The surprising solution to ocean plastic | David Katz

We've had it all wrong.

Everybody.

We've had it all wrong.

The very last thing we need to do

is clean the ocean.

Very last.

Yeah, there is a garbage truck of plastic

entering the ocean

every minute

of every hour of every day.

And countless birds and animals

are dying just from encountering plastic.

We are experiencing the fastest rate of extinction ever,

and plastic is in the food chain.

And I'm still here, standing in front of you,

telling you the very last thing we need to do

is clean the ocean.

Very last.

If you were to walk into a kitchen,

sink overflowing,

water spilling all over the floor,

soaking into the walls,

you had to think fast, you're going to panic;

you've got a bucket, a mop or a plunger.

What do you do first?

Why don't we turn off the tap?

It would be pointless to mop

or plunge or scoop up the water

if we don't turn off the tap first.

Why aren't we doing the same for the ocean?

Even if the Ocean Cleanup project,

beach plastic recycling programs

or any well-meaning

ocean plastic company

was a hundred percent successful,

it would still be too little, too late.

We're trending to produce over 300 million ton

of plastic this year.

Roughly eight million ton

are racing to flow into the ocean

to join the estimated 150 million ton already there.

Reportedly, 80 percent of ocean plastic

is coming from those countries that have extreme poverty.

And if you live in the grips of poverty

concerned, always, about food

or shelter

or a sense of security,

recycling --

it's beyond your realm of imagination.

And that is exactly why

I created the Plastic Bank.

We are the world's largest chain of stores

for the ultra-poor,

where everything in the store is available to be purchased

using plastic garbage.

Everything.

School tuition.

Medical insurance.

Wi-Fi, cell phone minutes, power.

Sustainable cooking fuel, high-efficiency stoves.

And we keep wanting to add everything else

that the world may need and can't afford.

Our chain of stores in Haiti are more like community centers,

where one of our collectors,

Lise Nasis,

has the opportunity to earn a living

by collecting material from door to door,

from the streets,

from business to business.

And at the end of her day, she gets to bring the material back to us,

where we weigh it, we check it for quality,

and we transfer the value into her account.

Lise now has a steady,

reliable source of income.

And that value we transfer into an online account for her.

And because it's a savings account, it becomes an asset

that she can borrow against.

And because it's online,

she has security against robbery,

and I think more importantly,

she has a new sense of worth.

And even the plastic

has a new sense of value.

Hm.

And that plastic we collect,

and we add value to,

we sort it,

we remove labels,

we remove caps.

We either shred it

or we pack it into bales and get it ready for export.

Now, it's no different than walking over acres of diamonds.

If Lise was to walk over acres of diamonds

but there was no store, no bank,

no way to use the diamonds, no way to exchange them,

they'd be worthless, too.

And Lise was widowed

after the 2010 Haitian earthquake,

left homeless without an income.

And as a result of the program,

Lise can afford her two daughters' school tuition

and uniforms.

Now, that plastic

we sell.

We sell it to suppliers of great brands

like Marks and Spencer,

who have commissioned the use of social plastic

in their products.

Or like Henkel,

the German consumer-goods company,

who are using social plastic directly into their manufacturing.

We've closed the loop

in the circular economy.

Now buy shampoo

or laundry detergent

that has social plastic packaging,

and you are indirectly contributing

to the extraction of plastic from ocean-bound waterways

and alleviating poverty

at the same time.

And that model

is completely replicable.

In São Paulo,

a church sermon encourages parishioners

to not just bring offering on Sunday,

but the recycling, too.

We then match the church with the poor.

Or, I believe more powerfully,

we could match a mosque in London with an impoverished church in Cairo.

Or like in Vancouver,

with our bottle-deposit program:

now any individual

or any group

can now return

their deposit-refundable recyclables,

and instead of taking back the cash,

they have the opportunity to deposit that value

into the account of the poor around the world.

We can now use our recycling

to support and create recyclers.

One bottle deposited at home

could help extract hundreds around the world.

Or, like Shell,

the energy company,

who's invested in our plastic-neutral program.

Plastic neutrality is like carbon-neutral.

But plastic neutrality invests in recycling infrastructure

where it doesn't exist.

And it provides an incentive for the poor

by providing a price increase.

Or --

like in the slums of Manila,

where the smallest market

with a simple scale and a phone

can now accept social plastic

as a new form of payment by weight,

allowing them to serve more people

and have their own greater social impact.

And what's common here

is that social plastic

is money.

Social plastic is money,

a globally recognizable and tradable currency that, when used,

alleviates poverty and cleans the environment

at the same time.

It's not just plastic.

It's not recycled plastic, it's social plastic,

a material whose value is transferred

through the lives of the people who encounter it,

rich and poor.

Humans have produced

over eight trillion kilograms of plastic,

most of it still here as waste.

Eight trillion kilograms.

Worth roughly 50 cents a kilo,

we're potentially unleashing a four-trillion-dollar value.

See, I see social plastic

as the Bitcoin for the earth --

(Laughter)

and available for everyone.

Now the entire ecosystem is managed and supported

through an online banking platform

that provides for the safe, authentic transfer of value globally.

You can now deposit your recyclables in Vancouver or Berlin,

and a family could withdraw building bricks or cell phone minutes

in the slums of Manila.

Or Lise --

she could deposit recycling at a center in Port-au-Prince,

and her mother could withdraw cooking fuel or cash

across the city.

And the app adds rewards,

incentives,

group prizes,

user rating.

We've gamified recycling.

We add fun and formality

into an informal industry.

We're operating in Haiti and the Philippines.

We've selected staff

and partners for Brazil.

And this year, we're committing to India and Ethiopia.

We're collecting hundreds

and hundreds of tons of material.

We continue to add partners

and customers,

and we increase our collection volumes every day.

Now as a result of our program with Henkel,

they've committed to use over 100 million kilograms

of material every year.

That alone will put hundreds of millions of dollars

into the hands of the poor

in the emerging economies.

And so now,

we can all

be a part of the solution

and not the pollution.

And so, OK, maybe cleaning the ocean is futile.

It might be.

But preventing ocean plastic

could be humanity's richest opportunity.

Thank you.

(Applause)