(clock ticking)
(water droplet sound)
(clock ticking)
(soft piano music begins)
John Fullerton: I had lunch once with
a former CEO of one of the big banks.
(soft suspenseful music)
He started shaking his head and he said:
"You know, John, it's just too big.
I can't, I can't go there."
(soft piano music)
I didn't seem to be able to elicit the reaction
in them that I had in myself,
which was: Put your pencil down, stop,
and Rethink Everything.
(upbeat music)
(ding)
(upbeat music)
(water droplet sound)
(clock ticking)
(upbeat music)
James Lovelock: It all seemed obvious, didn't it?
I had no doubts.
And I don't now.
(upbeat music)
Because I had no idea that what
I was talking about was something revolutionary.
All I knew was it was something
everybody seemed to disagree with.
But I was right all the time.
Janine Benyus: It changed the way
I thought about everything else.
John Fullerton: An idea that extends from the microscopic
to the cosmic - the magic is that it never ends.
Arthur Huang: It definitely make me feel like
this is going to change the world.
-: We have this entire misunderstanding of what Darwin
really meant when he said: "Survival of the fittest."
-: It's this incredible juggling act
of the same materials over, and over, and over again.
-: Everything is interrelated to each other,
it's self-balancing, and we are screwing up the balance.
(upbeat bright music)
John Fullerton: We need to re-imagine
our place in the universe.
(waves wash up on beach)
(water droplet sound)
(clock ticking)
-: I don't tend to think too much of the past;
perhaps because I can remember it so clearly.
I don't have to think about it.
It's like turning the pages of a book -
memories are like that.
(clock ticking)
(birds chirping)
If you go right back to the beginning,
I estimate that I was conceived on Armistice Day,
World War I,
(laughs)
November the 11th,
19...
What would that be? 1918.
My mother was rather upset about me making an appearance
in her womb, because she had a very quite good job.
So, she shunted me to my grandmother to raise me.
My father who worked in Brixton, in South London,
I only saw occasionally.
He was a wonderful
teacher in many ways.
(piano music)
For my Christmas present one year,
he gave me by far the best present.
(paper shuffling)
What he called, "a box of tricks,"
which was bits of wire, and bells, and lights.
He said: "There you are.
Try joining up those things.
See what you can make."
(soft ding)
(soft upbeat music)
(paper shuffling)
I was four years old, and there's something about
the feel of things like this
that inspired me
in many ways.
I remember going around pestering people and saying:
"Why do you need two wires to send electricity along?
You can send gas down a pipe, or water down a pipe.
It's just one can do that."
And nobody could give me the answer.
And I realized then I'd have to find out for myself.
I think this happens to most children.
I think children will get turned on to music or painting,
or something like that by being given something around about
that age, and a chance to concentrate.
(swift piano music)
-: I must've been 10 or 11 years old.
And I had heard about microscopes
and I was interested in it.
My Dad went to Edmund Scientific in Barrington, New Jersey.
He got me slides, and slide covers, and test tubes.
And he got me a really good microscope;
he got me a professional microscope.
He asked the guy who made the signs at work.
He got one that said: "Janine Benyus Microscopist."
You might as well have said: "Astronaut,"
because every time I sat down,
I was traveling to another world. Right?
And he got me this book called: "Hunting with a Microscope,"
it's full of all these black-and-white drawings
of these exotic creatures.
You know, they looked like science-fiction dragons to me.
We got some pond water.
I looked at it that night in the microscope,
and sure enough.
(bright piano music)
There were all these creatures that I had seen.
And it blew my mind.
It just... it just blew my mind.
(bright piano music)
It changed the way I thought about everything else.
(melancholic music begins)
-: The happiest memory I have was something that
I always looked forward to every Saturday.
(upbeat music begins)
(background market chatter)
On Saturday night, we would go to my Grandpa's house.
My Grandpa would put on like a full suit, three-piece suit.
He's very elegant in terms of the way he walks,
the way he dressed.
And then we would walk to the night market,
and we will have four or five different type of dishes.
(upbeat music)
(background market chatter)
(food sizzling)
(metal tapping)
(beeping)
(upbeat piano music)
(background market chatter)
I still remember it very clearly that every stall
there's always, like, two buckets - there's one bucket
of used utensils and used bowls and cups,
and the other bowl is a clean one.
I never thought twice about that system.
But when I went to the States -
wow.
(bright music intensifies)
At first, it's actually quite amazing.
You go to any fast-food restaurant -
everything is like layers and layers of packaging.
Everything is plastic; from the straw, the lid,
even the cups, all the way to all the wrappers,
tomato sauce.
At the end, I always tried to return those ketchups
back to the counter.
And then they say: "No, no, no, just dump it."
Whole tray - straight into the trash bin.
For me, the shock was like: "This is how rich people,
wealthy people, developed nations consume."
In a way, in the beginning, really,
you actually think it's actually quite cool.
(upbeat dance music)
(upbeat dance music intensifies)
John Fullerton: When you ask me about the beginning
of my career on Wall Street,
I was very proud to be accepted
into this
fraternity of elitism.
(upbeat dance music)
(alarm clock beeping)
(upbeat dance music)
I went to Brooks Brothers and bought my suit,
and polished my shoes.
There I was, all proud as a peacock.
âª I like the way you move; I like the way you smile. âª
âª You show yourself... âª
âª Show yourself. Show yourself. âª
It was exciting time, flying around the world first class.
I was in Tokyo and London, and they paid you a lot.
There was some real bad behavior.
We got carried away more than we should have, for sure.
But it was success - that is like a drug.
It was crazy.
I was the second-youngest Managing Director of J.P. Morgan.
You know, life was great.
It was nothing but fun and excitement and ego gratification.
And you know, what could, what could go wrong?
(metal wind chimes clanging)
(upbeat piano music)
Janine Benyus: I was a little scientist in training.
I began to really notice
rhythms, the cycles,
and the patterns
in the natural world.
(birds chirping)
(upbeat music)
(birds chirping)
And I would be out there all day long.
It was like Wind in the Willows.
(birds chirping)
I remember the moment when all that changed.
(footsteps crunching)
(melancholic music)
It was spring, I was 12,
and things were not quite right.
Everywhere I looked, I started to see these flags.
And then I found another one, and another one.
(melancholic music)
They were starting at one end and scraping
the field.
(engine roaring)
(crackling of branches and trees)
So,
that summer
I watched
them replace
this incredibly competent, beautiful,
complex system, living system.
-: [TV News Reporter] People move out from the crowded cities
to build homes and raise their family.
