TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Sarah Dudas: Microplastics are everywhere -- but we can do something about them

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I'm going to tell you a story, and it's my sorty, but it's all of yours story too, and you'll soon see how. I asked my students to join me in the challenge of dmecntuiong how plastic touches our lives, by taking a photo every time we touch plastic. And at the end of that day, to put all of those photos together in one spot. Here, I share with you my day of plastic. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, as a working mhetor - I have two young dgtueahrs - you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. And I've had to make the photos quite small because it was challenging to fit them all on to this slide. If you're looking closely, you might notice that I've put mputllie plastic items into many of the photos. It was quite ownmeirhevlg in the course of the day to take that many pictures, but you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. Right from the start, when I woke up to the sounds of my plastic alarm clock, the plastic pickaangg in the food that I ate, the clothing that I put on as I got ready to go outside, the phones that I tklead on at work a lot, right through the end of the day, when I tucked in my youngest datugehr with her favorite stuffed animal, Pinky, synthetic, right down to the very last step of the day - a plastic book cover on the book that I was reading. Plastic is in every single element. When I put all of these photos together, I found the result really shocking, but perhaps what's even more shocking is that we've only been using plastic since the 1950s. That's about 65 years, and in that relatively short span of time, we have generated the estimated [8,300 million] metric tons of plastic on the planet. That's equivalent to 25,000 empire state buildings. Now, out of all of that plastic, only 9% has been recycled, and in my day of plastic, 9% looks like this. 60% has been thrown away. In my day of plastic, 60% looks like this, leaving us with the 31% that's still being used. All of that plastic - over time, with the heat of the sun, lhigt, oxygen, microbes - will brake down into smaller and smaller pieces. That may take 10 to 20 years for a plastic bag, upwards of 400 years for a plastic bottle, but over time, it will brake up in the smaller and smaller pieces to what scientists now call microplastics. Microplastics are defined as any plastic less than five millimeters, so about the size of a grain of rice, and we divide these into two types. The first, pramriy microplastics: plastic engineered to be slaml. And there are many reasons why we do this: medical, personal, industrial. Microbeads are one that many of you will be familiar with, now banned in many crtnuieos. Watch out for other microplastics in cosmetics, for example, synthetic fibers in mascara. Polystyrene beads are used in many applications as sunfiftg and flotation; nudrles, a funny name for plastic resin pellets that can be used to make just about anything, and even things like glitter are considered primary mpaocscltriis. Then we have our sondecray microplastics, and these are plastics that are created from the breakdown of those large materials: fgmntraes from a plastic blttoe, films from a plastic bag, fibers from netting, from rope, and even from our synthetic clothing. Now, microplastics are in my day of plastic too, but they are harder to see because of their small size. But rest arsuesd, they were there from start to finsih. In my morning cup of tea, plastic fibers in the deceptively paper-looking-like tea bags - this is my last box - to the tire dust generated from my synthetic polymer tires as I drove to preschool and to work, to the nurdles in my daughter's stuffed animal and even the plastic gem on the ring that she found in the parking lot. Right through to the end of the day, the load of laundry I did, the lint from the dryer, containing synthetic fibers from our cotnhilg, to my daughter's arwrtok that I hung up cmpotlee with seunqis and glare, microplastics are everywhere. As scientists have looked across habitats and eoemnnrnvits, we found that microplastics are everywhere: in different habitats - from freshwater to the oeacn, from deep sea to the Arctic - and in animals - from the bottom of the food chain and zooplankton and fish, all the way to the top, to marine mammals and even in ourselves. Microplastics are everywhere, and as animals eat those plastics, it can have negative effects on them. It can have physical impacts, blockages, abrasions, or chemical impacts, either from the chemicals in the plastics leaching out or caliecmhs in the eioemrnnvnt and contaminants sticking to the plastic themselves. And all of this can create negative health effects: decreases in gotwrh, reproduction. The study of microplastics is a new one, and our knowledge of the impacts of microplastics is