What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce

Summary

The video 'What really happens to the plastic you throw away', narrated by Emma Bryce and produced by TED-Ed, traces the journey of three plastic bottles, exploring the environmental impact of their destinations. It explains how plastic is made and narrates the potential fates of these bottles: ending up in a landfill, polluting the ocean, or being recycled. The landfill bottles contribute to toxic leachate, while those in the ocean become part of harmful plastic gyres. The video highlights the importance of recycling as the third bottle is transformed into something new, emphasizing the critical role recycling plays in addressing plastic pollution.

Highlights

• Three plastic bottles' fate: landfill, ocean, or recycling! 🌊
• Landfill bottles create harmful toxic stew affecting the environment. ☠️
• Ocean bottles join the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, harming sea life. 🐢
• Recycling transforms plastic into new products, giving it a new life. 🌿

Key Takeaways

• Plastic's journey varies: landfill, ocean, or recycling center! 🌍
• Landfills cause harmful toxic leachate affecting ecosystems. 🚯
• Ocean plastics contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 🐟
• Recycling gives plastic a second life, reducing pollution. 🔄

Overview

Ever wonder what happens to the plastic bottles you toss away? Well, they embark on wildly different adventures that can either harm or help our planet! In the video 'What really happens to the plastic you throw away', Emma Bryce takes us on a journey of three plastic bottles, narrating their lifecycle from creation to their eventual destinations: landfill, ocean, or the recycling plant.

The narrative kicks off with the bottle being discarded, destined for a landfill, ocean gyre, or a recycling facility. The grim stories of bottles one and two highlight the environmental damage: toxic leachate from landfills poisons ecosystems, while ocean-bound bottles contribute to massive plastic patches, where their fragments harm marine life and move up the food chain.

Thankfully, bottle three offers a beacon of hope. Through recycling, it's shredded, melted, and reborn into something new. This transformation story emphasizes the power of recycling in mitigating plastic pollution and protecting the environment. A small drop in the ocean, perhaps, but every recycled bottle counts!

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Three Plastic Bottles The chapter titled 'Introduction to Three Plastic Bottles' introduces the journey of three plastic bottles that are empty and discarded. Each bottle's journey diverges with significant outcomes that could affect the fate of the planet. The origin of these bottles starts at an oil refinery, which sets the stage for the exploration of their future paths.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Formation and Life of Plastic Bottles The chapter titled 'Formation and Life of Plastic Bottles' details the process of creating plastic bottles. It begins with the chemical bonding of oil and gas molecules to form monomers, which are then bonded into long polymer chains to create plastic. This plastic is initially in the form of millions of pellets. These pellets are melted down at manufacturing plants and molded into the desired shape, forming resilient plastic bottles. The bottles are then filled with sweet, bubbly liquid, wrapped, shipped, purchased, opened, and ultimately consumed.
• 01:00 - 02:00: The Fate of Bottle One: Landfill The chapter "The Fate of Bottle One: Landfill" delves into the journey of a plastic bottle that ends up in a landfill. It illustrates the mundane yet grim reality of how plastics contribute to the ever-growing piles of waste. The landfill described expands daily as more waste is added, showcasing the mounting environmental challenge posed by plastic waste. As these plastics, including the bottle, sit compressed under layers of other trash, the chapter hints at the environmental consequences of this process, particularly when rainwater seeps through the waste.
• 02:00 - 03:00: The Fate of Bottle Two: Ocean and Great Pacific Garbage Patch Bottle One's fate involves degradation in landfills over approximately 1,000 years, producing toxic leachate that harms ecosystems. Bottle Two follows a peculiar path, ending up in the ocean, contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
• 03:00 - 04:00: The Life Journey of Bottle Three: Recycling and Rebirth This chapter explores the journey of a plastic bottle as it navigates through various stages of pollution in the ocean. Beginning in a stream, the bottle eventually reaches the ocean where it becomes part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This patch is a massive vortex in the ocean where trash accumulates due to the currents, turning the waters into a 'cloudy plastic soup' filled with millions of pieces of plastic debris. The chapter highlights the existence of five such plastic-filled gyres around the world, emphasizing the global issue of oceanic plastic pollution.

What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 This is the story of three plastic bottles, empty and discarded. 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 must first explore their origins. The heroes of our story were conceived in this oil refinery. The plastic in their bodies
• 00:30 - 01:00 was formed by chemically bonding oil and gas molecules together to make monomers. In turn, these monomers were bonded into long polymer chains to make plastic in the form of millions of pellets. Those were melted at manufacturing plants and reformed in molds to create the resilient material that makes up the triplets' bodies. Machines filled the bottles with sweet bubbily liquid and they were then wrapped, shipped, bought, opened, consumed
• 01:00 - 01:30 and unceremoniously discarded. And now here they lie, poised at the edge of the unknown. Bottle one, like hundreds of millions of tons of his plastic brethren, ends up in a 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 other junk, rainwater flows through the waste
• 01:30 - 02:00 and absorbs the water-soluble compounds it contains, and some of those are highly toxic. Together, they create a harmful stew called leachate, which can move into groundwater, soil and streams, poisoning ecosystems and harming wildlife. It can take bottle one an agonizing 1,000 years to decompose. Bottle two's journey is stranger but, unfortunately, no happier. He floats on a trickle that reaches a stream,
• 02:00 - 02:30 a stream that flows into a river, and a river that reaches the ocean. After months lost at sea, he's slowly 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 pieces of plastic debris. This is one of five plastic-filled gyres in the world's seas. Places where the pollutants turn the water into a cloudy plastic soup.
• 02:30 - 03:00 Some animals, like seabirds, get entangled in the mess. They, and others, mistake the brightly colored plastic bits for food. Plastic makes them feel full when they're not, so they starve to death and pass the toxins from the plastic up the food chain. For example, it's eaten by lanternfish, the lanternfish are eaten by squid, the squid are eaten by tuna, and the tuna are eaten by us.
• 03:00 - 03:30 And most plastics don't biodegrade, which means they're destined to break down into smaller and smaller pieces called micro plastics, which might rotate in the sea eternally. But bottle three is spared the cruel purgatories of his brothers. A truck brings him to a plant where he and his companions are squeezed flat and compressed into a block. Okay, this sounds pretty bad, too, but hang in there. It gets better. The blocks are shredded into tiny pieces,
• 03:30 - 04:00 which are washed and melted, so they become the raw materials that can be used again. As if by magic, bottle three is now ready to be reborn as something completely new. For this bit of plastic with such humble origins, suddenly the sky is the limit.