Janine Benyus: With streets, and driveways, and roads.
-: [TV News Reporter] One subdivision after another,
leapfrogs across the landscape,
competing for valuable land space.
Man, with his modern machines,
is consuming land at a frightening rate.
(rock music)
About 3,000 acres are cleared every day
to make room for the growing ranks of suburban dwelling.
(cash register dings)
(rock and roll music)
âª Everybody says it's just like rock and roll. âª
(cars engine accelerating)
(rock and roll music)
âª Fly like a plane, drive like a car, âª
âª hold out your hand. âª
âª Babe, I wanna be your man. âª
John Fullerton: To me, the modern world is a pretty
interesting experience right now.
(screaming)
It's filled with excitement, innovations, and opportunities
that my parents never could have imagined
when they were growing up.
It's like many things; it's a paradox.
It's both great and terrifying.
âª I wanna be... âª
I wonder what it would look like if we were removed from
the day-to-day, and sort of sitting up in a spaceship,
looking down at humans on Earth.
In many ways, we're all trapped in this system
where we're hustling for more money to buy more stuff
that we know doesn't give us happiness
in order to impress people that, many of which,
we really don't even like.
And you know, it's kind of insane.
But if you go out on the street, everything seems fine.
It's hard to imagine that there's
something fundamentally wrong.
(woman humming)
-: Aw, thank you.
(clock ticking)
(birds chirping)
James Lovelock: Life somehow always put me in places
where there were interesting questions to answer
or things to invent; and then having invented them,
I could then use them and try and find out
answers to other problems.
Like, for example, when I invented the E.C.D. -
the Electron Capture Detector.
(soft piano music)
James In 1957: This device
is quite exceptionally sensitive.
More so, even than an animal's nose,
and that's quite remarkable for it's not often
that one can do better than nature.
James Lovelock: It wasn't long before it was used to find
the presence of tiny amounts of pesticides
and other poisonous substances in the environment.
-: [Male TV Reporter] The pesticide problem is an application
in which this invention proved its worth.
We're now alerted to the dangers
of an uncontrolled use of pesticides;
a buildup of man-made chemicals
in the tissues of animals and man.
And it took Professor Lovelock's Detector
to spot the minute quantities involved.
-: The E.C.D. seemed to have a partial
for picking only the really dangerous things,
like the CFCs, which were in every spray can everywhere,
and were building up in the atmosphere, hugely.
-: [Female TV Reporter] A little known chemical that depletes
the ozone layer is found in hundreds of household products.
James Lovelock: Lots of things that we throw away,
like the gas in the spray can - it goes into the atmosphere
and does all sorts of things thereafter.
-: [Female TV Reporter] The chemical is one of several
pollutants believed to be damaging the
protective blanket in the atmosphere
that shields the Earth from ultraviolet radiation.
(airplane engine roaring)
(soft upbeat music)
John Fullerton: Develop a great reputation,
get hired to run the world bank to save the world,
and retire as a proud citizen.
That was sort of a model of a career path
that appealed very much to me.
-: [Female Plane Attendant] For everyone's safety,
please keep the aisles clear.
Right now, sit back, and relax, and enjoy the flight.
John Fullerton: There I was sitting in Singapore Air,
first class, and it was Father's Day,
and I was thinking about my kids.
And I looked down and there was an article that talked about
the low-income housing system,
and how corrupt and mismanaged it was.
That spoke to me about all these problems in the world.
And on the left-hand column, there was an article
about a media executive...
Airplane Radio: Ladies and gentlemen,
we seem to be encountering a bit of turbulence.
John Fullerton: And he had decided to give away
virtually all of his fortune;
it was something like 350 million dollars.
Airplane Radio: All passengers,
please return to their seats,
and fasten their seatbelts.
(audio fast-forward sound)
(glass hits table)
Airplane Radio: We should be back on track now,
and heading for our scheduled landing.
-: It's almost like being the naive recruit
who signed up for the military and was sent to Vietnam,
and then realized mid-battle that:
"This fight wasn't about what I thought it was about.
And what the hell am I doing here?"
(upbeat music)
J.P. Morgan was the only firm
I'd ever worked in out of college.
And honestly, I didn't know what I was going to do next.
(water washing up against boat)
I got a call from a friend of mine.
He asked if I wanted to join him and this other guy
sailing across the Atlantic.
(waves hitting boat)
A thousand miles east of Newport, which is a week's sailing,
cruising along at about nine knots, fresh breeze.
And I was down below sleeping,
and something bizarre had happened.
(big crashing sound)
(metal hits floor)
(crashing)
The first thought that went through my head was:
"We must have hit... we must have hit something big."
A humpback whale had come up from below the boat
and smashed into our rudder, and split it in half.
Because we couldn't steer, we were going around in circles;
in a sense, out of control.
Somewhat ironically, I was...
happened to be reading Moby Dick at the time.
The coincidence of that is sort of
too remarkable to not notice.
It felt like a message about, you know:
"Life is not just meant to go on as it was,
and this is a turning point that's more profound
than you realize. So, wake up."
(melancholic music)
Arthur Huang: Every human has the same desire.
We're all tempted by it.
Deep inside, there is a
constant
urge
to own,
to own
more.
Yeah.
(soft melancholic music)
I was in the United States until I was, like, 25.
(melancholic music)
During this time, consumer cultures become all-time boom.
Once you come back to Taiwan,
you don't see any differentiations.
Now Taiwan is the same as the West.
In this consumption culture, everywhere in the world
has now almost like a standard template of success.
Same type of watch you need to wear,
same type of car you need to drive,
same type of apartment you should have.
(sirens)
But that's what consumer culture is about.
(sirens)
This beauty is deceptive.
What are these light doing?
(melancholic music)
It's creating this ambience for us to admire
this cluster of buildings in the middle of the city.
This is basically a psychological
symbol of progress, growth.
We get over-hyped up about this sense of achievement.
Right?
You're getting higher, and taller, brighter, more colorful.
Unfortunately, this glittering beauty - behind it,
it's just lots of frivolous consumption.
And some of that is
very much
against
what nature wants or what the environment needs us to do.
You can really look at the world in two ways.
(bright music begins)
There is a biosphere, which is Earth and all living beings,
but there is new ecosystem that human built for themselves.
This man-made technosphere is
everything on Earth that is not natural.
This infrastructure that we built
-: roads, networks, informations -
is not in balance with the natural ecosystem.
We have to rethink that.
It's okay to build these things,
but we have to do it in a smart way.
