongs to azerbaijan the head of the World Food Program has said no one should go hungry in the world today after the Organization Won the Nobel Peace Prize the Award Committee said the u. N. Body was a driving force in stopping the use of hunger as a weapon of war around 97000000. 00 people a year receive food aid from the program and several European Countries are struggling to suppress a 2nd wave of covert 19 cases francis in a jump of more than 20000 infections for the 1st time while neighboring italy is reporting a caseload not seen since the peak of the outbreak in march. Well those are the main stories this hour techno is coming up next but ill have more news for you in about 5 minutes time on c. N. N. This is techno a show about innovations that can change lives the science of fighting wildfires were going to explore the intersection of hardware in humanity and were doing your unique way. This is a show about science no not nice scientists tonight true. Its everywhere but our. Landfills overflowing if those smells so down but some of our trash. Can be recycled why isnt it being done lol now techno investigates the problem with plastic they toiled on the streets or toyed in the ocean we have the technology of 1000000 so why dont we use it so you dont know what happens to the plastic with you because that doctor should be so morrow it is a mechanical engineer dr crystal dilworth is a neuroscientist sir can i apply that claim other than live in one field taurus and an entomologist thats on t. V. And they are now lets do some science. Hey guys welcome to techno im phil taurus today were going to talk and trash and a ton of it and joining me with this trash talk dr crystal door and dr shu some are now 1st up the water ball now by some estimates here in the u. S. We use 50000000000 of these every year and missed number one is that this is going to be. Recycle correct actually its probably not going to be recycled a lot of Water Bottles that we think are headed for recycling facility and up in landfills and theres landfills that has a really negative impacts on the surrounding communities is actually quite shocking for the material that is designed to be used over and over again actually only gets used once and what weve done is take a water bottle just like this one of its journey after its been lubin to see exactly what. The world is addicted to plastic. It was sold to us as the product of the future plastic. This educational video from the 1940 s. Celebrates the convenience of plastic hero not. Having our own. Back then it was a symbol of the modern times to come 6 decades later the reality is. The earth is choking on it. According to the United States Environmental Protection agency only 9 percent of plastic is making its way into the recycling stream thats a people problem as they try it on the streets or troi it in the ocean or unfortunately thats a habit that has to be stopped its our addiction to single use plastic for fast food storage and packaging convenience thats at the root of the problem were guilty. And we should just admit it dr steven not is a professor of Materials Science at u. S. C. He studies the physics and chemistry of materials like plastic seems to have been a material that was developed for convenience but were now you know almost 100 years later paying the price if you look at the population as a whole or probably a majority have not yet realized the magnitude of the problem. And nothing symbolizes the problem like the omnipresent plastic water bottle americans consume water from about 50000000000 bottles a year. Made from the school to p. T. Polyethylene terrified late to monomers Ethylene Glycol and purify tariff acid combine to create a polymer resulting in a lightweight strong material why then does it last all my stuff to infinity in the landfill these essentially are the same type of bonds that hold together diamond if youre conscientious enough to throw a water bottle into a blue recycle bin like we do here at techno and you probably think that water bottle is going to be turned into another water bottle but that may not necessarily be the case techno wants to find out what happens next so we followed the water bottle. This is the massive 20 facility near los angeles california. Located near a notch metropolis it can take a lot of trash. If you take a football field from post to post 10 feet high. Fill it up with trash about a 3rd of that water that comes over here every day. 3000. 00 tons a day this facility of is a glimpse into the wilds of single stream recycling because all of the recycled material it receives comes from a Single Source been like this convenient because all recyclables end up in one basket but theres a price you cant unscramble an egg Susan Collins is a manufacturing engineer who heads up a nonprofit recycling institute once materials get mixed together too much like glass shards ending up in paper or plastic bottles ending up in the paper streamer aluminum cans ending up in the plastic stream all of that is detrimental to recycling sorting sea. To be a massive component there are multiple compositions of plastic when these different plastics are blended together then the recycling become difficult to impossible thats exactly whats happening at the plenty of pounds that means of those who wont be turned back into another bottle but instead it will go