we should have to open the lid or in the hot water and enjoy all that's left afterwards. is the packaging. what do we do with all the plastic weight? or could we manage without plastic the welcome to tomorrow to date this science show on dw well noodles i've been a favorite for decades. the japanese version is especially popular among young people. it's known as rom and a super fast food appreciated by busy students. the growth, paste,

and hubs are packaged in plastic. a for an e, you competition. a curriculum for graduate students took on a challenge. could this evening be packaged in something non plastic and edible, maybe excels. 2 seasoned not, not actually part of the eggs that we can see, but that's still an important resource for us. because to us they also contain interesting properties that could help us create better food packaging people. that's of the items often have for him come with a hard boiled soft roll fake so delivered in their own ideal packaging that kind of old every year. adjustments alone, each $20000000000.00 of them. so team edgy decided to focus its research on itself from the university of holland high and they still got it's one of the best in

gemini, for food science with a life that makes all kinds of experiments possible. the team spent 9 months conducting intensive research into edible packaging. in that time they perfected the formula. it's made of fine, the ground excels. he didn't sanitize to be, i genic a vegetable protein and a binding agent. the exact composition remains a secret of water mix. well then poured into a tray, drying it, housing the oven, create that thing so that behaves like a plastic bag. another process to go property of the film is that it reacts to heat but can be fused together of the contents of an audit. this means that can be sealed into separate portions. it's a very simple product, a cup of pasta and a seasoning sashay. add hot water on the substrate to solve in a split 2nd stove it all together. and that's it. and environmentally friendly snack without caustic waste winning edgy the 1st prize and the competition

started in the packaging, succeeding retail, food markets. i would say the chances are 5050 right now. the situation is quite favorable because companies are looking for new solutions. and this is an interesting solution into the front of those on the students that already hoping to get a commercial partner with a view to funding that really stovetop a sign until the following day. it was great to eat. my 1st bought needles with all the packaging texts, and evidently sustainable noodles sleep create, sustains satisfaction. the we use it for food, water bottles, detergent, plastic is everywhere. but what is plastic exactly? what is it made? and why does it stay in the environment for so long?

it's of material that's been part of our lives since we were born. cheap stereo and practical plastic has assumed various roles over the decades as toys, accessories, utility products, and the dream for innovative designers. plastics consist of large molecules called polymers which are generally manufactured from mineral oil. the oil is broken down into its constituent components, which are then recombined to create synthetic polymer change. the new material has very special qualities which light robust and can be molded into practically any stream you want. but plastics not as easy to dispose of this instead of polymers are almost impossible to break down and degrees extremely slow . the some need 500 to a 1000 years to fully decompose plastic

cell, great from an acid production. but not all of them are made for an oil. the some polymers are naturally occurring and are used to make bio plastic, cohen, sugarcane and cellulose can be chemically converted into mil killer chains with comfortable properties to boil derived plastics. the degree easier and even if it takes some time to do so, there's obviously a need for non fossil basic solutions. 90 percent of plastics are manufactured from oil. the amount recycled corps qualifying is bio plastic, is not even 10 percent. so where does the plastic that doesn't get recycled and done? a lot of it enters our rivers and from there it's carried out to see our oceans are

drowning implants. a team of scientists is analyzing what happens to the plastic left in the water. these plastic tanks have been floating around in the school to for almost 2 years now and they'll be there for at least another age. one of the tanks is filled with fresh water. the other with c will 10. you can see is encoded with quite a layer of salt to see water, certainly having an effect because it's part of a long term study being conducted at the university in easton, gemini, and bodies of glee. in this experiment, we're looking to see how plastic still composed in water that in particular cuz we want to know whether they can be recycled after by young and water for years. i guess is the researches from knock to books, university of applied sciences are especially interested in what long term would you exposure does to normal every day? plastic waste. how does it change its structure? how is the surfaces affected?

