can I do an experiment with you? first I'm going to give you some information carbon dioxide, the famous gas that retains heat in our atmosphere has increased by 30% since the industrial revolution as a result of this, the global temperature has risen more than one degree we’re releasing the heat equivalent to 4 atomic bombs every second this is why the poles are melting within the next half century, in summer, there’ll be no ice in the Arctic and with the melting ice the sea level rises 1 mm more each year it has risen 17 cm in 100 years this means that, within the next 25 years, more or less, if the temperature rises by one degree more a large part of New York would be under water this is what would happen in Valencia this, in Barcelona and this in places like the Bay of Cadiz the impact is going to be so great that some people are already talking about climate refugees predictions by the United Nations talk of between 50 and 200 million people displaced due to climate change by the year 2050 13 million people have fled the war in Syria the prospect is frightening and there is a part of the process which it is already too late to avoid 7 million deaths a year are the result of atmospheric pollution this is 12% of all deaths even if we do meet the objectives of the recent climate change conference within 25 years, 5% of animal species will become extinct because of climate change and the most pessimistic scenarios predict one species in three this may not seem much but our grandchildren will think it strange when they see the save the polar bear stickers if there are none left great, thanks a lot how do you feel? damn, I forgot that you can't answer me here let me know in the comments, okay?
I'll tell you what I think maybe everything I've shown you has made you feel really bad or, perhaps, you already knew it and. . .
it hasn't really bothered you either way, I think it’ll hardly affect your daily life and the reason is called information overload you spend your whole life bombarded with catastrophic news to stop your head from exploding and so that you can carry on with your life your brain just activates a kind of 'adblocker' now, it's all just background noise in fact, if you felt bad just now, it's highly likely that you’re already over it so, does that mean we're done for? is the planet doomed? and we’ll never take any notice?
no! of course not if I thought that I wouldn't be making this video, would I? do you know what we need to get us interested in a story?
a good villain let's look for a villain let's choose. . .
capitalism I'm not far from the truth, am I? they are the companies that pollute that cut down the forests that extract the raw materials and fossil fuels in a way that's increasingly more aggressive but, wait, what about its most famous rival communism the largest attempt to implement it was in the Soviet Union which was involved in 2 of the worst ecological disasters in history: converting the 4th largest lake in the world into a desert of toxic salt and the Chernobyl accident that released 400 times more radioactivity than the Hiroshima bomb it was so bad that some studies say that the pollution was one of the causes of the end of the Soviet Union in this case neither is worse than the other because capitalism and communism share something the way in which we produce and use extra things we extract resources we refine them turning them into materials ready to be used they’re used to manufacture parts that’re assembled to give a final product that you use until its useful life is over and it becomes waste that causes pollution but not only at the end all the stages have produced wastes they all pollute and emit gases such as the carbon dioxide that is heating us up and they all consume energy that we extract from sources that also pollute in addition, some products also emit waste once the product's useful life is over the process once again activates the villain behind capitalism and communism is called the linear economy extract to throw away of the 60 billion tonnes of raw material that we extract a year half is not regenerated we've lost it forever it becomes part of the 2 billion tonnes of waste we produce each year if you ever thought that recycling is the solution it helps, but it’s not enough after so many years going on about it less than half of our waste gets recycled so, yes, we may be able to produce some things but we still have to extract a lot more materials to finish the job Hold on! we’re now coming to a point where if all of this has been done to manufacture products all we need to do is change our habits give up a more modern model in which there is neither manufacturing nor refining nor extraction if we live in a slightly simpler way we would extract even less if we had fewer children if we were fewer, we would produce less waste I'm sure you’ve heard similar proposals we could summarise them as a degrowth let's see what happens with degrowth mobile phones in the year 2000 there were 700 million in 2015 we passed 7 billion mobile phones are now as common in South Africa or Nigeria as in the USA 90% of adults have one vehicles we continually have more in the US there are 800 vehicles per thousand inhabitants that’s almost one vehicle by person China, could reach half as many in 15 years half doesn’t seem much but it has three times the population now imagine that nearly half of them have a vehicle as you already know where things come from you can imagine that to have more than 400 million vehicles we’ll have to emit a whole heap of C02 the gas that is warming us up and making the polar bears sad wait a minute, what’am I doing?
I said that I thought we could save the planet and all that we’re already half way through the video and. . .
what’ve I told you? 1. the planet is doomed 2.
the problem is how we manufacture things the linear economy 3. actually I shouldn't tell you about this because you have heard these messages a million times before 4. the figures show that all that we’re interested in is cars and mobile phones well I said I was going to tell you a story that you’d be interested in this video isn’t going to be about saving the polar bears it's about mobiles I'm going to tell you how to get your next mobile cheaper and the next one and the one after and in some way.