on another journey into the secondary plastic market one of the myths is that once you place the water possible in a blue recycle bin it can actually be made back into water bottle again the technology is that why isnt it being done more you know i cant really speak to the industry what happens after you know the water bottle leaves our facility we just make sure that the containers that come in here are recovered as much as possible so you dont know what happens to the plastic that you recover once youve given it to the breakup both no but from what we understand that there is a local market for that but for the most part lot of the material is shipped overseas mostly to be Asian Pacific in 2014 the 2nd cheap plastic market sent about hoffas of californias plastic trash to china because its a mix of all the different types of plastics it can only be melted down repurposed a process known as down cycling or it could be t. Shirts it could be teddy bear stuffing it could be carpets. Because down cycle products and. They just take a longer trip before they eventually end up in a landfill and theres another inherent problem with single stream recycling half of the country has access to recycling and the other half might have a drop off program that might be nearby or it might be 10 or 20 miles away in the u. S. Were able to lose about 5 to 7 percent Recycled Content m. P. T. Beverage bottles in the United States the number in germany is 25 to 35 percent in the. Us bottle bills are rare california is only one of 6 states that places a redemption value on noncarbonated p. T. T. Bottles why do we have a national possibile because it seems to be so successful sure its purely for political reasons but one bottles of purchased in california consumers pay anywhere from a nickel to a dime deposit on them at checkout. We see about a 1000000 and a half customers a Canadian Based Company replanted with 700 locations in the u. S. Offers a plastic buyback program. There are sorts of middleman in the plastics trade they redeem bottles for deposit. The result is dramatic the recycling rating california is typically 3 times higher than that of the rest of the nation here at this replant sourcing facility they process over 2000000 bottles a day packaging up the best quality p. T. T. These mountains of plastic oppressed cracked and then by among the by is this p. T. Is carbonite a 220000. 00 square foot plant but they transform use plastic into material from the bottles. As a mechanical engineer. I feel like a kid in a candy store that is very hot the morning i know you have. Poor hair or broken in the past ticks its separated from any debris and then washed in hot water in our 2nd stage that washes the very clearly separates their calves and labels from the p. C. Bottles is then separated into clear petey greene. The clear and colored p. T. Is ground into flakes and washed again heated then melted and then becomes pellets. The ones who want a bottle to bottle recycling the plastic from one bottle is used to make it nothing and often not until they even recycle the labels and casts. Nestle waters in pepsis they could use among the companies heavily invested in one to one. So if we get the recycled retiring up in the us you know its very easy. For us to have a 100 percent recycled material for use if you keep something in a closed loop he replacing version resources over and over and over again catches up with you in a pretty awesome way and is responsible for avoiding a whole bunch of environmental consequences. Throw away living. A promise of liberation. Americans are free at last this feature and life magazine 1955 signaled the beginning of a throwaway society. If people only knew the problem that they were creating when they extolled the virtues of throwaway living this is a monster in the creating right here. Right in the center do you know about that. They want to expand those experiences not alders oh constantly for years. These neighbors are talking trash as a group of milpitas california residents go door to door to buy the expansion of the newbie island landfill located in the neighboring city of san jose. They hold weekly meetings at stakes and they host town halls there is a significant odor that comes from the movie island facility sometime you know when i just go out and take a walk i just feel dizzy and i feel like story only because hes like a huge bathroom you know this is so smells so bad. Milpitas california a sleepy Bedroom Community is the gateway to Silicon Valley a bustling tech town of 70000. 00 many citizens here say the garbage is taking over. And ruining their quality of life. Im a Real Estate Broker and years ago very few people would ask about otar now 100 percent of the people that are buyers within the community are asking about the odor that is going to affect Property Values newbie Island Resource Recovery park here in san jose is a landfill operated by Republic Services the nations 2nd largest Waste Management company its been taking trash since 1030 and was scheduled to close in 2025. Instead today the city of san jose is not only planning to keep it open until 2041 they want to grow it from 150 feet above sea level to 245 feet increasing its capacity more than 15000000 cubic yards. We fell and that is that is the expression oh well i want to move out of this interview americans create about 