2000 years ago London was a marsh
The Romans built the first bridge here in 1850
For century after century this city grew
And it's still growing
It's incredible what we humans can build
On the face of it out of nothing
But in reality nothing comes from nothing
I magine all the materials the hours and energy that we used to build
different versions of London over the past 2000 years
And imagine what resources are needed now to run London
for just one day
The world we live in brings each of us so many incredible benefits
but we often forget that it comes with a cost
Waste
We have become too comfortable in societies
that are immensely wasteful
As a consequence across the globe the natural world about us is now
suffering from the waste we throw away
We are fast learning that on this finite planet
there is no such place as away
This barge and dozens like it are part of the waste management
of London helping to deal responsibly with one million tonnes
of waste each year
This waste will be turned into energy
But we should be asking ourselves why there is so much waste
in the first place
Is it possible for us to keep what we have and continue to progress
without generating waste?
That's the hope of the fifth goal of the Earthshot Prize
Every year until 200
the prize will award 1 million to a project that can help us
build a waste-free world
This film will expose the root causes of our wastefulness
highlight people around the world working on incredible solutions
And I 'll introduce you to the new projects shortlisted
for this year's Earthshot Prize
The people who built London over the centuries could not
have imagined what the city would become today
If we are genuinely to become sustainable on Earth
we must now start to build something that perhaps is hard for us
to imagine and achieve the last of our five Earthshots
Here to tell its story
are Sir David and another member of our Earthshot Prize Council
A person with an invaluable perspective on our waste problem
Hindou Oumarou I brahim
If you do not ncrease fnance for adaptaton
soon there wll be noone to adapt.
Its true that the natural world s n essence the most ggantc
the most effcent
and the most spectacular recyclng system magnable.
Lfe establshed tself on ths planet bllons of years ago...
...when prmtve speces developed ways to buld ther bodes
from the raw materals of the Earth.
But these materals are dffcult to secure.
And once n the lvng world nature works to recycle them.
The grasslands of the erenget grow vgorously on sols
enrched by neghbourng volcanoes.
Ome of the greatest herds on Earth tour these pastures
gnawng to the ground to capture the precous nutrents.
The herds n turn sustan the greatest concentratons
of large predators found anywhere.
Others take ther place n ther nutrent cycle
by recyclng materals ndgestble to most.
Theres no waste. Anythng not needed by one
becomes food for the next.
These grand cycles of nutrents form a tradng organsaton
known as an ecosystem.
Every lvng thng on Earth plays ts part.
The busy recycler
capturng borrowng
usng and passng on materals
even after theyve ceased to be lvng.
On the deep seabed a host of barre creatures spend decades
breakng down the remans of any lvng thng that falls from above.
If any mnerals are mssed they wll be bured n the sea floor
but nothng s lost from the system.
Itmately even that has returned to the surface to feed
nto the lvng world.
Nature s the very model of a wastefree world.
Its far more productve more complex and more dverse
than our human world.
And yet all the myrad structures and materals ts made of
are degradable ndeed bodegradable.
Its nutrents are on an endless crcular journey
perpetually beng used and reused.
The human world s not lke ths.
We mne the raw materals. We buld a product.
We use t for a lmted perod and then we dscard t
and we get another one.
Ths s known as a lnear process.
Its the cause of our waste problem.
Where nature has crcles we have lnes.
The consequence of a lnear approach s that we end up wth waste
stuff we no longer fnd useful.
The most problematc waste s made of materals ntentonally bult
to resst the breakdown system of the natural world
ncludng products made of metal...
...glass...
...synthetc fbres
and the many types of plastc.
Ths s the non bodegradable waste and because t never rots
after beng thrown away t never truly goes away.
It just becomes someone elses problem.
Polluted waterways lke ths can be wtnessed around the world.
The volume of non bodegradable products that humanty generates
across the planet s remarkable.
Each year we use over mllon tons of plastc alone.
Most of t s not recycled.
I n wealther natons non bodegradable waste s removed
by organsed collectons.
But per person these countres create more waste
than anywhere else.
Because t doesnt bodegrade the volume nevtably accumulates.
Non bodegradable waste s often exported to other natons
once agan to become someone elses problem.