(footsteps on hard floor)
(door clicks open)
-: Lying on my desk was a letter
from the director of Space Flight Operations at NASA,
asking: "Would I join in with them
in their Lunar and Planetary Exploration Program?"
The idea of actually being asked to join -
was extraordinary.
And it was all a consequence
of that Electron Capture Detector.
Male Narrator: Here in the rusty valleys of Mars,
autumn is almost over in the Northern Hemisphere.
James Lovelock: What NASA wanted was a tiny,
little instrument that was small enough that their
rockets could take to Mars,
or the moon or whatnot, and do an analysis
of the surface and see if it was fit for life.
-: [TV News Reporter] With the entire world as our witness,
the countdown begins at Cape Canaveral, Florida,
for One Of Man's greatest adventures.
James Lovelock: I was told I've got until Friday
-: the end of the week -
to find a way of finding life on Mars or any other planet,
come to that.
(background chatter of NASA reporter)
I put my foot in it, and said I thought
they hadn't a hope in Hell of finding anything.
This, of course, they didn't.
It wasn't until you started asking questions about Mars,
and thinking about its atmosphere that do you suddenly
start looking at the bits of the Earth like the atmosphere
and the oceans in a totally different light.
(bright music)
The sums didn't add up.
For example, the 20% of oxygen in the atmosphere,
21%, is it utterly anomalous?
It just doesn't belong there.
It should be less than a part-per-million of oxygen.
How does it stay constant?
Not just year by year, but for millions of years.
Then it dawned on me.
(upbeat bright music)
All those gases made by life must be regulated.
(upbeat hopeful music)
(upbeat music intensifies)
(sound of waterfall)
(water splashing)
The Earth had to be the complex system
that regulates itself so as to keep
a life-favorable state constantly.
(upbeat bright music)
The whole system is interconnected
in ways that we can't imagine.
(birds chirping)
And it's been doing it
for a remarkable
over three billion years.
(waves crashing)
It all seemed obvious to me.
I had no idea
that what I was talking about
was something revolutionary.
Janine Benyus: You know, in this little drop
of pond water
there's so much life.
When I look at these organisms, living in this little pond
under my microscope, I realize
that they're eating,
excreting.
And the thing that it creates
becomes the raw material for the next organism.
It's a system that creates everything it needs,
and it doesn't waste anything.
(chuckles)
And Lovelock saw that at the planetary level.
(beautiful piano music)
He saw that those small cycles created this large cycle;
releasing what was needed into the atmosphere in
incredibly
tuned amounts
to create
conditions conducive to life.
(bright upbeat music)
That - that's an amazing,
systemic
miracle,
when you think about it.
You know, it really is.
James Lovelock: A near neighbor of mine
was William Golding -
the author of Lord of the Flies, and all that.
And he was very interested, and he said:
"Well, if you're going to have a big theory like that,
you better give it a good name
after the Greek goddess for the Earth.
I suggest you call it Gaia."
(bright upbeat music)
Arthur Huang: Mr. James Lovelock is the pioneer
to make us realize that
the whole earth is actually one cohesive system.
Everything is interrelated to each other,
is self-balancing, and we are screwing up the balance.
(whimsical piano music)
John Fullerton: The first five years after
I left Wall Street, at least I would say,
were primarily spent searching.
I began questioning the core premises
of how the economy operates.
The unquestioned assumptions.
Exponential economic growth,
money equals wealth,
wealth equals power.
It really pushed me into a hunger for learning,
like I'd never experienced.
(soft piano music)
I was introduced to James Lovelock's work -
the idea that the entire planet is a living system
with cycles that interconnect in ways
that are probably beyond our understanding.
But it's a paradigm-shifting idea
that clearly has implications for economics and finance,
as well as everything else.
It gave me permission to believe
that what I was thinking wasn't crazy.
(soft music)
In the 21st century,
the way the system of the world works is linear.
We think of the economy as a machine,
where we push natural and human resources together
in such a way that we spit out products
that consumers buy, and then end up on a waste heap.
Did you know the word "consumer"
literally means "to destroy"?
What in nature is just a consumer?
Everything gives back, except us.
It works marvelously well
when the economy is relatively small.
(birds chirping)
It works to go into the forest and chop down a tree
once every three years to burn in your fire.
But if you continue to chop down more and more trees,
eventually, you don't have any trees.
So, scale matters.
(bright piano music)
We're at the moment in time where the scale
is butting up against the limits of the finite planet.
(bright piano music)
And we will either really get it wrong
and cause irreparable damage,
or remember that we're a member of a bigger system.
And, you know, this is something that we used to know
and we've forgotten
in our quest for modernity.
(bright piano music)
(bright piano music ends)
(birds chirping)
-: When I was starting architecture in Cornell,
we have a privilege of being in Rome to study
for a semester or a year.
I was here with one of my favorite professor,
teaching us about archeology.
We are in Augustus Forum.
The Forum is actually offices; next to it is a market,
literally like a shopping mall,
where different goods are being traded.
It's very interesting when you see these walls,
when they are open; especially when they're in ruin form.
You get the stone on the outside,
and then you got a brick layer; and in the middle,
literally, you have everything that's, like,
discarded inside the wall.
You can see, like, there's part of a roof,
some sort of tiles, clay pipes.
Any type of, like, leftover bricks or leftover materials
is being poured into this middle cavity.
(soft piano music)
On top of that, the decorated marble.
(whimsical piano music)
They are actually very expensive wallpaper, okay?
On top of a pile of crap.
(whimsical music intensifies)
For me as a student, it was very eye-opening.
(birds chirping)
Any buildings you open up, the walls is full of trash.
They're actually taking down their old house
and putting it into their new house.
They're reusing their stones,
they're re-using the pavement,
they're reusing all the columns,
but they're still creating beauty - lasting beauty.
They are actually a lot more advanced
than our system right now.
They're actually circular by nature.
All the material collected within literally meters.
Living in the current economy: I take, I consume, I dispose.
(background chatter)
But if you look at everything
as a circular system, everything makes sense.
The waste of one system is the energy of a next system,
so they are constantly interrelated
in these overlapping circles.
That's what I mean by "circular."
-: Hi, there.
-: Hello. Nice to meet you, finally.
-: Nice to meet you.
(foreign language background chatter)
-: And now, ladies and gentleman,
here's the pioneer of environmental movement
that some say can offer some solution
to revolutionize the economy,
known as "circular economy."
Architect, designer, and innovator - Arthur Huang
-: Hi, Andrea.
Thanks for inviting me.
-: So, please tell me: What is "circular economy"?
