Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch

244,742 views ・ 2011-01-14

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If we look around us,
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much of what surrounds us
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started life as various rocks and sludge
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buried in the ground in various places in the world.
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But, of course, they don't look like rocks and sludge now.
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They look like TV cameras, monitors,
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annoying radio mics.
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And so this magical transformation
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is what I was trying to get at with my project,
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which became known as the Toaster Project.
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And it was also inspired by this quote
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from Douglas Adams,
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and the situation is from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
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And the situation it describes
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is the hero of the book -- he's a 20th-century man --
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finds himself alone on a strange planet
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populated only by a technologically primitive people.
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And he kind of assumes that, yes,
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he'll become -- these villagers --
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he'll become their emperor
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and transform their society
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with his wonderful command of technology
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and science and the elements,
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but, of course, realizes
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that without the rest of human society,
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he can barely make a sandwich,
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let alone a toaster.
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But he didn't have Wikipedia.
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So I thought, okay,
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I'll try and make an electric toaster from scratch.
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And, working on the idea
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that the cheapest electric toaster
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would also be the simplest to reverse-engineer,
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I went and bought the cheapest toaster I could find,
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took it home
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and was kind of dismayed to discover
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that, inside this object,
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which I'd bought for just 3.49 pounds,
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there were 400 different bits
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made out of a hundred-plus different materials.
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I didn't have the rest of my life to do this project.
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I had maybe nine months.
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So I thought, okay, I'll start with five.
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And these were steel, mica,
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plastic, copper and nickel.
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So, starting with steel: how do you make steel?
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I went and knocked on the door
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of the Rio Tinto Chair
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of Advanced Mineral Extraction at the Royal School of Mines
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and said, "How do you make steel?"
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And Professor Cilliers was very kind
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and talked me through it.
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And my vague rememberings from GCSE science --
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well, steel comes from iron,
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so I phoned up an iron mine.
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And said, "Hi, I'm trying to make a toaster.
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Can I come up and get some iron?"
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Unfortunately, when I got there -- emerges Ray.
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He had misheard me
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and thought I was coming up because I was trying to make a poster,
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and so wasn't prepared to take me into the mines.
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But after some nagging, I got him to do that.
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(Video) Ray: It was Crease Limestone,
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and that was produced
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by sea creatures
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350 million years ago
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in a nice, warm,
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sunny atmosphere.
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When you study geology,
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you can see what's happened in the past,
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and there were terrific changes in the earth.
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Thomas Thwaites: As you can see, they had the Christmas decorations up.
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And of course, it wasn't actually a working mine anymore,
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because, though Ray was a miner there,
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the mine had closed
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and had been reopened as a kind of tourist attraction,
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because, of course, it can't compete
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on the scale of operations which are happening
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in South America, Australia, wherever.
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But anyway, I got my suitcase of iron ore
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and dragged it back to London on the train,
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and then was faced with the problem:
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Okay, how do you make this rock
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into components for a toaster?
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So I went back to Professor Cilliers,
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and he said, "Go to the library."
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So I did
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and was looking through the undergraduate textbooks on metallurgy --
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completely useless for what I was trying to do.
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Because, of course, they don't actually tell you how to do it
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if you want to do it yourself and you don't have a smelting plant.
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So I ended up going to the History of Science Library
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and looking at this book.
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This is the first textbook on metallurgy
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written in the West, at least.
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And there you can see that woodcut
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is basically what I ended up doing.
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But instead of a bellows, I had a leaf blower.
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(Laughter)
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And that was something that reoccurred throughout the project,
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was, the smaller the scale you want to work on,
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the further back in time you have to go.
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And so this is after
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a day and about half a night
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smelting this iron.
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I dragged out this stuff,
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and it wasn't iron.
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But luckily,
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I found a patent online
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for industrial furnaces that use microwaves,
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and at 30 minutes at full power,
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and I was able to finish off the process.
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So, my next --
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(Applause)
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The next thing I was trying to get was copper.
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Again, this mine
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was once the largest copper mine in the world.
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It's not anymore,
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but I found a retired geology professor
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to take me down,
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and he said, "Okay, I'll let you have some water from the mine."
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And the reason I was interested in getting water
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is because water which goes through mines
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becomes kind of acidic
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and will start picking up,
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dissolving the minerals from the mine.
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And a good example of this is the Rio Tinto,
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which is in Portugal.
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As you can see, it's got lots and lots of minerals dissolved in it.
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So many such
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that it's now just a home for bacteria
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who really like acidic, toxic conditions.
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But anyway, the water I dragged back
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from the Isle of Anglesey where the mine was --
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there was enough copper in it
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such that I could cast the pins
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of my metal electric plug.
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So my next thing: I was off to Scotland
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to get mica.
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And mica is a mineral
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which is a very good insulator
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and very good at insulating electricity.
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That's me getting mica.
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And the last material I'm going to talk about today is plastic,
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and, of course,
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my toaster had to have a plastic case.
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Plastic is the defining feature
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of cheap electrical goods.
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And so plastic comes from oil, so I phoned up BP
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and spent a good half an hour
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trying to convince the PR office at BP
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that it would be fantastic for them
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if they flew me to an oil rig
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and let me have a jug of oil.
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BP obviously has a bit more on their mind now.
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But even then
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they weren't convinced
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and said, "Okay, we'll phone you back" -- never did.
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So I looked at other ways of making plastic.
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And you can actually make plastic
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from obviously oils which come from plants, but also from starches.
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So this is attempting to make
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potato starch plastic.
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And for a while that was looking really good.
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I poured it into the mold, which you can see there,
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which I've made from a tree trunk.
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And it was looking good for a while,
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but I left it outside, because you had to leave it outside to dry,
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and unfortunately I came back
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and there were snails eating the unhydrolyzed bits of potato.
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So kind of out of desperation,
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I decided that I could think laterally.
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And geologists have actually christened --
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well, they're debating whether to christen --
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the age that we're living in --
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they're debating whether to make it a new geological epoch
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called the Anthropocene, the age of Man.
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And that's because geologists of the future
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would kind of see a sharp shift
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in the strata of rock that is being laid down now.
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So suddenly, it will become kind of radioactive from Chernobyl
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and the 2,000 or so nuclear bombs
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that have been set off since 1945.
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And there'd also be an extinction event --
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like fossils would suddenly disappear.
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And also, I thought
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that there would be
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synthetic polymers,
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plastics, embedded in the rock.
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So I looked up a plastic --
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so I decided that I could mine
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some of this modern-day rock.
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And I went up to Manchester
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to visit a place called Axion Recycling.
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And they're at the sharp end of what's called the WEEE,
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which is this European electrical and electronic waste directive.
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And that was brought into force
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to try and deal with the mountain of stuff
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that is just being made
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and then living for a while in our homes
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and then going to landfill.
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But this is it.
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(Music)
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(Laughter)
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So there's a picture
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of my toaster.
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(Applause)
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That's it without the case on.
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And there it is on the shelves.
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Thanks.
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(Applause)
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Bruno Giussani: I'm told you did plug it in once.
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TT: Yeah, I did plug it in.
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I don't know if you could see,
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but I was never able to make insulation for the wires.
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Kew Gardens were insistent
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that I couldn't come and hack into their rubber tree.
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So the wires were uninsulated.
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So there was 240 volts
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going through these homemade copper wires,
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homemade plug.
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And for about five seconds,
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the toaster toasted,
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but then, unfortunately,
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the element kind of melted itself.
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But I considered it a partial success, to be honest.
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BG: Thomas Thwaites. TT: Thanks.
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