The nted tates alone sends more than half a mllon tons
of plastc overseas every year.
Much of t ends up n countres wth poor waste management systems.
Anythng that can be used s used but the volume
of materal s overwhelmng.
Its been reported that the Afrcan naton of hana alone receves
mllons of tems of clothng from the West each week.
And that some of t s of such low qualty that t cant be sold.
Nce much of t contans non bodegradable fbres lke nylon
and polyester t nevtably jons
the plastc waste on landfll stes.
Ths s the fallout of our wasteful socetes our fast fashon
our sngle use plastc our lnear approach to lfe.
Itmately the non bodegradable waste that doesnt end up
n a landfll may fnd ts way to the sea the worlds snk.
I n recent years more than eght mllon tons of plastc
have been reachng our oceans annually.
Here t floats about drven by the currents.
Ome of t wll snk to the sea floor.
The rest s worn by wave acton salt and sunshne
nto mcroplastc fragments small enough to be eaten
by wldlfe and enter the food chan.
Today we know plastc may be damagng our ocean creatures.
And when we eat seafood ts possble we are eatng
mcroplastcs although at levels that dont seem
to be harmful as yet.
But materals that wll not break down are only part
of our waste problem.
We also create bodegradable waste wood products...
...natural fbres...
...paper...
...and unused food.
Worldwde we waste more than a thrd of the food we produce
whch n turn wastes mllons of tons of fertlser
and trllons of ltres of water.
The food that s wasted wll have added bllons of tonnes
of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere durng ts producton.
The wastage of food occurs at every stage of the journey
from feld to plate.
Ths s the story of just one of those journeys.
The grapes that are up to standard are cleaned sorted
weghed and packed. Once theyve left the farm
they must be refrgerated as quckly as possble.
Tacked n contaners the grapes jon other products
from across the contnent to begn ther epc oneway voyage
around the world.
Every year contaner shps some of the bggest movng objects
ever made help transport around four mllon tonnes of grapes
for nternatonal sale.
Outh Amerca s the leadng exporter wth more than a quarter
of the busness.
The journey from Chle to Europe can take up to a month.
The race s on to get the grapes to ther next destnaton.
O once they come here contaners dscharged from the vessel
we truck t to the warehouse. We open t up and thats the moment
of the surprse whether t came n well or not.
My name s Jon Marc chu of FI Rotterdam.
We source frut from all over the world.
We have to do a OC check to see what t has arrved n the condton
that our customers wll requre.
I thnk n the packng statons easly you can face somethng lke
of food thats gong to be thrown away.
And ths s completely edble.
Theres nothng wrong wth t. It just doesnt look as nce.
Lets assume you were havng a bunch of grapes or an apple
from the garden of your grandmother
and theres one rotten berry n there.
Youd just pck t out and thats t and the rest
of the product s perfect.
Nowadays ths one brown berry
wll cause a complete reject of one pallet of frut.
Thats one ton of frut rejected.
But f t doesnt look nce t does not get sold n the supermarket.
Even once the grapes reach ther destnaton
they may not be eaten.
One study found that . mllon tonnes of household food
s thrown away each year wthn the alone.
We humans have accepted that we are wasteful.
Its dffcult to estmate the volume of waste we produce
but one study suggests t could be seven to ten bllon tonnes
globally per year.
Of our muncpal waste we recycle less than .
And wth each passng year ths waste we produce ncreases.
Estmates suggest that by
we may produce more than one and a half tmes the volume
we produce today.
We are turnng our Earth nto somethng unquely human.
A world of waste.
How can we turn ths stuaton around?
There s a smple soluton to ths complex problem.
We need to take a page out of natures book and fnd a use
for everythng we now throw away.
As the people who deal wth the daly supply of waste
n hana have dscovered.
I brahm s one of thousands of people workng alongsde
the landfll ste at Agbogbloshe.
Ths workforce embody the rght way to thnk about waste.
Not as waste...
...but as scrap.
Whether alumnum comes from computer parts or car parts
t doesnt matter to I brahm.
Its all materals movng wthn a cycle
just as nutrents cycle n nature.
To buld a wastefree world
we must remagne what we mean by waste
and start behavng lke the natural world.
