The China Syndrome

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2018

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Plastic waste and pollution have become a global problem but is there any sign of a global solution? And how did we allow this to happen in the first place? Materials scientist and broadcaster, Professor Mark Miodownik, explores how we fell in love with plastic, why we've ended up with oceans of waste blighting the environment and what science and society can do about it. Programme Three: Roland Pease hears from Kenya where one of the most stringent bans on plastic bags has been in force for nearly two years, from the US where the reuseable cup has taken off and from Sweden where reverse vending machines give you money back when you return your plastic bottles. And he looks at places where plastic is the best material for the job. Picture: Bike loaded with empty plastic bottles. Shanghai China, Credit: typhoonski/Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:30.0	Big size gloves. The basement of a pharmaceutical company in Southern Britain where bacteria are kept in a deep freeze,
0:40.0	well it is a strange place to start a program on recycling plastics.
0:45.0	Researcher Nicola Crowhurst was hauling the critical samples out.
0:50.0	We have bee juice full of the coally. So it says petes. Yes, it petes.
0:57.0	That's the enzyme that we're expressing. So we'll take this file and this will be inoculated into a shape flask to then go into our fermenters.
1:06.3	But it was to one of G.S. K's facilities I'd come for this edition of Discovery from the BBC
1:12.1	to learn about the possible future of making the most of our plastic waste.
1:16.7	I'm Rowland Peas. These were genetically engineered bugs.
1:20.9	Essentially what it looks like. So that's literally coli cells.
1:24.0	Just spat it over there, tiny little dots.
1:26.0	Yes.
1:27.0	And each one of those will contain multiple copies of the plasmid
	...

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