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Five years ago, I embarked on a mission.

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I'd heard a statistic

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that the average American generates
4.5 pounds of waste each day,

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which meant that I was generating
my weight in waste every four weeks.

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It was mind-boggling to me
that we generate this much waste each day

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without even thinking twice
about where any of it goes.

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Today I'd like to share with you

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three short stories
about what I've learned

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about how waste is perceived
from different lenses across the globe,

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and finally, I'll tell you a little bit
about the solution that we've developed

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at our company, PK Clean.

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My first story is about one of the most
marginalized communities in the world.

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Waste pickers represent one percent

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of the urban population
across the developing world.

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These are some waste pickers
that I met in India a few months ago.

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They told me that they earn
less than a dollar per day

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and that their incomes have been
virtually unchanged over the past decade.

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What I learned from them

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was that sorting through low-value
plastics was not worth their time,

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and they also told me
that plastic wrappers,

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such as the candy wrappers
that we send from overseas,

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end up becoming an environmental burden
on developing countries.

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The next story I'd like to share with you

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is about how plastic waste
is impacting our marine life.

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My first exposure to this
was during my childhood in Australia,

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during beach cleanups.

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Apparently, that was only
the tip of the iceberg

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because an estimated
5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste

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is said to be across
the ocean's surfaces globally.

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Nothing tells the story
more powerfully than these images,

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and perhaps even more powerful
is the impact that this has on humans,

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who eventually end up eating
many types of marine life.

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My third and final story

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is about how waste is perceived
by the average American.

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This story is about myself.

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An honest look at my own waste consumption
is, frankly, embarrassing.

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This is a picture that I took
of my daily consumption of food.

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While this may look
all very healthy and organic,

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unfortunately, I know that none of
these plastic items will ever be recycled.

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That's because even though
I'll put them in my recycling bin,

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my recycler won't pull these out,
due to their low recycling value.

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Either these items are going to be
headed to landfill

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or perhaps sent to Asia
in order to avoid the landfill fee

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and to be further picked through
by waste pickers,

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or even worse,

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perhaps they'll fall into the ocean
somewhere along the way.

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The common thread
across all three of these stories

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is how challenging plastic waste is.

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While metal and paper recycling rates
have grown over the decades,

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plastic recycling has stayed
relatively unchanged, at under 10%.

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Plastic is the worst type of waste to bury
because it never decomposes.

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My biggest question was,
"Why is plastic's recycling rate so low?"

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It turns out that
in order to recycle plastic,

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you need to have a pure stream
of a specific number -

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numbers one through seven,

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which you can find under
your plastic packaging container.

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Once you mix all these different
plastic numbers into your recycling bin,

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it becomes very difficult
to separate them out.

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Typically, recyclers pull out PET,
such as water bottles and soda bottles,

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as well as HDPE, such as milk bottles
and detergent bottles,

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and much of the rest of the plastic waste

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ends up being a residual,
mixed waste stream

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that looks something like this.

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What you're looking at here

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is the challenge facing waste pickers,
marine life, and domestic recyclers.

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It's that certain plastic waste streams

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are simply too mixed
and too dirty to separate out.

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I knew that since plastic
came from oil to begin with,

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that there had to be a way
to recover oil back from plastic.

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This is why I started PK Clean.

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What we do is we take mixed, dirty,
landfill-bound plastic waste,

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and we feed it into
an oxygen-free reactor

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which is heated up,

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and the resulting vapors
are condensed back into oil.

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At a high level, the chemistry
is very straightforward.

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Plastic is comprised
of long carbon chains.

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What we do is we cut down these chains
into smaller chains between C12 and C20,

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which is similar to diesel fuel.

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The end product is a fuel
that looks like this.

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We're able to achieve an energy recovery
of roughly 95% overall.

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(Applause)

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In New York City,

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diesel trucks carry garbage
over 25 million miles each year

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and consume over
11 million gallons of diesel.

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New York City sends its
plastic waste residual waste streams

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to landfills in states
such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

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If instead we converted these into fuel,

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we'd be able to get more than enough

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to fuel the diesel trucks
in New York City.

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So far, we've demonstrated
this process in Salt Lake City

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at our facility which you can see up here,

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and next, we are targeting
other large cities.

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Beyond this, we see a huge opportunity
across the developing world,

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and we plan to work
directly with waste pickers

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in order to give them
higher value for their plastics.

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And finally, we are working
with the Plastic Ocean Project

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in order to deploy our technologies
across beach and island communities

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so that we're able to convert

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all the tons of plastic waste
which are washed ashore each year

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back into fuel.

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Global waste is expected
to nearly double in the next decade,

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from 3.5 million tons
to 6 million tons per day.

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Innovation is required
to slow down this pace of growth,

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yet so few young minds
consider waste a career path.

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Perhaps it's not glamorous enough
or that we're not patient enough,

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or perhaps we just simply haven't
thought of waste beyond a trash can.

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Waste is our greatest untapped resource,

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and as a society,

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we need to change our mindset
from seeing waste as waste.

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This requires us following the four Rs:

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to reduce, reuse, recycle,

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and then recover back into energy
whatever remains.

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But most importantly,

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we need to convert
a previous generation's challenge

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into our generation's
greatest opportunity.

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So next time you toss something out,
remember that there is power in waste,

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and it's time we harness it.

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(Applause)