Esgnng a system n whch the waste of one process
s the food for the next.
Fndng ways to break down every product
so that ts buldng blocks
can be handed on to ts next use.
Our materals wll then become lke natures nutrents
cyclng through the system.
All our producton lnes wll turn nto crcles.
I n a world bult of crcles
there s no end of the lne
and therefore no waste.
Is ths a dream or can t be realty?
The fact s ths knd of crcular thnkng s not new.
Its been part of human exstence throughout our hstory.
We just need to be remnded of ths.
The frst step to elmnate waste
s to elmnate the word from the language
because that makes us thnk dfferently about waste.
I nstead of waste water we have resource water
because the water s stll full of resources lke for nstance
heat and phosphorous.
Waste s really only waste f you cant fnd a use for t.
My name s Lsbeth Randers.
I m the symboss coordnator of alundborg ymboss
a unque ndustral ste
wth a group of companes workng together to share resources.
The waste from one company
becomes the raw materal for another company.
I n nature symboss s when two speces work together
to beneft each other.
We can apply ths thnkng to our approach to ndustry.
And I thnk ts a beautful descrpton
of what s actually happenng
because we are lvng closely together for mutual beneft.
Across the cooperatve we have botech
energy and manufacturng companes.
Each of them has waste products
that can be used by the next n the chan
excess energy water or materals.
J ust one chan of resources for example
we collect water from a nearby lake.
Ths s pped to a botech company.
Here we produce many enymes that are used n detergents
anmal feed food producton.
We also produce half of the worlds nsuln here.
When you make these wonderful products lke enymes and nsuln
youre left wth a by product the sludge.
Ths sludge can actually be used to make fertlser for agrculture.
But t can also be used as a raw materal for energy producton
at the nearby bogas staton.
Here bogas s upgraded
to natural gas and provdes local ndustry wth energy.
O ths s an example of how the system
where one producton results n waste
s changed nto a crcular loop where you can actually see
that waste beng the raw materal of the energy producton.
At the end any excess water s cleaned and returned to nature.
The ambton s that nothng s wasted.
The companes get the beneft from makng a savng
of mllon a year.
We are not only dong ths for the beneft of envronment
ts also good busness.
Ero waste s a goal and I thnk that beng able to completely
elmnate waste wll take hard work n the comng years
but I m absolutely sure that we wll manage to reach that goal
but were not there yet. We have to work stll.
My name s eran Whtaker and I farm black solder fles.
Ther larvae convert food waste and other agrcultural sde streams
nto hghqualty proten that we can then use to feed anmals
pets and humans n the long term.
Were able to utlse these huge volumes of food waste
to feed our nsects. Our black solder fles are not fussy.
They wll eat almost any organc waste materal.
We use local brewery wastes at the end of the brewng process
coffee waste and lastly we use frut and vegetable offcuts
and you know stuff thats not sold at the end of the day
and we then create that nto a perfect blend to feed the nsects.
Fundamentally there are two dfferent processes
to farmng nsects. On the one hand
you have the creaton of the next generaton
and then separately you have the fattenng of the nsects
that are gong to become anmal feed.
I n the space of just to days
they wll grow from almost the se of a gran of sand
nto about an nch long proten bar.
O they can grow up to tmes ther body mass
n that perod of tme.
The nsect larvae are then ground down and turn nto a proten feed
supplyng ndustres wth hgh proten demand
such as meat producton and fsh farmng.
The most effcent part of ths s ts hours a day
days of a year producton.
These nsects wll contnue to eat ths product and grow and convert
nto the sustanable proten all day all nght
no matter where they are.
Whch means that we can mplement ths anywhere n the world.
And now we need to do t on a truly massve scale.
Our next faclty should be able to process more than tonnes
of food waste every year.
O plastc has a bad reputaton. I thnk we need to remember
that plastc has transformed our socety.
Ynthetc plastcs are an ncredble materal.
These long polymer chans gve them ncredble durablty
they make them lghtweght and you can mould them
nto just about any shape.
And ths makes them so ubqutous n the manufacturng ndustry.
O my name s John Mceehan and I m a professor of structural bology
and drector of the Centre for Enyme I nnovaton
at the nversty of Portsmouth.