-: Basically right now, the current system
-: Yes.
is called "linear economy,"
It means you make something, you sell something,
you use something, and you throw away something - that's it.
But what we mean by "circular" or "circularity economy"
is basically, you're trying to keep everything in the loop;
you don't throw anything away; there's no waste.
-: Uh-huh.
-: And so we can reuse the resources for a long time.
Basically you're trying to mimic how nature is,
where there's no waste.
(birds chirping)
Janine Benyus: I think of "circularity" as "circulation."
(birds chirping)
When I see a log, I don't see a rotting log;
I see a fountain of life.
You know, this log doesn't rot and decay into the ground.
It actually, this log becomes this orchid.
The materials in this log, they're becoming fungus.
You know?
And the mushroom, the materials in the mushroom,
if a vole was to come over and eat that mushroom,
those materials would become the vole.
And then if a hawk, or an owl were to swoop down right now
and pick up that vole,
those materials would become the owl.
It's a circulation of materials.
(bright piano music)
In nature, the circulation and reuse
of resources is endless.
Is it possible that we humans can do the same
with our technical resources?
I think we can.
We simply need to rethink our make, use, throw away world
so that it circulates resources, too.
-: I actually see these sunglasses right here.
-: Yeah.
-: Yeah, so that is actually made from cigarette butts.
The filter in the back of cigarettes...
-: Yes.
-: that we throw away, you see on the ocean all the time.
-: Mm-hmm.
-: Those are actually a very precious plastic
called cellulose acetate, which is hypoallergenic,
so you don't get allergies from touching your skin.
"Reuse" means you just keep using something for long time.
-: Yes.
Right? "Refurbish" means: "Oh, okay, sorry.
It's a little bit broken, here.
Let's try to make it work again."
Okay, so that's means "refurbish."
-: Mm-hmm.
-: Okay.
"Recycle" actually means it has no more use to you;
actually it's about jumping applications,
coming out with a new way of using this material.
And "upcycle" means whatever product
it was in the previous life,
the upcycle actually even
has a higher performance value than the previous life.
This idea of reusing everything is not new.
It has been around for human society
and civilization forever.
In the pre-World War II era,
everything is recycled and refurbished.
There was no such thing as going to waste.
As we urbanized and population increased dramatically,
that's when the single-use become a huge problem.
So, if you can consider everything you buy is forever
and you should not create waste;
you're not going to throw it out -
then we are going somewhere.
I cannot say I'm immune to single use,
but I'm trying to reduce my own single use
in my daily life.
-: So, basically...
-: Our system of design, our system of economy,
our system of consumption has to become zero waste.
As simple as that.
Literally mimicking nature - that's what circularity is.
âª We need a revolution. Uh-huh. âª
âª We need a revolution. âª
Janine Benyus: Life builds to shape.
If we were going to make leaves,
we would take a green piece of construction paper
and cut out the leaves,
and then we'd have the rest left as waste.
âª We need a revolution. Uh-huh. âª
âª There's only one solution. Uh-huh. âª
âª I need somebody to show me, somebody to show me the... âª
John Fullerton: Life grows back
often better than it was to begin with.
The magic is that it never ends.
(rock and roll music)
Arthur Huang: For me, the question has always been:
How do you create a elegant lifestyle
without creating waste?
Pollution can actually become the solution.
âª We need a revolution. âª
-: We need to re-imagine our place in the universe.
-: The whole system is interconnected
in ways that you can't imagine.
(machine door slams)
John Fullerton: Stop, put your pencil down,
and Rethink Everything.
(ding)
(clock ticking)
(birds whistling)
(clock ticking)
-: And over here is some awesome co-...
What would you call them?
Comic strips or cartoons from a newspaper.
I forget which one it was.
When my first book called: "Gaia" was out,
the university biologists went out of their
way to bad mouth Gaia.
There were endless papers in the scientific journals,
trying to disprove Gaia.
(typewriter typing)
(slamming noise)
I would hate to have to keep on trying to remember
all of the criticisms there have been of it.
They have been devastating.
(typewriter typing)
Maynard Smith even called it in an evil religion.
(slamming noise)
It set me thinking:
"I'll have to make a computer model of this."
I wrote a model in BASIC
which was simple language, and it worked straight away.
(typing on typewriter)
(bright upbeat music)
It was always magical.
I sent it in to the Royal Society to their journal,
the oldest scientific journal in the world.
Nearly all of the peer reviewers rejected it as nonsense,
but the president said:
"We need to hear this side of the story."
And to my amazement, they publish it.
(typing on typewriter)
It takes time for big ideas
to
come across
because people like to stick with what they know.
But if we are to survive on this planet,
way into the future, we'd better believe it.
(clock ticking)
(typewriter noise)
(clock ticking)
(ding)
Arthur Huang: Recycling is really not working.
All the single-use material that we throw away,
in reality, there's no such thing as "away."
(soft piano music)
It's all Western trash; containers are actually filled
with trash material labeled
as recycled - "recycled" - material.
Most of our developed countries just ship the whole thing
as trash directly
into Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines,
etc.
If you look at Gaia Earth as a system,
it is a bowl.
It's a fish bowl.
Right?
It's a tank.
We're all living in this tank; nothing goes away.
You know?
The stuff we throw away, nothing goes away;
it's all within the system.
Polluting in China, in Vietnam, in Taiwan
is the same as polluting in Europe.
Eventually, we get to Europe.
(water washing up on beach)
Janine Benyus: We've been very leaky with our materials.
You know, we dissipated things all over the place
and the circular economy says everything is valuable
and you want to recoup it, reincarnate into something else,
-: a product, say -
but recoup those bits
as if they are the most precious thing in the world,
because they are.
Recouped and reincarnated -
that's what life does.
(orchestra music)
Arthur Huang: Everything has a story.
An artist can paint a painting
that might only cost one dollar to make,
but is selling for millions of dollars.
(door clicks and creaks open)
It's about seeing something as valuable.
(orchestra music)
This is one of my favorite projects.
It's also a combination of many years
of what we've been trying to develop
and sometimes successful and sometimes not successful,
and we kind of put the successful pieces all in one place.
(bright upbeat music)
(bright wind chime music)
Recycling is really not working, right?
Why is it not working?
It's because no one is generating
the new desire for this recycled material.
(bright wind chime music)
The House of Trash is just a house; literally a house.
(bright upbeat music)
Everything in here should be 100%
made from a previous life product.
If you see luxury industry,
you learn a lot from the brands
who are creating desire.
That's why we are here at Milan.
Man In Milan: You can see here,
we've got all this kind of samples.