limited, especially at the smaller sizes. And as we zoom down to those smaller sizes, right down to the level that's invisible to the naked eye, about 100 micnros or the tkneshcis of the sheet of paper, we find microplastics there too. They are in my day of plastic, in the water that I drink, in the air that I bretah, and we're only just learning about microplastics in food. My reeacsrh team has found microplastics in shellfish, in clams and in oysters. Other studies have found microplastics in chicken, honey, salt, beer, and we've yet to learn about microplastics in other foods. Almost all of the microplastics that we've found, and in many other suetdis, have been fibers. We're still fgrnuiig out where these fibers come from, but synthetic clothing represents a significant piottneal source. Every year, 70 mlloiin tons of fibers are used in the clothing isntrudy. Out of that 70 million, 60% are synthetic. And that's evident when you go shopping if you look at your llabes. My daughter and I went shopping to get ready for this talk on a hunt for a natural fiber dressy shirt. We went to four major Canadian reerltais, and we struck out. So I snatd here today looking a little less fomarl that I might like, but feeilng a whole lot more comfortable than I would if I were snanditg here talking to you about plastic while wearing it. Now, as we wash our clothes, fibers are released, and a recent study took six-kilogram loads of laundry - polyester cotton, potelyesr, and aycirlc - and wheasd them. And they generated anywhere from 140,000 fibers for the poly-cotton mix to a whopping 700,000 fibers for acrylic, per load. Now, I took those numbers and iimgnead that my family of four would generate a three-kilogram load of synthetic lraudny a week. Multiply that up by 52 weeks a year, and my family alone generates 11 hundred million fibers a year - fibers that go into our sewage system, into our waterways, into the ocean, into our ecosystems, and into our food. Our microplastics are everywhere, but there is something that we can do about it almost everywhere we go, and it starts with the good old three R's from the 70s that we're familiar with: reduce, reuse, recycle. But we need to update these to add three new R's, starting with the first one: rfusee. Refuse single use plastic, refuse any plastic you don't need, refuse straws, refuse coffee cups, think critically about what you need, think about where away is. If you can't refuse it, reduce it. Think culealrfy about the plastic that you need, find naarutl aeettavlnris where you can. There are many things that we can do to reduce fiber pollution, for example, you can use a fiber catcher like the Cora Ball, or use a bag to put your synthetics in, like the grynpueifpd from Patagonia, use a front-loading washing machine that generates fewer fibers than a top-loader. Use a feiltr on your washing machine to catch the fibers before they go into the water. All of these things will help reduce your fiber pollution. If you can't reduce it, reuse it. coohse products that are built to last rather than those with planned onloebscecse. Try to get most life out of your plastic items that you can, and if you can't reuse it, of course, recycle it, but even the hard things, even the things that don't fit into your curbside recycling. In my case, that's plastic bags, sorytfoam, enlteoicrcs. If your community doesn't have a facility to deal with these types of items, then create the dmeand and the need for it, it's worth your time. The second new R: rethink. We live in a society that doesn't place a high value on second-hand goods, we need to change that. We need to focus on services rather than recnmlaepet, and that is going to require the final new R, and perhaps the most challenging, which is to redesign. On a broader slace, we need to change our thinking from the linear model of make, take and dispose to one that's more circular in nature, to one in which we think about the end life of a porucdt right at its biienngng. Now, I went through my day of plastic and chose a number of items that fololw that linear economy, that linear mdeol of make, take and dispose, and I mupltiiled the images by the number of each one that I've used in my lifetime. Now, I'm proud and somewhat embarrassed to say that this is the alarm clock from my childhood, which doesn't say much for me keeping up with the tmies, but I've gone through a number of different appliances, computers, phones; I csohe my daughter's backpack because in her seven years on this plneat, she's already gone through three, and I've gone through more synthetic clothing than I care to admit. This consumption model generates much more watse than it would in a circular economy, one which focuses on services, on resrnppiuog, on refurbishing, rather than replacing, one in which I might have one phone, one ctumepor that gets updated with latest technology as it becomes available. Imagine a system in which you don't own your clothes, but burrow them or you