How to Be a Better Human - TED Climate: What happens to the plastic you throw away?

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

Plastic is everywhere. We know we should cut down on it where we can, but is plastic ever the answer? In this episode, a whole world of plastic you never knew about. Starting with: which bag is best: paper, plastic, or cotton? The answer might surprise you. Dan breaks down the pros and cons of each bag, and which you should carry on your next shopping trip. Then we follow the journey of three different plastic bottles after you throw them away, shedding light on the dangers these disposables present to our world. Plus, three things you can do to put a cap on our plastic problem. This is an episode of TED Climate, another TED Audio Collective podcast. For more, find the podcast wherever you're listening to this. You can read the full text transcript for this episode at go.ted.com/TC1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, Chris Duffy here. We are still on summer break here at How to Be a Better Human, but as always, we don't want to leave you hanging. So I want to share a new podcast from the TED Audio Collective here with you. It's a show that I find extremely important and extremely interesting, which is a great combo.

I mean, one of the top combos there is if you're going to get two things, extremely important and extremely interesting. Very good. This show is called Ted Climate. It can be a little daunting to dive into the climate crisis, I think. I mean, I certainly feel like that. But this show does it so well in a way that's not just informative, but also genuinely entertaining and fascinating.

I think that you are going to love it. And if you do love it, you can hear more episodes of TED Climate wherever you're listening to this. We're gonna have that episode for you in just a moment, right after this quick ad. Hello, and welcome to TED Climate, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective. I'm your host, Dan Kortler,

and on this show, we're gonna be staring straight into the abyss of the climate crisis. Don't worry, though, we're not gonna bum you out too much. Each episode of this season, we'll look at two different sides of the climate crisis. Don't worry, though. We're not going to bum you out too much. Each episode of this season, we'll look at two different sides of the same issue. So we'll explore big questions like, could we transition to only renewable energy? And what would happen if every human just disappeared?

But we'll also dig into the smaller things that actually affect your day-to-day life. Hopefully, these stories will reveal some small changes you can make to feel like you're actually doing something instead of just, you know, tumbling towards inevitable doom. This week's topic, plastic. So our first question is probably one that you've asked on your last grocery trip.

Which bag should I use? Plastic, paper, or cloth? Cities around the world have actually begun moving away from single-use plastic bags. These are the thin, flimsy bags that you might see stuck in a tree or blowing through the wind. But what exactly is the environmental impact of using a plastic bag as opposed to another kind of bag? Surely a paper bag or a cotton tote would be the better option. But is that actually true? Each of these three materials actually has a unique environmental impact that's determined by a couple of factors, three things.

Its carbon footprint, its potential to be reused and recycled, and its degradability. So to get the full story on these grocery bags, we need to talk about how they're made, how they're used, and where they ultimately go. Let's start with plastic. The typical thin, flimsy plastic bags are made of high-density polyethylene. This is commonly known as HDPE. Producing HDPE requires extracting petroleum from the ground and applying extreme heat. This creates a polymer resin that is then transported

alongside additional materials like titanium oxide and chalk to bag manufacturing plants. Here, coal-powered machines melt all the materials down and spin them into really thin sheets of plastic, which are then folded into the bags that you know and use. By the time one of these plastic bags reaches its destination, it's contributed an estimated 1.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That might sound like a lot. It's actually the same amount of carbon that a car produces driving a little over six kilometers. But the alternatives actually possess a much larger carbon footprint. Paper is made from wood pulp. And when you account for the carbon cost of,

you know, removing a tree from its ecosystem, a single paper bag can actually be responsible for 5.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, growing cotton is an extremely energy and water-intensive process. The production of a single cotton tote emits an estimated 272 kilograms of carbon dioxide. So when we compare carbon footprints, plastic bags are surprisingly the winner. But environmental impact isn't just determined by carbon footprints. It's also determined by how the bag is actually used. Reusing or recycling these bags significantly offsets their environmental toll, mostly by reducing the demand for new bags. We can actually quantify the offset, too. We can divide a bag's carbon footprint by the number of times that we reuse it. So, for example, if a paper bag was reused three times,

then it would have a lower net impact than a single-use plastic bag. It would basically have the impact of one-third of one paper bag. So the carbon footprint of a cotton tote could be similarly lowered. Just have to reuse it 131 times. So of these three options, durable cloth totes are the most likely to be reused. Evidence shows paper bags are quickly discarded due to their tendency to tear. This issue plagues HDPE bags as well. But even when these bags are made to avoid tearing,

their widespread availability makes it really easy to just treat them like a single-use item. Although, researchers do estimate that 40% of HDPE bags are reused at least once for throwing out waste. All you cat owners know what I'm talking about. Reusing these bags is great, but recycling them also offsets their carbon footprint. Unfortunately, recycling's not offsets their carbon footprint. Unfortunately, recycling is not universally possible for each material. Many countries lack the infrastructure to efficiently recycle plastic bags. Cotton toads are perhaps even more difficult to break down and process. But since they're often reused for really long periods, they're still less likely to end up in

