-
Chris Anderson: So, you've been
obsessed with this problem
-
for the last few years.
-
What is the problem, in your own words?
-
Andrew Forrest: Plastic.
-
Simple as that.
-
Our inability to use it for the tremendous
energetic commodity that it is
-
and just throw it away.
-
CA: And so we see waste everywhere.
-
At its extreme, it looks a bit like this.
-
I mean, where was this picture taken?
-
AF: That's in the Philippines,
-
and you know, there's a lot of rivers,
ladies and gentlemen,
-
which look exactly like that.
-
There's 169 in Sri Lanka alone.
-
And that's the Philippines.
-
So it's all over Southeast Asia.
-
CA: So plastic is thrown into the rivers,
-
and from there, of course,
it ends up in the ocean.
-
I mean, we obviously
see it on the beaches,
-
but that's not even your main concern.
-
It's what's actually happening to it
in the oceans. Talk about that.
-
AF: OK, so look. Thank you, Chris.
-
About four years ago,
-
I thought I'd do something
really barking crazy,
-
and I committed to do a PhD
in marine ecology.
-
And the scary part about that was,
-
sure, I learned a lot about marine life,
-
but it taught me more about marine death
-
and the extreme mass
ecological fatality of fish,
-
of marine life, marine mammals,
-
very close biology to us,
-
which are dying in the millions
if not trillions that we can't count
-
at the hands of plastic.
-
CA: But people think of plastic
as ugly but stable. Right?
-
You throw something in the ocean,
"Hey, it'll just sit there forever.
-
Can't do any damage, right?"
-
AF: See, Chris, it's an incredible
substance designed for the economy.
-
It is the worst substance possible
for the environment.
-
The worst thing about plastics,
as soon as it hits the environment,
-
is that it fragments.
-
It never stops being plastic.
-
It breaks down smaller
and smaller and smaller,
-
and the breaking science on this, Chris,
-
which we've known in marine ecology
for a few years now,
-
but it's going to hit humans.
-
Marine mammals, 99.9 percent
same biology as us.
-
We are aware now that nanoplastic,
-
the very, very small particles of plastic,
carrying their negative charge,
-
can go straight through
the pores of your skin.
-
That's not the bad news.
-
The bad news is that it goes
straight through the blood-brain barrier,
-
that protective coating which is there
to protect your brain.
-
Your brain's a little amorphous, wet mass
full of little electrical charges.
-
You put a negative particle into that,
-
particularly a negative particle
which can carry pathogens,
-
so you have a negative charge,
it attracts positive-charge elements,
-
like pathogens, toxins,
-
mercury, lead.
-
That's the breaking science
we're going to see in the next 12 months.
-
CA: So already I think you told me
that there's like 600 plastic bags or so
-
for every fish that size
in the ocean, something like that.
-
And they're breaking down,
-
and there's going to be ever more of them,
-
and we haven't even seen the start
of the consequences of that.
-
AF: No, we really haven't.
-
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation,
they're a bunch of good scientists,
-
we've been working with them for a while.
-
I've completely verified their work.
-
They say there will be
one ton of plastic, Chris,
-
for every three tons
of fish by, not 2050 --
-
and I really get impatient with people
who talk about 2050 -- by 2025.
-
That's around the corner.
-
That's just the here and now.
-
You don't need one ton of plastic
to completely wipe out marine life.
-
Less than that is going
to do a fine job at it.
-
So we have to end it straightaway.
We've got no time.
-
CA: OK, so you have an idea for ending it,
and you're coming at this
-
not as a typical environmental
campaigner, I would say,
-
but as a businessmen,
as an entrepreneur, who has lived --
-
you've spent your whole life thinking
about global economic systems
-
and how they work.
-
And if I understand it right,
-
your idea depends on heroes
who look something like this.
-
What's her profession?
-
AF: She, Chris, is a ragpicker,
-
and there were 15, 20 million
ragpickers like her,
-
until China stopped taking
everyone's waste.
-
And the price of plastic,
minuscule that it was, collapsed.
-
That led to people like her,
-
which, now -- she is a child
who is a schoolchild.
-
She should be at school.
-
That's probably very akin to slavery.
-
My daughter Grace and I have met
hundreds of people like her.
-
CA: And there are many adults as well,
literally millions around the world,
-
and in some industries,
-
they actually account
for the fact that, for example,
-
we don't see a lot
of metal waste in the world.
-
AF: That's exactly right.
-
That little girl is, in fact,
the hero of the environment.
-
She's in competition with
a great big petrochemical plant
-
which is just down the road,
-
the three-and-a-half-billion-dollar
petrochemical plant.
-
That's the problem.