rent them from the cepominas that you like, you wear them until you want something new, you send them back, they get repurposed into newer styles you want to wear. Let's slow down fast fashion and fucos on quality rather than quantity. All of these things, with a change in our lneiar way of thinking, are within the realm of possibility, and many are already happening. Let's think outside the bottle and create room for innovation. Plastic is a vbaualle product, we are reliant on it, and a frutue without it is completely unrealistic. But we can't and we shouldn't cinutone to use it and pdoruce it on the increasing trajectory that we are currently on. Plastic is resilient, it lasts a long time, and while that is a pbroelm in one respect, it represents an opportunity in so many others. Microplastics are everywhere, and while that sacers me, what gives me hope is knownig that the solutions are too. Thank you. (Applause) Winter Clark: I'm just so intrigued by these ideas of rethinking and redesigning, you know, focusing on rapeir and sivreces rather than just throwing something out after one use. Do you think that those aspects of rhekitning and redesigning are more important than continuing to reduce the amount of plastic that we use? Sarah Dudas: I think they're both important. On an individual level, it's very easy to reduce the amount of plastics that we use. Now, I challenge everybody here to try and do that every time you're offered plastic you don't really need. So we can make some srmat individual choices, but we do need to rethink things at a broader level. There are some things that we're doing that we can improve upon. For example, in the food packaging industry, we package foods that have a shelf life of a few days to maybe a few years and packaging that lasts upwards of a few decades. This doesn't make sense, we need to rethink those models, and with that will come a further rcuieotdn in the way that we're using pliastc. WC: aghlrit, thanks. SD: Thanks. (Applause)

Open Cloze

I'm going to tell you a story, and it's my _____, but it's all of yours story too, and you'll soon see how. I asked my students to join me in the challenge of ___________ how plastic touches our lives, by taking a photo every time we touch plastic. And at the end of that day, to put all of those photos together in one spot. Here, I share with you my day of plastic. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, as a working ______ - I have two young _________ - you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. And I've had to make the photos quite small because it was challenging to fit them all on to this slide. If you're looking closely, you might notice that I've put ________ plastic items into many of the photos. It was quite ____________ in the course of the day to take that many pictures, but you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. Right from the start, when I woke up to the sounds of my plastic alarm clock, the plastic _________ in the food that I ate, the clothing that I put on as I got ready to go outside, the phones that I ______ on at work a lot, right through the end of the day, when I tucked in my youngest ________ with her favorite stuffed animal, Pinky, synthetic, right down to the very last step of the day - a plastic book cover on the book that I was reading. Plastic is in every single element. When I put all of these photos together, I found the result really shocking, but perhaps what's even more shocking is that we've only been using plastic since the 1950s. That's about 65 years, and in that relatively short span of time, we have generated the estimated [8,300 million] metric tons of plastic on the planet. That's equivalent to 25,000 empire state buildings. Now, out of all of that plastic, only 9% has been recycled, and in my day of plastic, 9% looks like this. 60% has been thrown away. In my day of plastic, 60% looks like this, leaving us with the 31% that's still being used. All of that plastic - over time, with the heat of the sun, _____, oxygen, microbes - will brake down into smaller and smaller pieces. That may take 10 to 20 years for a plastic bag, upwards of 400 years for a plastic bottle, but over time, it will brake up in the smaller and smaller pieces to what scientists now call microplastics. Microplastics are defined as any plastic less than five millimeters, so about the size of a grain of rice, and we divide these into two types. The first, _______ microplastics: plastic engineered to be _____. And there are many reasons why we do this: medical, personal, industrial. Microbeads are one that many of you will be familiar with, now banned in many _________. Watch out for other microplastics in cosmetics, for example, synthetic fibers in mascara. Polystyrene beads are used in many applications as ________ and flotation; _______, a funny name for plastic resin pellets that can be used to make just about anything, and even things like glitter are considered primary _____________. Then we have our _________ microplastics, and these are plastics that are created from the breakdown of those large materials: _________ from a plastic ______, films from a plastic bag, fibers from netting, from rope, and even from our synthetic clothing. Now, microplastics are in my day of plastic too, but they are harder to see because of their small size. But rest _______, they were there from start to ______. In my morning cup of tea, plastic fibers in the deceptively paper-looking-like tea bags - this is my last box - to the tire dust generated from my synthetic polymer tires as I drove to preschool and to work, to the nurdles in my daughter's stuffed animal and even the plastic gem on the ring that she found in the parking lot. Right through to the end of the day, the load of laundry I did, the lint from the dryer, containing synthetic fibers from our ________, to my daughter's _______ that I hung up ________ with _______ and glare, microplastics are everywhere. As scientists have looked across habitats and ____________, we found that microplastics are everywhere: in different habitats - from freshwater to the _____, from deep sea to the Arctic - and in animals - from the bottom of the food chain and zooplankton and fish, all the way to the top, to marine mammals and even in ourselves. Microplastics are everywhere, and as animals eat those plastics, it can have negative effects on them. It can have physical impacts, blockages, abrasions, or chemical impacts, either from the chemicals in the plastics leaching out or _________ in the ___________ and contaminants sticking to the plastic themselves. And all of this can create negative health effects: decreases in ______, reproduction. The study of microplastics is a new one, and our knowledge of the impacts of microplastics is limited, especially at the smaller sizes. And as we zoom down to those smaller sizes, right down to the level that's invisible to the naked eye, about 100 _______ or the _________ of the sheet of paper, we find microplastics there too. They are in my day of plastic, in the water that I drink, in the air that I ______, and we're only just learning about microplastics in food. My ________ team has found microplastics in shellfish, in clams and in oysters. Other studies have found microplastics in chicken, honey, salt, beer, and we've yet to learn about microplastics in other foods. Almost all of the microplastics that we've found, and in many other _______, have been fibers. We're still ________ out where these fibers come from, but synthetic clothing represents a significant _________ source. Every year, 70 _______ tons of fibers are used in the clothing ________. Out of that 70 million, 60% are synthetic. And that's evident when you go shopping if you look at your ______. My daughter and I went shopping to get ready for this talk on a hunt for a natural fiber dressy shirt. We went to four major Canadian _________, and we struck out. So I _____ here today looking a little less ______ that I might like, but _______ a whole lot more comfortable than I would if I were ________ here talking to you about plastic while wearing it. Now, as we wash our clothes, fibers are released, and a recent study took six-kilogram loads of laundry - polyester cotton, _________, and _______ - and ______ them. And they generated anywhere from 140,000 fibers for the poly-cotton mix to a whopping 700,000 fibers for acrylic, per load. Now, I took those numbers and ________ that my family of four would generate a three-kilogram load of synthetic _______ a week. Multiply that up by 52 weeks a year, and my family alone generates 11 hundred million fibers a year - fibers that go into our sewage system, into our waterways, into the ocean, into our ecosystems, and into our food. Our microplastics are everywhere, but there is something that we can do about it almost everywhere we go, and it starts with the good old three R's from the 70s that we're familiar with: reduce, reuse, recycle. But we need to update these to add three new R's, starting with the first one: ______. Refuse single use plastic, refuse any plastic you don't need, refuse straws, refuse coffee cups, think critically about what you need, think about where away is. If you can't refuse it, reduce it. Think _________ about the plastic that you need, find _______ ____________ where you can. There are many things that we can do to reduce fiber pollution, for example, you can use a fiber catcher like the Cora Ball, or use a bag to put your synthetics in, like the ___________ from Patagonia, use a front-loading washing machine that generates fewer fibers than a top-loader. Use a ______ on your washing machine to catch the fibers before they go into the water. All of these things will help reduce your fiber pollution. If you can't reduce it, reuse it. ______ products that are built to last rather than those with planned ____________. Try to get most life out of your plastic items that you can, and