landfills than paper or plastic. And it's this landfill that brings us to our third point. Whenever these bags aren't recycled, the third factor in calculating environmental impact comes into play. Degradability. Since HDPE bags are heat-resistant and insoluble, they stick around long, long after we're done with them. A partially broken-down plastic bag can circulate in ecosystems for centuries. Cotton, on the other hand, degrades substantially in a matter of months,

and paper bags break down completely in just 90 days. So, which of these three bags should you use? The answer is, kind of, none of them. It turns out there's actually another way better, more environmentally friendly bag that combines most of the best features that we've discussed. I'm talking about those plastic bags that they sell at the grocery store for a dollar or two. These are the sturdy, reusable bags that are made of polyester and vinyl and other tough plastics. These are durable and reusable like cotton, but they have a lower carbon footprint than cotton or paper. And they're already used worldwide. A small collection of these bags should last a lifetime, making them the best option for the planet.

So maybe that was kind of a trick question, but it looks like no matter what bag you use, what's most important is to use it again, and again, and again, pretty much forever. Give it to your kids, grandkids too. Reusing your bags dramatically decreases their environmental impact, especially because when you don't reuse something, its journey after you trash it can be a lot longer than you think. Remember earlier when I said that plastic can circulate in our ecosystem for centuries? That gets at our next question. What actually happens to the plastic that we throw away?

This is the story of three plastic bottles. Their journeys are about to diverge with outcomes that impact nothing less than the fate of the planet. But they weren't always this way. To understand where these bottles end up, we need to first explore their origins. The heroes of our story were conceived in an oil refinery. The plastic in their bodies was formed by chemically bonding oil and gas molecules together to make monomers, which were then bonded into long polymer chains to make millions of pellets of plastic. Those pellets were then melted at manufacturing plants and reformed in molds to create the resilient material that makes up these bottles.

Machines filled them up with water, and they were then wrapped, shipped, bought, opened, consumed, and unceremoniously discarded. First up, bottle number one. Like hundreds of millions of tons of its plastic brethren, this bottle ends up in the landfill. This huge dump expands each day as more trash comes in and continues to take up space. As plastics sit there being compressed amongst layers of junk, rainwater flows through the waste and absorbs the water-soluble compounds within. Some of these compounds are highly toxic,

and together they create a harmful stew called leachate. Leachate can move into groundwater, soil, and streams to poison ecosystems and harm wildlife. Sitting in this dump, it could take our first bottle an agonizing 1,000 years to decompose. Bottle number two's journey is stranger, but unfortunately just as depressing. It floats on a trickle that reaches a stream that flows into a river that reaches the ocean where it is lost at sea for months. Eventually, it gets drawn into a massive vortex where trash accumulates, a place known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Here, the ocean's currents have trapped millions of millions of pieces of plastic debris. millions of pieces of plastic debris. This is one of five plastic-filled gyres the world sees, places where the pollutants turn the water into a cloudy plastic soup. Some animals, like seabirds, get entangled in the mess. They and others mistake the brightly colored plastic bits for food. Eating those bits makes them feel full, even when they're not, So they might starve to death and then pass the toxins from the plastic up the food chain. Those birds might be eaten by lanternfish, which would then be eaten by squid, which are then eaten by tuna, which are finally eaten by us. And most plastics don't biodegrade, meaning they're destined to break down into smaller and smaller pieces called

microplastics, which could rotate in the sea eternally. Man, this is a bummer, huh? Guess I lied about not depressing you guys too much. But there's still bottle number three. This bottle is spared the cruel purgatories of its siblings because it is getting recycled. A truck brings it to a plant where it's squeezed flat and compressed into a

block with a bunch of other bottles. Okay, I know this still sounds pretty bad, but we're getting there. These blocks are going to be shredded into tiny pieces, which are then washed and melted, so they become the raw materials that can be used again. As if by magic, bottle number three is now ready to be reborn as something completely new. So there you have it. My big takeaways for this episode? Good grief. First off, buy less plastic, like buy no plastic. It's not easy, I know, because plastic is everywhere, but it's a small change you can make that can have a huge consequence. Second, when you do buy plastic, try to reuse it as much as possible.

And anything you can't reuse, find out if it can be recycled in your area. If it's not collected with normal recycling, you might still be able to drop it off at your local grocery store. Well, that's it for this week. Join me next time for more knowledge to help you fight off the crushing reality of the climate crisis. But seriously, learning how all this stuff works is actually the only way we can change things.

And we can change things. But it takes everyone. So thank you for listening. You can get more involved by joining Countdown, TED's global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis in collaboration with future stewards. Find out more at countdown.ted.com. TED Climate is produced and edited by Sheena Ozaki and hosted by me, Dan Kortler. These lessons were originally made in animated form by the TED-Ed team,

so special thanks to them and to Michelle Quint, Anna Phelan, and Colin Helms.