-
We've got more oil and gas
in plastic and landfill
-
than we have in the entire oil and gas
resources of the United States.
-
So she is the hero.
-
And that's what that landfill looks like,
ladies and gentlemen,
-
and it's solid oil and gas.
-
CA: So there's huge value
potentially locked up in there
-
that the world's ragpickers would,
if they could, make a living from.
-
But why can't they?
-
AF: Because we have ingrained in us
-
a price of plastic from fossil fuels,
-
which sits just under what it takes
-
to economically and profitably
recycle plastic from plastic.
-
See, all plastic is
is building blocks from oil and gas.
-
Plastic's a hundred percent polymer,
which is a hundred percent oil and gas.
-
And you know we've got
enough plastic in the world
-
for all our needs.
-
And when we recycle plastic,
-
if we can't recycle it cheaper
than fossil fuel plastic,
-
then, of course, the world
just sticks to fossil fuel plastic.
-
CA: So if that's the fundamental problem,
-
the price of recycled plastic
is usually more
-
than the price of just buying
it made fresh from more oil.
-
That's the fundamental problem.
-
AF: A slight tweak
of the rules here, Chris.
-
I'm a commodity person.
-
I understand that we used to have
scrap metal and rubbish iron
-
and bits of copper lying
all round the villages,
-
particularly in the developing world.
-
And people worked out it's got a value.
-
It's actually an article of value,
-
not of waste.
-
Now the villages and the cities
and the streets are clean,
-
you don't trip over scrap copper
or scrap iron now,
-
because it's an article of value,
it gets recycled.
-
CA: So what's your idea, then,
to try to change that in plastics?
-
AF: OK, so Chris,
-
for most part of that PhD,
I've been doing research.
-
And the good thing about being
a businessperson who's done OK at it
-
is that people want to see you.
-
Other businesspeople,
-
even if you're kind of a bit of a zoo
animal species they'd like to check out,
-
they'll say, yeah, OK,
we'll all meet Twiggy Forrest.
-
And so once you're in there,
-
you can interrogate them.
-
And I've been to most of the oil and gas
and fast-moving consumer good companies
-
in the world,
-
and there is a real will to change.
-
I mean, there's a couple of dinosaurs
-
who are going to hope
for the best and do nothing,
-
but there's a real will to change.
-
So what I've been discussing is,
-
the seven and a half billion
people in the world
-
don't actually deserve to have
their environment smashed by plastic,
-
their oceans rendered depauperate
or barren of sea life because of plastic.
-
So you come down that chain,
-
and there's tens of thousands of brands
which we all buy heaps of products from,
-
but then there's only a hundred
major resin producers,
-
big petrochemical plants,
-
that spew out all the plastic
which is single use.
-
CA: So one hundred companies
-
are right at the base
of this food chain, as it were.
-
AF: Yeah.
-
CA: And so what do you need
those one hundred companies to do?
-
AF: OK, so we need them
to simply raise the value
-
of the building blocks of plastic
from oil and gas,
-
which I call "bad plastic,"
-
raise the value of that,
-
so that when it spreads through the brands
and onto us, the customers,
-
we won't barely even notice
an increase in our coffee cup
-
or Coke or Pepsi, or anything.
-
CA: Like, what, like a cent extra?
-
AF: Less. Quarter of a cent, half a cent.
-
It'll be absolutely minimal.
-
But what it does,
-
it makes every bit of plastic
all over the world an article of value.
-
Where you have the waste worst,
-
say Southeast Asia, India,
-
that's where the wealth is most.
-
CA: OK, so it feels like
there's two parts to this.
-
One is, if they will charge more money
-
but carve out that excess
-
and pay it -- into what? --
a fund operated by someone
-
to tackle this problem of -- what?
-
What would that money be used for,
that they charge the extra for?
-
AF: So when I speak
to really big businesses,
-
I say, "Look, I need you to change,
and I need you to change really fast,"
-
their eyes are going
to peel over in boredom,
-
unless I say, "And it's good business."
-
"OK, now you've got my attention, Andrew."
-
So I say, "Right, I need
you to make a contribution
-
to an environmental
and industry transition fund.
-
Over two or three years,
-
the entire global plastics industry
-
can transition from getting
its building blocks from fossil fuel
-
to getting its building
blocks from plastic.
-
The technology is out there.
-
It's proven."
-
I've taken two multibillion-dollar
operations from nothing,
-
recognizing that
the technology can be scaled.
-
I see at least a dozen technologies
in plastic to handle all types of plastic.
-
So once those technologies
have an economic margin,
-
which this gives them,
-
that's where the global public
will get all their plastic from,
-
from existing plastic.