This, for instance, is very interesting,
because they're made from over 60% plastic.
You can pass them around
and sort of just see what it look like.
You would think they're marble;
but in fact, they have a percentage,
a very high percentage of recycled materials.
-: [Background Male Speaker] And you can see from our...
Arthur Huang: We work with students,
artists that come here,
and then this place actually
become a place where ideas come together
and we influence each other to make this thing a reality.
-: You would turn the waste into
think it's 100%, you know, useless
into something that is 100% both beautiful and useful.
Arthur Huang: When people first see it, they would
never guess where all those materials are coming from.
And then they don't even know that this is possible today.
A lot of people are actually saying:
"Oh, this might be some art project."
It's not; it's actually designed
to make circularity into a possibility.
-: And these are what we've
been able to transform mobile screens into.
And you can see how this feels.
The transformation from screen of a telephone.
Arthur Huang: There's a beauty in transformations.
(bright piano music)
And you also want to create the possibility
for second life and the third life.
Coffee lid, coffee cups,
we use it for what, five minutes?
We have to turn that into something
of maybe five years, like a furniture.
If after the furniture is used,
maybe this is no longer what you desire for a sofa,
or you simply got sick of that,
would compress the chair again,
like the one I'm sitting in,
and we then turn it into
an architecture building block.
-: You can see here, we have our bricks.
Arthur Huang: Then you turn the five-year material
then into a 25 years, 50-year material.
-: They have an interlocking...
-: All material should be done this way.
All products should be made this way.
(upbeat bright music)
John Fullerton: We are, as a species,
good at problem solving.
And yet, the problems are really
symptoms of a flawed system design.
Arthur Huang: And everything is made from those materials
that we looked at and described.
-: So, the idea of system change is to create a system
that doesn't generate the problems in the first place,
rather than spending our time
trying to solve and fix problems.
(insects buzzing)
(bright hopeful music)
-: After 3.8 billion years of life on Earth,
life has solved everything we're trying to solve
in an incredibly sustainable way.
Life has learned what works and what lasts,
what's appropriate,
and life's learned how to live gracefully on the Earth.
(bright music intensifies)
In a million different strategies,
I see them, in total,
as nature's genius.
(birds chirping)
(insects buzzing)
Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature.
So it's the practice of anytime you design anything,
saying: "What in the natural world has already solved
what it is I'm trying to solve?"
(typewriter noise)
(upbeat bright music)
You can imagine a solar manufacturer sitting
down with a botanist who knows how photosynthesis works.
Somebody who wants to make sustainable fiber,
sitting down with somebody who knows
how a spider spins its web.
You can imagine a ship builder wanting to sit with somebody
who knows about fish, or tuna, or shark,
to know how to reduce drag in the shape of a hull.
(bright hopeful music)
When you look at fireflies, there's bioluminescence;
it's a chemical light, but what's really interesting
is the abdomen of the firefly.
If you look very closely, they have these,
this tiled structure.
When you put those tile structures on the bulb of an LED,
you get 55% more light out of a single LED bulb.
So, life always is giving us these amazing ways
to make what we already have even better.
(children playing)
There's a really important one for human health
that has to do with controlling bacteria.
(sirens)
If you look at seaweed,
there are thousands of different species
of algae that live in oceans all over the world.
(sirens)
You would expect them to be covered
with bacteria and barnacles, but they're not.
They're actually producing a chemical
that keeps bacteria from communicating with each other,
which is what they need to do if they're
going to colonize the surface.
When bacteria can't communicate, they simply don't land.
Now, you can mimic that chemical and use it as a cleaner -
(bottle sprays)
a liquid spray that will prevent bacteria or algae,
or even mold from settling.
(water running and turning off)
And because it's not
(bottle sprays)
killing bacteria,
-: it's just stopping them from colonizing a surface -
they don't develop an immunity to it.
And that's why it's worked in nature for millions of years.
It's a whole new way of dealing with bacteria.
One of the opportunities that biomimicry offers
is to use the power of the sun
to help us control temperatures inside a building.
What if your house or office was something that
actively regulated temperature, something like a skin?
When we're hot our skin pores release sweat,
which evaporates to keep us cool.
Imagine tiny pores in a building's outer surface
that release humid air to cool the building surface,
or imagine an array of solar-powered awnings
that move in concert with the sun,
shading and cooling the surface of your home,
like a canopy of leaves.
(bright music intensifies)
And if we can mimic nature on a small scale,
why can't we do it big?
(bright music intensifies)
Arthur Huang: This is the first time
something of this scale is being
executed at this circularity level,
from the way, how we collect the material
all the way how we construct to mimic nature.
We literally have campaign to collect
the material from all Taipei citizens.
We collected 1.5 million PET bottle within two weeks.
And then we created this nine-story, tall structure.
It's important for us to have this type of project
as a demonstration to show the potential
of circularity at this scale.
(bright upbeat music)
The ultimate form for us is biomimicry.
So everything here is trying
to construct without using glue.
We use the material,
we transform them into these self-interlocking block.
They create these honeycomb panel,
and these panel became the wall
and the muscle of a structure.
(bright upbeat music)
Everybody have these huge concept of micro scale,
trying to mimic how nature works.
But how do you do that in an economical, scalable way?
And that's what this building is trying to demonstrate.
(soft bright music)
(birds chirping)
(footsteps on gravel)
Janine Benyus: Another lesson nature teaches
-: Hi, guys.
Janine Benyus: is how to make materials
-: Good.
Janine Benyus: for all kinds of jobs.
-: Okay.
(plastic clashing)
Janine Benyus: In the natural world,
you've got 10 million organisms,
but they share a unity in their biochemistry.
(plastic clashing)
(laughs)
(plastic clashing)
They're able to find materials anywhere they look,
and they know that they're going to be plug-and-play,
and be able to build their bodies out of them.
And that's really amazing.
(bright upbeat music)
It's this incredible juggling act
of the same materials over and over and over again.
(plastic clashing)
Girl: Hey!
(laughs)
Girl: That's mine.
Boy: Oh, yeah.
Janine Benyus: You're looking at saying:
"How can our economy
upcycle and circulate materials
in the same way that that an ecosystem does?"
(soft piano music)
Since the Industrial Revolution,
we've been very busy, creating
hundreds of materials,
tens of thousands of chemicals;
things the world has never seen before.
Every time we want to function,
we do a different kind of material;
(soft piano music)
whereas life says: "Let's use the same material
and change its design."
(typewriter noise)
(ding)
We've got to join that.