if you can't reuse it, of course, recycle it, but even the hard things, even the things that don't fit into your curbside recycling. In my case, that's plastic bags, _________, ___________. If your community doesn't have a facility to deal with these types of items, then create the ______ and the need for it, it's worth your time. The second new R: rethink. We live in a society that doesn't place a high value on second-hand goods, we need to change that. We need to focus on services rather than ___________, and that is going to require the final new R, and perhaps the most challenging, which is to redesign. On a broader _____, we need to change our thinking from the linear model of make, take and dispose to one that's more circular in nature, to one in which we think about the end life of a _______ right at its _________. Now, I went through my day of plastic and chose a number of items that ______ that linear economy, that linear _____ of make, take and dispose, and I __________ the images by the number of each one that I've used in my lifetime. Now, I'm proud and somewhat embarrassed to say that this is the alarm clock from my childhood, which doesn't say much for me keeping up with the _____, but I've gone through a number of different appliances, computers, phones; I _____ my daughter's backpack because in her seven years on this ______, she's already gone through three, and I've gone through more synthetic clothing than I care to admit. This consumption model generates much more _____ than it would in a circular economy, one which focuses on services, on ___________, on refurbishing, rather than replacing, one in which I might have one phone, one ________ that gets updated with latest technology as it becomes available. Imagine a system in which you don't own your clothes, but burrow them or you rent them from the _________ that you like, you wear them until you want something new, you send them back, they get repurposed into newer styles you want to wear. Let's slow down fast fashion and _____ on quality rather than quantity. All of these things, with a change in our ______ way of thinking, are within the realm of possibility, and many are already happening. Let's think outside the bottle and create room for innovation. Plastic is a ________ product, we are reliant on it, and a ______ without it is completely unrealistic. But we can't and we shouldn't ________ to use it and _______ it on the increasing trajectory that we are currently on. Plastic is resilient, it lasts a long time, and while that is a _______ in one respect, it represents an opportunity in so many others. Microplastics are everywhere, and while that ______ me, what gives me hope is _______ that the solutions are too. Thank you. (Applause) Winter Clark: I'm just so intrigued by these ideas of rethinking and redesigning, you know, focusing on ______ and ________ rather than just throwing something out after one use. Do you think that those aspects of __________ and redesigning are more important than continuing to reduce the amount of plastic that we use? Sarah Dudas: I think they're both important. On an individual level, it's very easy to reduce the amount of plastics that we use. Now, I challenge everybody here to try and do that every time you're offered plastic you don't really need. So we can make some _____ individual choices, but we do need to rethink things at a broader level. There are some things that we're doing that we can improve upon. For example, in the food packaging industry, we package foods that have a shelf life of a few days to maybe a few years and packaging that lasts upwards of a few decades. This doesn't make sense, we need to rethink those models, and with that will come a further _________ in the way that we're using _______. WC: _______, thanks. SD: Thanks. (Applause)

Solution

linear
overwhelming
valuable
stuffing
daughter
knowing
bottle
industry
light
stand
documenting
feeling
companies
sequins
environment
repair
refuse
laundry
acrylic
finish
small
obsolescence
scares
alternatives
daughters
research
million
follow
mother
planet
polyester
multiplied
environments
chose
potential
ocean
scale
carefully
assured
figuring
continue
waste
filter
imagined
studies
rethinking
talked
styrofoam
countries
story
product
computer
retailers
primary
growth
beginning
formal
demand
secondary
thickness
guppyfriend
washed
multiple
standing
fragments
focus
complete
breath
problem
nurdles
future
replacement
produce
packaging
model
services
electronics
clothing
reduction
natural
microns
alright
microplastics
plastic
smart
choose
artwork
chemicals
times
repurposing
labels

Original Text