When we desgned synthetc plastcs
we knd of took our nspraton from nature.
Nature uses polymers all the tme. It takes these buldng blocks
and lnks them together to form these long chans.
If you look at a plastc lke PET
the stuff that makes plastc bottles
and most of our clothes actually as well
thats held together by the same bond called an ester bond.
O nature has developed over mllons of years
to break that bond and we can use those enymes
to break that bond n synthetc plastcs too.
O n a group n Japan
had actually dscovered a bacterum
that was growng n a recyclng dump.
Ths bacterum was actually lvng off the plastc tself.
It was eatng PET plastc and usng t as a food and an energy source
and thats really qute ncredble.
What ths meant was that evoluton was actually n acton.
O breakng down the bottles s actually qute a smple process.
You take the bottles you put them n lqud ntrogen
that makes them super cold
and thats mportant because when you then grnd them down
they dont remelt. They actually form these small fragments.
We then take t a stage further and actually mll them down
nto fne powder and that ncreases the surface area and makes them
really accessble for enymes.
Lterally at that pont we take a jar of ths materal
and we pour n the powdered enymes and we just mx t.
And over tme the enyme wll start to act on the plastc and youll see
ths soluton just go clear
as the enyme breaks the polymer nto ts buldng blocks.
And ths s a massve opportunty for desgn of future materals
where you can use these recycled waste streams to make the monomers
turn them nto compostes but compostes that can be recycled
at the end of lfe. And ths s a huge opportunty for ndustry.
New York has a really rch hstory when t comes to waste.
Early days lke late s
waste prmarly went nto the rvers
and thats actually why you see that bg parts of Lower Manhattan
are bult on landfll t was lterally the waste plng up.
About a thrd of what ends up n landfll n New York Cty
s food waste. o that s the bggest porton of the waste
that could be dverted.
If you have food scraps you can compost them.
And thats great because ts essentally takng somethng
that would have been wasted and turnng t nto...
...almost lke a fertlser. Its actually very valuable
and around New York Cty
we have both smallscale communty compostng stes
as well as our commercal largescale compostng ste.
And were actually able to sell t to landscapers and use some of that
revenue to go back nto the erowaste educaton.
Its just really rewardng and exctng
to see all the dfferent creatve ways that New Yorkers
and our nsttutons are comng together around waste.
The root cause of waste s dsposablty
usng thngs for an ncredbly short perod of tme.
My name s Tom aky
and I m the founder and CEO of TerraCycle and Loop.
Before the s we cobbled our shoes.
We mended our clothes. We bought mlk from the mlkman.
The only dfference between Loop and really a mlkman model
s that Loop tres to expand that concept for everythng
from your shampoo to your motor ol
from your orange juce to your favourte spread.
Our job here s shftng packagng from beng your property at the end
to property of the manufacturer at the end.
By makng the package property of the manufacturer n the end
through a depost mechansm the manufacturer s gong to be
motvated selfshly to make that package last a long tme
to make t durable to make t refllable.
I n a place lke ths the beatng heart of captalsm and consumersm
I thnk we can shft and become much more n tune wth nature
and consumng and thrvng n a sustanable way.
I do thnk ts achevable to send ero waste to landflls
but ts gong to take a lot of work.
0 years ago the River Thames was biologically dead
Today it is one of the cleanest city rivers in the world
We can clean up our act and the Earthshot Prize
is here to recognise reward
and support those with the best solutions to do so
It is an honour for me to introduce you to the three finalists
for this the first-ever Earthshot Prize
to build a waste-free world
Our first idea WOTA BO
is the world's first portable water recycling plant
reusing domestic waste water from appliances like showers and sinks
I n many countries poor infrastructure wastes huge amounts
of water due to leaky pipes and inadequate treatment facilities
Within five years two thirds of the world's population
may face shortages of this precious resource
Yosuke Maeda and the WOTA BO team's solution
is to recycle the water at its point of use
The device starts with a reservoir of water As the water is used
it goes through a series of filters
AI sensors ensure that the water isn't released until it's clean
This way the same water can safely be used again and again
Since it doesn't require an external water supply or drainage
it is portable It could be used anywhere in any situation
This technology is scalable and extremely efficient
But it is expensive
With extra support the designers will work on bringing down the price
of production so countries all over the globe
particularly those with poor infrastructure can benefit
Next we head to East Africa with Sanergy
a project that builds lavatories for communities without sewage systems
and in doing so has found a circular solution for human waste
My name s avd Auerbach and I ve lved here n Narob enya
for the last ten years.