. . this’ll solve the polar bears' problems and for this we have to go back to how things’re manufactured remember?
extract refine the material manufacture components and assemble them into a product that we use and throw away in the process we fill the world full of crap now look at this! here you are the further we move away from you, the user the more expensive everything is these initial phases cost an arm and a leg and the more that’s extracted the more that’s refined the more parts are manufactured the more products assembled the more money the companies spend how do you think they recover this money? in the price of your mobile, obviously and you now know what it becomes it becomes waste now, imagine that we make our mobile easy to repair something that we don't see very often at the moment many people’d buy others just because the screen is broken but a mobile that is repaired, a mobile that you get back this is one less mobile that is manufactured the company saves as it extracts less refines less manufactures less you know, all this all the phones would cost less if they were easily repairable because fewer handsets would have to be created well, I promised you a cheaper mobile and here it is ah!
wait the company the company wants to earn money not only save it, ok how do they get us to buy a phone when the one we have still works innovation they invent a better camera a longer lasting battery if we’ve made the phone easy to repair why not innovate and make it updatable we take it to the factory we open it up we put in the latest generation chip and we're ready in this way it returns to us updated and look! as we have not produced a new phone the company is still saving a crazy amount of money you’d always have the latest model and as only a few parts have to be manufactured you’d be happy to buy an upgrade that costs less than a phone manufactured from scratch once again, there is much less extraction refining manufacturing do you see the trick I'm doing? all that horrible C02 that we emitted in each phase we are avoiding producing it every time we don't go through the process it works but.
. . we can fine tune this even more I was telling you about waste, half of which we fail to recycle there is a reason for this the waste products are not intended to be reused they are waste but, what if we designed the technology so that the waste was better?
in that case, when we can no longer repair or update our mobile phone, its parts are designed to be turned into materials that we can use to create new parts that can be turned into new phones the materials have been returned and once again we’ve not extracted them you remember what the current way of manufacturing things is called, don't you? it's called the linear economy exactly do you know how much C02 we’d avoid emitting if we manufactured in this way? repairable, upgradable products and with materials that can have several lives there are studies that suggest up to 70% less and energy?
shouldn't we also manufacture it in this way as well? couldn't we do something similar? we want this to have a name: circular economy the European Union is freaking out about this idea and it is beginning to put lots of money into initiatives relating to the circular economy they believe that if we adopt it we’ll reduce urban waste by 65% by 2030 the circular economy seeks to eliminate the word waste for example, the wastes that are still emitted such as the hot gas leaving this factory could be used for other things such as heating a nearby city or the parts that are outdated because we don’t think anyone can use them this chip is more than enough for a smart washing machine another industry that has been eliminating steps and another way that we all win well, our phones would be better and cheaper the companies would save billions of euros and we would be saving the planet so, what is the problem?
everything's sorted out if we want to save the planet all we have to do is to stop bombarding people with information about polar bears and other things that they don't even notice and start to manufacture mobiles that are repairable, upgradable and designed to be truly recyclable the mobile is just one example this applies to anything that is manufactured when this car is too old the manufacturer will buy it from you because the parts are designed to be reused these jeans are made from old jeans saving the expense of cultivating and spinning new cotton even with vegetables the packaging could be made of easily compostable materials to turn it into fertiliser to grow more plants I invite you to google a bit about the circular economy ok, but we were asking about the problems well, one problem could be us, the consumers for the companies to lower their prices they must be sure that they’ll get the materials back again an easy way to do this is if the mobile wasn’t your property if this was so you’d only be renting it from them in this way, they could recover their parts whenever they needed them saving them money and saving us money these parts of the process would then be designed so that they were removable and reusable would we be willing to have a sh. . .
hot mobile but not own it? the answer should be, why not? there are things that we do not own you don’t think about sharing a train you buy a ticket it's cheaper that way and take a look at the car share websites or the flat rates for online series there’re ever more models based on not owning still, aren't I being too optimistic?
after all it's the companies who will have to do all this innovation will they do it? good question you'll see that this video was made for the Cotec Foundation for Innovation, which hired us to make it Cotec includes governmental authorities, such as municipalities and this type of body as well as big companies that is, the ones that’d have to carry out and promote this change so it is a good sign that they’ve asked us to make this video even so it’s not every day you have the opportunity to give these people a ticking off so we’re going to make the most of it they remind me of my parents who were always telling me that playing video games is a waste of time what they didn't know was that many video games are pure economics you spend time building things searching for gold stone and wood and you can use them to make castles and other stuff and then things start to go wrong if you only have two gold, one stone and three wood I see the real world in the same way we have seven coal 10 oil and 5 iron but we still use them without worrying about it and, what happens when we reach 0? what if in real life we have 500, of waste we are poor in resources but rich in waste what’d happen if everything that we’re throwing out had been designed to be used again we’d have 20 coal, 20 oil and 20 iron again we’d start the game again I have to finish now I know that you have questions and the people at Cotec wanted us to to tell you everything but it’s not possible to summarise all these studies on the circular economy in a 15-minute video so we’ll have to end another way when the Voyager spacecraft arrived at the edge of the system solar it pointed its camera back the way it had come searching for the earth and it sent us this photo it's difficult, but we can see just ourselves this dot is us millions of people floating in the void sometimes we fantasise that someone’ll come from another corner of the universe to pay us some attention are you going to take charge of this beautiful place?
but nobody has come yet we only have ourselves to save the planet for once it seems that environmentalists, consumers, companies and states have a tool to understand this topic the circular economy this won’t happen very often why don't we make the most of the opportunity?