-
CA: So every sale of virgin plastic
contributes money to a fund
-
that is used to basically
transition the industry
-
and start to pay for things
like cleanup and other pieces.
-
AF: Absolutely. Absolutely.
-
CA: And it has
the incredible side benefit,
-
which is maybe even the main benefit,
-
of creating a market.
-
It suddenly makes recyclable plastic
-
a giant business that can unlock
millions of people around the world
-
to find a new living collecting it.
-
AF: Yeah, exactly.
-
So all you do is, you've got fossil
fuel plastics at this value
-
and recycled plastic at this value.
-
You change it.
-
So recycled plastic is cheaper
than fossil fuel plastics.
-
The world goes to fossil fuel plastics.
-
What I love about this most, Chris,
is that, you know,
-
we waste into the environment
300, 350 million tons of plastic.
-
On the oil and gas companies own accounts,
-
it's going to grow to 500 million tons.
-
This is an accelerating problem.
-
But every ton of that is polymer.
-
Polymer is 1,000 dollars,
1,500 dollars a ton.
-
That's half a trillion dollars
which could go into business
-
and could create jobs and opportunities
and wealth right across the world,
-
particularly in the most impoverished.
-
Yet we throw it away.
-
CA: So this would allow the big companies
to invest in recycling plants
-
literally all over the world --
-
AF: All over the world.
-
Because the technology
is low-capital cost,
-
you can put it in at rubbish dumps,
at the bottom of big hotels,
-
garbage depots, everywhere,
-
turn that waste into resin.
-
CA: Now, you're a philanthropist,
-
and you're ready to commit
some of your own wealth to this.
-
What is the role of philanthropy
in this project?
-
AF: I think what we have to do
is kick in the 40 to 50 million US dollars
-
to get it going,
-
and then we have to create
absolute transparency
-
so everyone can see
exactly what's going on.
-
From the resin producer
to the brands to the consumers,
-
everyone gets to see
who is playing the game,
-
who is protecting the Earth,
and who doesn't care.
-
And that'll cost about
a million dollars a week,
-
and we're going to underwrite
that for five years.
-
Total contribution is circa
300 million US dollars.
-
CA: Wow.
-
Now --
-
(Applause)
-
You've talked to other companies,
like to the Coca-Colas of this world,
-
who are willing to do this,
they're willing to pay a higher price,
-
they would like to pay a higher price,
-
so long as it's fair.
-
AF: Yeah, it's fair.
-
So, Coca-Cola wouldn't
like Pepsi to play ball
-
unless the whole world knew
that Pepsi wasn't playing ball.
-
Then they don't care.
-
So it's that transparency of the market
-
where, if people try and cheat the system,
-
the market can see it,
the consumers can see it.
-
The consumers want a role to play in this.
-
Seven and a half billion of us.
-
We don't want our world smashed
by a hundred companies.
-
CA: Well, so tell us, you've said
what the companies can do
-
and what you're willing to do.
-
What can people listening do?
-
AF: OK, so I would like all of us,
-
all around the world,
-
to go a website called noplasticwaste.org.
-
You contact your hundred resin producers
-
which are in your region.
-
You will have at least one
-
within an email or Twitter
or a telephone contact from you,
-
and let them know that you would like them
to make a contribution to a fund
-
which industry can manage
or the World Bank can manage.
-
It raises tens of billions
of dollars per year
-
so you can transition the industry
to getting all its plastic from plastic,
-
not from fossil fuel.
-
We don't need that.
That's bad. This is good.
-
And it can clean up the environment.
-
We've got enough capital there,
-
we've got tens of billions
of dollars, Chris, per annum
-
to clean up the environment.
-
CA: You're in the recycling business.
-
Isn't this a conflict of interest for you,
-
or rather, a huge business
opportunity for you?
-
AF: Yeah, look, I'm in
the iron ore business,
-
and I compete against
the scrap metal business,
-
and that's why you don't have
any scrap lying around to trip over,
-
and cut your toe on,
-
because it gets collected.
-
CA: This isn't your excuse
to go into the plastic recycling business.
-
AF: No, I am going to cheer for this boom.
-
This will be the internet
of plastic waste.
-
This will be a boom industry
which will spread all over the world,
-
and particularly where poverty is worst
because that's where the rubbish is most,
-
and that's the resource.
-
So I'm going to cheer for it
and stand back.
-
CA: Twiggy, we're in an era
-
where so many people around the world
are craving a new, regenerative economy,
-
these big supply chains,
these big industries,
-
to fundamentally transform.
-
It strikes me as a giant idea,
-
and you're going to need a lot of people
cheering you on your way
-
to make it happen.
-
Thank you for sharing this with us.
-
AF: Thank you very much. Thank you, Chris.
-
(Applause)