I'm going to tell you a story, and it's my story, but it's all of yours story too, and you'll soon see how. I asked my students to join me in the challenge of documenting how plastic touches our lives, by taking a photo every time we touch plastic. And at the end of that day, to put all of those photos together in one spot. Here, I share with you my day of plastic. From the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, as a working mother - I have two young daughters - you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. And I've had to make the photos quite small because it was challenging to fit them all on to this slide. If you're looking closely, you might notice that I've put multiple plastic items into many of the photos. It was quite overwhelming in the course of the day to take that many pictures, but you can see that plastic is in every single element of my day. Right from the start, when I woke up to the sounds of my plastic alarm clock, the plastic packaging in the food that I ate, the clothing that I put on as I got ready to go outside, the phones that I talked on at work a lot, right through the end of the day, when I tucked in my youngest daughter with her favorite stuffed animal, Pinky, synthetic, right down to the very last step of the day - a plastic book cover on the book that I was reading. Plastic is in every single element. When I put all of these photos together, I found the result really shocking, but perhaps what's even more shocking is that we've only been using plastic since the 1950s. That's about 65 years, and in that relatively short span of time, we have generated the estimated [8,300 million] metric tons of plastic on the planet. That's equivalent to 25,000 empire state buildings. Now, out of all of that plastic, only 9% has been recycled, and in my day of plastic, 9% looks like this. 60% has been thrown away. In my day of plastic, 60% looks like this, leaving us with the 31% that's still being used. All of that plastic - over time, with the heat of the sun, light, oxygen, microbes - will brake down into smaller and smaller pieces. That may take 10 to 20 years for a plastic bag, upwards of 400 years for a plastic bottle, but over time, it will brake up in the smaller and smaller pieces to what scientists now call microplastics. Microplastics are defined as any plastic less than five millimeters, so about the size of a grain of rice, and we divide these into two types. The first, primary microplastics: plastic engineered to be small. And there are many reasons why we do this: medical, personal, industrial. Microbeads are one that many of you will be familiar with, now banned in many countries. Watch out for other microplastics in cosmetics, for example, synthetic fibers in mascara. Polystyrene beads are used in many applications as stuffing and flotation; nurdles, a funny name for plastic resin pellets that can be used to make just about anything, and even things like glitter are considered primary microplastics. Then we have our secondary microplastics, and these are plastics that are created from the breakdown of those large materials: fragments from a plastic bottle, films from a plastic bag, fibers from netting, from rope, and even from our synthetic clothing. Now, microplastics are in my day of plastic too, but they are harder to see because of their small size. But rest assured, they were there from start to finish. In my morning cup of tea, plastic fibers in the deceptively paper-looking-like tea bags - this is my last box - to the tire dust generated from my synthetic polymer tires as I drove to preschool and to work, to the nurdles in my daughter's stuffed animal and even the plastic gem on the ring that she found in the parking lot. Right through to the end of the day, the load of laundry I did, the lint from the dryer, containing synthetic fibers from our clothing, to my daughter's artwork that I hung up complete with sequins and glare, microplastics are everywhere. As scientists have looked across habitats and environments, we found that microplastics are everywhere: in different habitats - from freshwater to the ocean, from deep sea to the Arctic - and in animals - from the bottom of the food chain and zooplankton and fish, all the way to the top, to marine mammals and even in ourselves. Microplastics are everywhere, and as animals eat those plastics, it can have negative effects on them. It can have physical impacts, blockages, abrasions, or chemical impacts, either from the chemicals in the plastics leaching out or chemicals in the environment and contaminants sticking to the plastic themselves. And all of this can create negative health effects: decreases in growth, reproduction. The study of microplastics is a new one, and our knowledge of the impacts of microplastics is limited, especially at the smaller sizes. And as we zoom down to those smaller sizes, right down to the level that's invisible to the naked eye, about 100 microns or the thickness of the sheet of paper, we find microplastics there too. They are in my day of plastic, in the water that I drink, in the air that I breath, and we're only just learning about microplastics in food. My research team has found microplastics in shellfish, in clams and in oysters. Other studies have found microplastics in chicken, honey, salt, beer, and