(whimsical piano music)
-: Come have a look here.
(whimsical piano music)
Janine Benyus: Say you have a beetle shell
-: beautiful, brilliant beetle shell -
-: Whoa.
-: Wow.
(whimsical piano music)
Janine Benyus: it's made of chitin
and it's one material system.
(whimsical piano music)
And in our world, it would be easy to recycle one material.
(3D printer buzzing)
So this one material, in some places,
it needs to be really, really strong,
so maybe it's laid up with a plywood orientation.
(3D printer whirring)
And then in another place,
it needs to be abrasion-resistant,
so it's laid up with a different architecture.
And then maybe near the head of the beetle
it needs to be somewhat flexible; rubbery almost.
Same material; different design,
(3D printer buzzing)
so you get these different properties.
Life also builds from the bottom up.
It grows to shape -: Hi. - Hi.
Janine Benyus: or builds to shape.
-: That's a lovely drawing.
-: Thank you.
Janine Benyus: So this idea of 3D printing, for instance,
is usually important because it's one of the ways
that perhaps we can start to build to shape.
(happy music)
Female: Hey, guys.
Janine Benyus: If you think about...
-: Hi. - Hi.
Janine Benyus: the shellfish industry - right? -
those shells, crustacean shells are chitin.
So, you can take that waste stream;
and instead of putting toxic plastic in your 3D printer,
you use a natural material.
(3D printer buzzing)
-: It's so cool.
(3D printer buzzing)
-: Someday it's going to bring manufacturing home.
-: Daddy, daddy.
And those few materials will be assembled and reassembled
into the kinds of products that we need.
-: Who wants to help me cook?
-: Me. - Me.
Janine Benyus: Of course, building to shape
doesn't apply just to small things.
Imagine if we could build a house to shape
without using any more material
than what actually ends up in the house.
Well, we can.
Whether you want to build a conventional design,
or a whole new kind of construction for a new age,
taking inspiration from nature and printing it
with local, renewable materials.
It's all possible right now.
Build to shape with no waste left over.
(typewriter noise)
(rodeo music begins)
John Fullerton: The world didn't used
to eat cheap chicken.
âª Always get pluckin' them chickens. âª
âª We're going to have chicken for dinner. âª
âª Most men say you can't have steak because the cow... âª
-: We benefit from remarkably inexpensive chicken now.
(rodeo music)
âª Always get pluckin' them chickens. âª
(chicken bawks)
-: But the chicken industry
and all of us benefiting from cheap meat
is destroying large farmlands, large landscapes.
And I suspect most chicken farmers
struggle to make a living.
(somber music)
The poultry grains that are grown on massive farms,
using massive amounts of fertilizer and pesticides,
which essentially destroys the soil.
I began to think about solutions to the nutritional needs
of human beings and how we can grow food
in a way that doesn't destroy the planet.
-: (fire crackling)
-: The essence of living systems
is that they are regenerative.
(fire roaring)
You know, a forest fire leaves the land barren,
and smoking, literally in cinders,
but then magically that forest will regenerate itself
more healthy than it was prior to the fire.
(birds chirping)
(soft hopeful music)
The key to the regenerative process is that it,
it continually unfolds; I think of it almost
like as an upward spiral -
never-ending unfolding of fresh potential.
(soft piano music)
I try to find projects that are at the cutting-edge
of this whole regenerative paradigm.
(kisses)
And the one that I'm focused on right now,
it's a beautiful kind of closed loop,
cradle-to-cradle, you know, model.
(upbeat bright music)
It involves farm-raised tilapia.
(upbeat bright music)
Tilapia are grass-eating fish.
The feed input is grass.
The waste from the tilapia is fed into freshwater shrimp.
The shrimp are then â harvested as a second crop,
and the waste from the shrimp then go into
where we can grow crustaceans.
So think freshwater, clams, and oysters.
(bright upbeat music)
But then the waste from that third tank is the fertilizer
for a farm up on the roof
that is growing tomatoes and basil.
(bright upbeat music)
So, now you've got fish, shrimp, crustaceans, tomatoes,
and basil all grown with the same grass-fed input,
but then also heating the water in the greenhouse
so that you don't have to add heat to the system
when the water goes back into the tilapia tank.
(birds chirping)
The world didn't used to eat cheap chicken.
If we choose to eat grass-fed fish instead,
and grass-fed shrimp instead at a comparable cost,
and that's safer and cleaner -
it would create a massive demand to turn
cornfields back into grasslands,
and that would have a massive impact
on stabilizing the climate.
(birds chirping)
(bright piano music)
That's the promise I have for a regenerative economy
is that it's not just eliminating the bad stuff
we all can see and are trying to reduce,
but it's unlocking potential that most of us
don't currently see.
(orchestra music)
(typewriter sound)
Arthur Huang: With fashion, I think we have a problem.
(rock and roll music begins)
The fashion is one of the biggest polluter;
also has huge amount of carbon footprint.
(upbeat rock and roll music)
One of the most damaging environmental
industries in the world.
(rock and roll music)
We are all a contributor of this major problem.
âª Tasted like a raindrop. âª
âª She's got the look. âª
âª Heavenly-ah bound, 'cause Heaven's got her number. âª
âª When she's spinnin' me around, kissin' is a color. âª
âª Her lovin' is a wild dog. âª
âª She's got the look. âª
âª What in the world âª
âª can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue? âª
âª And I go: La, la, la. âª
-: My personal solution to fashion
is to repair as much as possible.
(upbeat techno music)
Most of my pants after the third time I'm mending
them together, the fabric just won't take it anymore;
they just completely falls apart.
It's only then the problems with how we make materials
in the first place becomes clear.
(upbeat dance music)
Most of the fashion industry fabric
or fibers that's creating these fabric
are either made from two sources.
One is the natural source, farm source,
like cottons, like wool.
The synthetic material, which are all the polyesters,
nylons, polypropylene, or acrylics -
they combine them in the fashion industry.
One piece of clothes can have rayon, cottons,
satin, and polyester - all within one mix.
So it's impossible for you to separate these materials.
You only need a tiny bit of a different material in the mix,
and it makes recycling impossible.
Just one label in the t-shirt with different
material or stitching - the whole thing will
probably end up in landfill.
(upbeat music)
(insects buzzing)
In fashion, one place is iconic
for doing things differently.
(birds chirping)
(orchestra music begins)
(orchestra music continues)
(material ripping)
(orchestra music)
This family-owned firm started trading
over a hundred years ago.
(material ripping)
We have perfected a way to process used material,
even with mixed fibers.