250000000 tons of trash a year. In 1088 there were about 8000 landfills in america 2 decades later that number dropped to below 2000 spurred on by environmental and Health Concerns heavily Populated Areas started closing landfills and shipping trash to more remote regions. San francisco hauls its trash about 50 miles across the bay to york city trash is trucked out of state to new jersey pennsylvania even as far away as ohio virginia and South Carolina and until recently america was doing a brisk business selling its crap to china but now even china is leery times of changed awareness of the public is much greater about Health Issues now than it was when newby began newbie is one of the largest active landfills on the shores of San Francisco bay i think its more like this in america the city of milpitas filed a lawsuit against san jose over environmental impacts caused by the landfill. The bay area air Quality Management district which has received 2000 newbie landfill order complaints has issued new b. Island 5 public nuisance violations related to odor issues according to a district spokesman theyre still negotiating the fines. Trash is a big business and an unfortunate smelly business too don lets field is the Northern California environmental manager for Public Services the community itself seems to have some concerns about this site and the odor problem that theyre experiencing unfortunately weve been a little slow to address those concerns and wed like to apologize to the community for that here at the landfill weve had order mitigation plan that weve been working on for years we get a lot of fresh refuse that comes in every day and we have order misting stations set up in strategic locations throughout the landfill that can mitigate some of the fresh orders. In addition republik says it invested heavily in the state of the art recycling facility to help divert landfill list. All of the mature that we accept over a 1000 tons a day in the bay area in california comes into this facility and we diverted from the landfill so weve processed the material and removed everything thats recyclable. 200000 tons a year are being diverted from the landfill are all 4400 tons of paper and 3 tons of plastic 90 tons of the last 30 tons of metal every day despite diverting nearly 50 percent of their annual beats the landfill is still growing and that causes some to look toward another possible solution. In sweden a country that post 33. 00 incinerators trash is burned to create fuel and whats known as waste to energy about half of their waste is recycled and the rest is parent less than one percent goes to landfill sweden is known as a world leader in waste to energy incinerators like this one which utilizes modern technology to capture and control emissions San Francisco authorities tell us they have no plans to build an incinerator in the bay area instead they say they plan to increase composting and to continue to ban what they call bad designs. What is your hope for San Francisco what were trying to do is really break that addiction to pasta quater San Francisco is the 1st city in the country to ban the single use water bottle from City Property in the case of our ban on single use plastic Water Bottles the goal here is to establish a marker laid down in San Francisco to work with other cities to do the same in the meantime however we are still a consumer and dump nation republics landfill manager Augustine Marino says he wants to residents to know just one thing. Ringback as the one that works in trash for a living and you hear the concerns of the citizens in the us but you have to say to them this is not a dog you know you hear that were very often and for us you know that we work here every day its not fair to call this a dog this is a modern sonny feels we take pride in what we do here these residents say they just wish they were doing it somewhere else. So this is not a day im just waiting for my vehicle im fighting for them to be as big as nobody is big it is going to be the. Mounds of trash piled high as the eye can see at this landfill just outside San Francisco but inside this mask scientists see potential some of this waste is organic about 40 percent of Landfill Waste nationwide is from food thats waste that doesnt have to be there innovators are tackling that waste a program that takes food from restaurants and farms in the area turns that waste into Energy Refining the way its what we use to call we right now mark 90 percent of their Waste Recycling composting gabrielle is on a small cafe in San Franciscos Mission District she composts everything im a strong believer that im doing what i can and that is that i can what shes doing here on a small scale is part of a much bigger picture. If you look at what shes doing here in terms of diverting waste away from landfills and creating a recycling type of circuit here with everything that happens at elles and thats what we have to look to inspired by western europe San Francisco opera owners like the financial incentives to compost. A lot of these Small Businesses are actually doing it for economic reasons it lowers their bill always for recycling for their garbage but overall money is a way to motivate people but its not the only motivator when the food waste is in the landfill it decomposes and it gene

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