we've yet to learn about microplastics in other foods. Almost all of the microplastics that we've found, and in many other studies, have been fibers. We're still figuring out where these fibers come from, but synthetic clothing represents a significant potential source. Every year, 70 million tons of fibers are used in the clothing industry. Out of that 70 million, 60% are synthetic. And that's evident when you go shopping if you look at your labels. My daughter and I went shopping to get ready for this talk on a hunt for a natural fiber dressy shirt. We went to four major Canadian retailers, and we struck out. So I stand here today looking a little less formal that I might like, but feeling a whole lot more comfortable than I would if I were standing here talking to you about plastic while wearing it. Now, as we wash our clothes, fibers are released, and a recent study took six-kilogram loads of laundry - polyester cotton, polyester, and acrylic - and washed them. And they generated anywhere from 140,000 fibers for the poly-cotton mix to a whopping 700,000 fibers for acrylic, per load. Now, I took those numbers and imagined that my family of four would generate a three-kilogram load of synthetic laundry a week. Multiply that up by 52 weeks a year, and my family alone generates 11 hundred million fibers a year - fibers that go into our sewage system, into our waterways, into the ocean, into our ecosystems, and into our food. Our microplastics are everywhere, but there is something that we can do about it almost everywhere we go, and it starts with the good old three R's from the 70s that we're familiar with: reduce, reuse, recycle. But we need to update these to add three new R's, starting with the first one: refuse. Refuse single use plastic, refuse any plastic you don't need, refuse straws, refuse coffee cups, think critically about what you need, think about where away is. If you can't refuse it, reduce it. Think carefully about the plastic that you need, find natural alternatives where you can. There are many things that we can do to reduce fiber pollution, for example, you can use a fiber catcher like the Cora Ball, or use a bag to put your synthetics in, like the Guppyfriend from Patagonia, use a front-loading washing machine that generates fewer fibers than a top-loader. Use a filter on your washing machine to catch the fibers before they go into the water. All of these things will help reduce your fiber pollution. If you can't reduce it, reuse it. Choose products that are built to last rather than those with planned obsolescence. Try to get most life out of your plastic items that you can, and if you can't reuse it, of course, recycle it, but even the hard things, even the things that don't fit into your curbside recycling. In my case, that's plastic bags, styrofoam, electronics. If your community doesn't have a facility to deal with these types of items, then create the demand and the need for it, it's worth your time. The second new R: rethink. We live in a society that doesn't place a high value on second-hand goods, we need to change that. We need to focus on services rather than replacement, and that is going to require the final new R, and perhaps the most challenging, which is to redesign. On a broader scale, we need to change our thinking from the linear model of make, take and dispose to one that's more circular in nature, to one in which we think about the end life of a product right at its beginning. Now, I went through my day of plastic and chose a number of items that follow that linear economy, that linear model of make, take and dispose, and I multiplied the images by the number of each one that I've used in my lifetime. Now, I'm proud and somewhat embarrassed to say that this is the alarm clock from my childhood, which doesn't say much for me keeping up with the times, but I've gone through a number of different appliances, computers, phones; I chose my daughter's backpack because in her seven years on this planet, she's already gone through three, and I've gone through more synthetic clothing than I care to admit. This consumption model generates much more waste than it would in a circular economy, one which focuses on services, on repurposing, on refurbishing, rather than replacing, one in which I might have one phone, one computer that gets updated with latest technology as it becomes available. Imagine a system in which you don't own your clothes, but burrow them or you rent them from the companies that you like, you wear them until you want something new, you send them back, they get repurposed into newer styles you want to wear. Let's slow down fast fashion and focus on quality rather than quantity. All of these things, with a change in our linear way of thinking, are within the realm of possibility, and many are already happening. Let's think outside the bottle and create room for innovation. Plastic is a valuable product, we are reliant on it, and a future without it is completely