They are not just creating new material, but new beauty.
Fabric from Prato is some of the most treasured
in the fashion industry.
(upbeat dance music)
With smart design, we could avoid creating
landfill fabric in the first place.
(upbeat dance music)
But a real breakthrough has already happened:
A circular solution for one
of the most mass-produced fabrics.
30 million pairs of jeans are sold every day,
but they can be made with denim designed
to be fully recyclable,
to preserve resources, and reduce waste.
And they never need cause a problem as landfill
because they can dissolve in the ground in under two weeks,
even on a compost heap at home.
John Fullerton: The actual real world that we live in
is this dynamic, really magical,
one in a million, one in a catrillion oddity
that is this self-organizing, self-perpetuating,
ever-evolving, ever-complexifying, amazing
reality.
(birds chirping)
And the only thing that's in conflict with that
is the way we run our human economy.
How can that possibly be?
(typewriter noise)
(banging)
(upbeat dance music)
Game Reporter: Sickening goal.
Alder will give it another go.
There's a crease for him to find his way into the end zone.
After falling behind 23-nothing last...
(background football game)
-: It's sort of embedded in our culture
that winning is what's rewarded.
âª The best things in life are free, âª
âª but you can give them to the birds and bees. âª
âª I want money. âª
âª That's what I want. âª
John Fullerton: Taken to an extreme, it gets unhealthy,
and money becomes the measure that becomes
the scorecard of the game.
There's never a concept of enough in the capitalist system.
There's never an idea that, you know:
"You've grown as big as it makes sense to grow,"
in a certain business.
You know, if you look to the jungle,
the king of the jungle is the lions,
and the lions spend most of their day
sitting around sleeping,
when they could spend all day
killing antelope if they wanted to.
(background football game)
(background game whistling)
But if they killed all the antelope,
then they wouldn't have dinner in the future.
So they don't waste antelope; they just eat what they need.
I had a wonderful dinner with Janine Benyus once.
She explained how competition works in nature.
She went on to explain that, you know,
we have this entire misunderstanding of what
Darwin really meant when he said: "Survival of the fittest."
That really means:
"Survival of the one that fits best,"
like a puzzle fitting together.
(soft piano music)
Janine Benyus: Think about the coral reef.
There are these small coral polyps.
They're actually...
they're an animal, and they're composed of zooxanthellae.
It's a photosynthesizing organism
that lives within the coral.
(wind chime music)
The zooxanthellae gets a place to be inside the coral,
and it photosynthesizes and gives the coral its carbon.
And together, they create something
that can be seen from space.
(soft hopeful piano music)
They create homes,
protected homes for 4,500 species.
That
if not for the
coral-polyp partnership,
literally would not be there.
(bright piano music)
There's a generosity in the natural world.
The fish are giving just by excreting.
They eat, they excrete;
the coral reef blooms because of that nitrogen.
It's not too much nitrogen,
but it's just the nitrogen that they need.
(bright hopeful music)
A natural world full of these symbiotic relationships,
(metal door slides open)
where I have a certain skill, you have a certain skill,
we combine those skills
(footsteps on hard floor)
and we make the most of our habitat.
(footsteps on hard floor)
Arthur Huang: We definitely need to be more like nature,
but working together is hard.
It's a cultural paradigm shift that we are dealing with.
(footsteps on hard floor)
Almost every industry, every facet
(door creaks open)
of our economy need to see the connections.
(door clicks closed)
Female Host: What's an example?
I want to know more; elaborate.
-: So, for example, the waste of one company
Female Host: Uh-huh.
-: can turn into the resources of another company,
and they're all interrelated.
So, there's a network of companies that supply...
their waste is someone else's energy resources,
or material resources for their next generation of products.
But they are all semi-interconnected,
so they create an ecosystem.
(bright hopeful music)
What if we can make an ecosystem that links, say,
the car and the fashion industries?
We know that fashion is notorious for waste,
but what if the waste could be something
that the car industry pays good money for?
(machines whirring)
Something that otherwise might get made
from brand new materials.
(machine buzzing)
Like insulation in car doors.
(bright upbeat music)
It's actually about making connections,
building business partnership that create a wider benefit.
In Holland, used and spare batteries from electric cars
have been installed as a power supply in a football stadium.
Because they are charged by solar panel during the day,
the place can light up at night.
(light buzzes on)
(lights flick on)
(lights buzzing)
(lights flash on)
It even pumps spare power back into the grid.
(bright upbeat music)
(cheering)
The quick wins are, for us,
just to show people that things work.
But our real ambition is to have these big,
long-term, systematic impact.
We got our project.
I think we can use all our upcycle material
we developed over the last 15 years
to turn that into a hospital,
and for containment hospitals.
Female Student: We've never done that before.
Arthur Huang: Of course. I think the concept...
The hospital project is basically:
Turn all the single-use waste that we can collect
during this pandemic time.
And we want to turn that into state-of-the-art,
pandemic-ready hospital wards.
This is how it should look when it's finished,
but this is the one that's, like, most complex.
This is the one that's going to ICU room.
To design a system that click together,
-: very quick to assemble, within 24 hours -
to create a medical pod.
And this is also additional, like, water for
dialysis machines.
Circularity becomes super-important
during the pandemic time because of global trade shut down.
The fact that you shut down,
you have to use local material to produce
the necessary infrastructure that's needed
to help save lives.
(grinder whirring)
(grinder slows to a stop)
Most business people don't like to be here.
They want to talk about circularity on concepts,
(metal clicks)
but they don't know how to execute physical.
To them, this is
junk.
(chuckles)
(soft piano music)
This is literally circularity meet health
and meets crazy time constraint.
By end of this year,
we supposed to finish, like,
96
wards.
These...
Within these pods, they all have to fit together
to directly clip, like, just
(metal clicks)
click.
And then you don't have any joints.
(metal clangs)
Almost every industry, almost every facet of our economy
need to start having these system innovations
to have circularity.
(soft bright music)
One of the best transformations a business can make
is to rethink what it is that they are actually selling.
(bright music intensifies)
An MRI scanner is one of the most important,
expensive machines in medicine.
It can look right inside the human body.
They are complicated, involve rare and valuable materials;
and expensive, and difficult to replace
when they get outdated.
So, this scanner manufacturer has changed
how they do business.
They supply, maintain, and upgrade the machine,
so it can be used for as long as possible.
(lights buzz on)
(door clicks open)
When that's no longer an option,
they take it back and refurbish
to start a second life.
And there's zero waste.
Every part or material is reused and recycled.