Were helpng to clean up fastgrowng ctes
wth our waste collecton servces.
Were provdng vtal servces for hundreds of thousands of people.
It matters to me that people have access to clean tolets
because I thnk everyone
deserves to lve n a safe clean envronment.
Sanergy collects around 1000 tonnes of waste each year
from the slums With this much waste
they had to find a circular solution for what to do with it
If we could create somethng from the waste
we knew that we would have a soluton that would be sustanable
and could grow.
They began with a process which heats up the waste
killing any bacteria and making it safe for use as fertiliser
This fertiliser has helped local farmers increase yields
I ntally we would get four klos or fve klos.
Now we are up to nne or sometmes even klos per plant.
Its enabled me to knd of lower my producton cost.
We have also mproved our grade and qualty of the frut
better shelf lfe bgger ses and better presentaton for the market.
I thnk the round economy style of dong t s really creatve
helps us clean the cty at the same tme usng the same waste materal
that we use to be able to grow
and feed the same cty agan. Its just amang.
Everythng about anergy s crcular.
We collect waste we process t
we produce fertlser whch grows crops and people feed from that
and then we collect waste agan.
BLEATI NG
If we dont manage waste n the future
ts gong to be catastrophc.
Were gong to destroy our envronment destroy our rvers
and our oceans and were gong to make each other sck.
Weve come up wth a system that wll help solve that problem.
The project is still developing
It's now turning to our friend the black soldier fly
to scale up its production
The soldier flies feed on the waste
that can be turned into a protein- rich
affordable animal feed an organic fertiliser
anergys work can be done anywhere.
We have got a great soluton and t needs to go global.
And I just want to go faster.
Sanergy is an inspiring example of a circular solution
to a huge waste problem
With more support and investment the project wants to expand
production across seven other African nations
and treat one million tonnes of human waste a year
helping millions of people in the process
The city of Milan is our third finalist
It leads the world in tackling the problem of food waste
with a citywide system that rewards markets shops restaurants
and canteens for passing on unused edible food
to those who need it via local food hubs run by volunteers
The food hubs can redistribute over 100 tonnes of food per year
to people that need it
equivalent to almost a quarter of a million meals
The city offers tax breaks to businesses that donate food
and in fact saves money because there is less biodegradable waste
for them to treat But what's happening in Milan
isn't about just money
Milan believes it can reduce its food waste by half by 200
and it wants to help other cities to do so too
Milan's approach to food waste
works for the economy society and the environment
The city next hopes to share its blueprint with more cities
across the world
I n this series we've discovered the five Earthshots we have
to undertake in the next decade
But is it all too much?
Can we pull this off?
If there's one thing we can be sure of
it is that we humans have the capacity to change the world
The issue is - the way our modern world operates at present
is simply not sustainable
Which means that those of us alive today
have been handed the momentous task of deciding the future of humankind
We stand at a fork in the road
If we continue on our current path
the natural world will decline around us and with it
potentially everything we now take for granted
But if we take the other path
if we strive to find solutions to our biggest problems
we can create a different future for our children and grandchildren
A better future
One in which both humanity and nature thrive
I n which the way we live our lives works in harmony with the climate
A future with flourishing productive oceans
One that is free of the burden of our waste
And that offers each of us clean air with every breath
It is within our reach
But only if we reach for it now
Over the next ten years
the Earthshot Prize will celebrate
champion
and scale 50 innovative solutions
to the biggest environmental challenges facing our planet
But in truth it'll take a lot more than 50 solutions
It will take every one of us as individuals
as schools
as communities
as businesses
and as leaders to do our bit
What do we want? Clmate justce
And when do we want t? Now now
to change our choices and our habits
to set and achieve our own personal Earthshots
We can change the world again Today every one of us
may - unintentionally - be part of the problem
But from today working together
we can all become part of the solution