unrealistic. But we can't and we shouldn't continue to use it and produce it on the increasing trajectory that we are currently on. Plastic is resilient, it lasts a long time, and while that is a problem in one respect, it represents an opportunity in so many others. Microplastics are everywhere, and while that scares me, what gives me hope is knowing that the solutions are too. Thank you. (Applause) Winter Clark: I'm just so intrigued by these ideas of rethinking and redesigning, you know, focusing on repair and services rather than just throwing something out after one use. Do you think that those aspects of rethinking and redesigning are more important than continuing to reduce the amount of plastic that we use? Sarah Dudas: I think they're both important. On an individual level, it's very easy to reduce the amount of plastics that we use. Now, I challenge everybody here to try and do that every time you're offered plastic you don't really need. So we can make some smart individual choices, but we do need to rethink things at a broader level. There are some things that we're doing that we can improve upon. For example, in the food packaging industry, we package foods that have a shelf life of a few days to maybe a few years and packaging that lasts upwards of a few decades. This doesn't make sense, we need to rethink those models, and with that will come a further reduction in the way that we're using plastic. WC: Alright, thanks. SD: Thanks. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
single element	3
synthetic clothing	3
plastic items	2
smaller pieces	2
synthetic fibers	2
washing machine	2
linear model	2

Important Words

abrasions
acrylic
add
admit
air
alarm
alright
alternatives
amount
animal
animals
applause
appliances
applications
arctic
artwork
asked
aspects
assured
ate
backpack
bag
bags
ball
banned
beads
bed
beer
beginning
blockages
book
bottle
bottom
box
brake
breakdown
breath
broader
buildings
built
burrow
call
canadian
care
carefully
case
catch
catcher
chain
challenge
challenging
change
chemical
chemicals
chicken
childhood
choices
choose
chose
circular
clams
clock
closely
clothes
clothing
coffee
comfortable
community
companies
complete
completely
computer
computers
considered
consumption
contaminants
continue
continuing
cora
cosmetics
cotton
countries
cover
create
created
critically
cup
cups
curbside
daughter
daughters
day
days
deal
decades
deceptively
decreases
deep
defined
demand
dispose
divide
documenting
dressy
drink
drove
dryer
dust
easy
eat
economy
ecosystems
effects
electronics
element
embarrassed
empire
engineered
environment
environments
equivalent
estimated
evident
eye
facility
familiar
family
fashion
fast
favorite
feeling
fiber
fibers
figuring
films
filter
final
find
finish
fish
fit
focus
focuses
focusing
follow
food
foods
formal
fragments
freshwater
funny
future
gem
generate
generated
generates
glare
glitter
good
goods
grain
growth
guppyfriend
habitats
happening
hard
harder
health
heat
high
honey
hope
hung
hunt
ideas
images
imagine
imagined
impacts
important
improve
increasing
individual
industrial
industry
innovation
intrigued
invisible
items
join
keeping
knowing
knowledge
labels
large
lasts
latest
laundry
leaching
learn
learning
leaving
level
life
lifetime
light
limited
linear
lint
live
lives
load
loads
long
looked
lot
machine
major
mammals
marine
mascara
medical
metric
microbeads
microbes
microns
microplastics
millimeters
million
mix
model
models
moment
morning
mother
multiple
multiplied
multiply
naked
natural
nature
negative
netting
newer
notice
number
numbers
nurdles
obsolescence
ocean
offered
opportunity
overwhelming
oxygen
oysters
package
packaging
paper
parking
patagonia
pellets
personal
phone
phones
photo
photos
physical
pictures
pieces
pinky
place
planet
planned
plastic
plastics
pollution
polyester
polymer
polystyrene
possibility
potential
preschool
primary
problem
produce
product
products
proud
put
quality
quantity
reading
ready
realm
reasons
recycle
recycled
recycling
redesign
redesigning
reduce
reduction
refurbishing
refuse
released
reliant
rent
repair
replacement
replacing
represents
reproduction
repurposed
repurposing
require
research
resilient
resin
respect
rest
result
retailers
rethink
rethinking
reuse
rice
ring
room
rope
salt
sarah
scale
scares
scientists
sea
secondary
send
sense
sequins
services
sewage
share
sheet
shelf
shellfish
shirt
shocking
shopping
short
significant
single
size
sizes
slide
slow
small
smaller
smart
society
solutions
sounds
source
span
spot
stand
standing
start
starting
starts
state
step
sticking
story
straws
struck
students
studies
study
stuffed
stuffing
styles
styrofoam
sun
synthetic
synthetics
system
talk
talked
talking
tea
team
technology
thickness
thinking
throwing
thrown
time
times
tire
tires
today
tons
top
touch
touches
trajectory
tucked
types
unrealistic
update
updated
valuable
wash
washed
washing
waste
watch
water
waterways
wear
wearing
week
weeks
whopping
winter
woke
work
working
worth
year
years
young
youngest
zoom
zooplankton