(panel clicks closed)
The business aims to flourish, without making and selling
more and more machines,
because the customer don't want machines;
they simply want the best scan for their patients.
(soft bright piano music)
-: I'm not gonna go easy...
John Fullerton: Things in the natural world
don't grow forever.
You know, think of our bodies.
-: Adhunya, come here quick.
John Fullerton: We grow exponentially when we're young,
and then the curve moves from exponential
to slower growth every year;
and eventually physically we stop growing.
But our growth continues on in a non-physical way,
and that's, I think the...
Maybe the lesson for our business world is that:
We need to...
We need to, in a sense, mature beyond adolescence
and begin creating new value, new services.
-: Yeah.
One of the smartest things businesses are already doing
is switching from selling us stuff, to selling us services.
Imagine you never consume another fridge in your life,
or a dishwasher, or a washing machine.
Instead, you take out a contract to have one
that'll always work.
-: All right, put the first one in.
John Fullerton: The company will
maintain it and update it.
And when you don't want it anymore,
they'll come take it back.
And then they'll reuse everything it's made of.
-: There we go.
-: You doing it manually.
John Fullerton: That's a business model
that could work for lots of things.
-: You are...
Come see.
-: Whoa.
(phone dings)
John Fullerton: Businesses will make smarter money.
-: Engineer's here.
John Fullerton: They'll use less raw materials,
things will last longer, and their reputations will be
enhanced because they'll be providing services
to us that we actually need.
Janine Benyus: Imagine never needing
the latest mobile phone
(knocking) or TV...
(door opens) -: Hi. - Hi.
Janine Benyus: with all the new materials
it takes to make it.
Because the one you already own just got updated
and now it's performing like a new one.
In the circular economy, we get to be customers
without having to be consumers.
-: Don't worry. We'll fix it for you.
(typewriting sound)
John Fullerton: We need to reimagine
our place in the universe.
(soft orchestra music)
The lessons from COVID are going to be
ricocheting out for years to come.
And understand there's going to be many other COVIDS coming;
whether they're pandemics, or climate change disasters.
The point is that we're in a world that's not possible
to predict what's going to happen.
(soft piano music)
Where does your food come from?
And where does your water come from?
Those are questions that I think
suddenly will become front-of-mind,
as opposed to: "Boy, I'd sure like another fancy watch,
or a fancy car, or, you know, a fancy vacation."
(soft piano music)
It's taught us how fragile the system really is.
We've designed our society around an economic system
that values money; more money is good, less money is bad.
There's no place for love, there's no place for beauty,
there's no place for goodness in an economic model.
We live as if we're separate from the planet
and separate from each other.
We even have a word, "nature,"
as if nature is separate from humanity.
So, it's really the mindset.
It's the...
it's the way we think, the way we see the world,
that is the heart of the matter.
(soft piano music)
(birds chirping)
What's the future of capitalism?
Think about it.
It's the biggest corporations,
it's the biggest governments,
and it's a handful of billionaires
who make capital investment decisions
that matter to the fate of this planet.
(birds chirping)
The lion sleeps most of the day and eats only what it needs,
and that keeps the ecosystem in balance.
I can imagine a day when we will see
large multinational corporations, the biggest governments,
and the billionaires working in service
of the health of the whole.
(paper rubbing)
(paper ripping)
Janine Benyus: If I were to write a letter
to James Lovelock, I would probably say:
"You're right - it is all alive.
And thank you for seeing life at every scale.
(paper unfolding)
And allowing us to stand back and realize that
those grand cycles -
they come about because
of getting all the small cycles right."
(soft piano music)
And I would just thank him for hanging in there
when his scientific objectivity was questioned.
I know that the Earth is a living system
and we all know it now.
(waves crashing)
John Fullerton: I'm constantly in awe
of the natural world.
You don't need money to get that joy.
And yet, it gives me much more fulfillment
than buying stuff.
I get that big corporations feel locked
in this need for exponential growth of profit - I get that.
What I think will happen is that people are going
to evolve and that the demand for the products
these companies are currently selling us
is going to go away.
It's already happening.
And then companies will have to do what they've always done;
the best ones will adapt, and they'll innovate,
and find ways to solve the real problems facing humanity
in the 21st century.
(bright piano music)
Arthur Huang: The hospital is finally finishing.
(bright piano music)
It definitely shows that trash can save lives.
We actually don't need new, virgin resources.
We can literally take post-consumer resources
and we can transform that
into the next generation of technology.
(bright piano music)
It definitely makes me feel like
this is going to change the world.
(bright piano music)
(upbeat dance music)
John Fullerton: The evidence that
our current human economy is not working,
is not sustainable is now overwhelming.
We actually are at the moment of crisis,
and so we need to make a fundamental decision
about the direction we had.
Well, what better model to use, to rebuild around
than the model of living systems and how they behave?
Which are the only systems that we know of
that have sustained themselves for long periods time.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be there.
They are sustainable by the fact that they exist.
âª Everything is everything. âª
Janine Benyus: These organisms are building soil.
Are we?
-: Wow, it's so amazing!
Janine Benyus: They're cleaning water.
Are we?
They're cleaning air.
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Yes, it is. âª
Janine Benyus: They're creating exactly the conditions
we all need to live.
We've got to take our rightful place
as living organisms on this planet.
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Yes, it is. âª
Arthur Huang: Circularity is the only hope.
This is the only way we can survive.
Because that's the closest that we are mimicking
how nature operates.
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Yes it is. âª
John Fullerton: Stop, put your pencil down, and
(typewriter sound)
(ding)
Rethink Everything.
(upbeat music)
âª Everything is everything. âª
(water droplet sound)
James Lovelock: Gradually, the opponents began to listen.
âª Everything is everything. âª
Gaia, it became better known
(water droplet sound)
as the Earth System Science.
It is applicable to
(water droplet sound)
all of the different systems - biological, being,
like anything.
(water droplet sound)
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Yes, it is. âª
(water droplet sound)
I received a letter stating that I've been awarded
(water droplet sound)
the Companion of Honor Award,
and would I
(water droplet sound)
come to Buckingham Palace to receive it?
It was a 10-minute audience I had with Your Majesty.
âª Come on up, now. âª
It was quite pleasant.
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Yes, it is. âª
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª You better believe it, now. âª
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª But you know it now. âª
âª I said: Everything is everything. âª
âª Whoa, yeah. âª
âª Everything is everything. âª
âª Do what you got to do. âª
âª Everything is everything. âª
(laughter)
âª Everything is everything. âª
(computerized glowing sound)