the demonic is generally we concerned with what the material does to the eco system, the water. but we're looking at what the water does to long plastic. can we really get it out of the water and use it again because the deaf office advocates? so the plastic is being exposed to natural influences in as many different environments as possible. these tanks have been floating and the voltage for 18 months does not. what does it plays a bond pocono of your home, but we also have 5 ohms documents that see because you can't recreate that inner tank and let me stuff to me the, the team of scientists hoping for lots of new insights, ones that will help us to better find the growing title, ways of plastic in our patients. new studies and warning of an exponential rise in the amount of trash you know,

sees by 2050. that could be more plastic than fish in the sea spin pool. yeah. every year, a total of about $300000000.00 metric tons of plastic is produced. we can just see me at least 10000000 tons end up in our ocean. so that's the united nation is estimate. and you could say a truckload of plastic is dumped into the sea every single minute you think it kept? plastic can take hundreds of years to break down. it's practically invincible. in water, it decomposes slowly into micro plastic and then often it's not. it sinks down into the depths, the c mon shits, the fits, estimated that already 80 percent of plastic is already lying. i'm a see bed and can no longer being removed. it slipped thought they would get eaten

by worms and all kinds of organisms organism. and when to create, in short said lions back in our plates by the food chain via the fish, we don't can, i can and cannot become many green organizations trying to break this vicious circle. the ocean clean enough is probably the best known project. it uses floating structures to capture learning letter. one is one ocean is consuming a similar goal. using folks still gather up the plastic sorted and recycle it. then that is the of a wave project which involves trying to remove liquid from rivers before it can even get to the si se puede depending of heat and fire. on the one hand, these projects raise awareness of the issue. warning us about our use of plastic him quinn stuff and fuck came to us on the other. they are

a drop in the ocean and shine by to the get some coming in queen stores. we are currently dumping into the seas can be removed by any project or with any technology in the world and how school with it and kind of michelle steiger agrees . but he's determined to do something to cook the plastic, as well as the big projects service, small businesses like his attempting to recycle marine the to he and his team produce rucksacks made completely of plastic from the ocean pacific that they were already a lot of great projects out there thinking the more the better. and we think that all these projects combine are also having an effect on the environment. it was in the philippines, some 100 people gather plastic from the waters off. one of the article it goes on and the pacific ocean throws up a lot of trash on the beach, is here. most of the plastic has only been in the water for a few weeks or months. the cooking recycled about 20 percent of the other 80

percent is made up of plastic coated wrapping paper. you can recycle back to anywhere in the world, including germany. they are incinerating. this is the only currently existing way of getting rid of these materials. only maureen, that if i'm close to the beach, is used to make his rock sites as it's unclear how suitable plastic is this been out at sea for years in the future science consent new lights on that fucking mach to book the experiments currently being carried out until 5, much time as much as the so i'm, i know for the material is so contaminated for the cleaning and preparing it to get to a point that it could be turned into something new. it's so much effort to 1000 the chances of sight in this trash of the songs on the middle of this research on marie mitchell, they say it's important to them. one thing in mind now is a stop listening message. the message can be no problem. we can recycle it. we comp

that's, that's done. it shouldn't end up the in the 1st place, seen on this stuff done this month. and we will need to keep on researching over the next few years to find out what we can do with the plastic. if it does end up that the, the ideal solution for the world's waste problem would be a plastic eating pac man. type need a huge appetite, be able to eat fast, and i just plastics like p t that's used for water bottles. amazingly, scientists have discovered an enzyme that can do just that. researchers in the city of leipzig have found an enzyme that breaks down plastic very fast. but to work it has to be heated between 60 and 70 degrees celsius. christiane and son in dick is team building is biotechnology. holds the key to our plastic problem. you're telling me to look at how nature does things and then copy it, and not

a tree, uses enzymes to breakdown polymers. so that's what we're doing. the team heads down to one of live 6 main cemeteries. this is where they found their enzyme on a compost heap. let's see what we find to the researchers identified an enzyme that decomposes leaves and it can also break down p t plastic. so a lot that's not to worry, we always have a wax light coating formed by an outer layer of eugene, which is a polyester. if that's a polymer that's built up by a ester bonds, just like with p t o by few and buick and stuff. it's the same for many bio plastics to the end. semi enzymes are so non specific that they can recognise and break down a broader spectrum of polyesters and inductance. and that's the advantage we're lucky to have a biological answer if you into our plastic problem. opens up plastic of the

infinity. christiane design and decor showed us how fast the enzyme works. as long as it's capped at 60 to 70 degrees celsius. the p t packaging dissolves completely in one day. all that remains is the basic building blocks. the enzyme was a lucky find for the researchers. we have all the t h o 7, which stands for polyester, hydrolyzed slide 600 on the 7th candidates out of the 9 that we found out that was the best performing enzyme. and this is what it looks like. they produce the 3 d printed model to show how the reaction works. so, i'm gonna see if there's the enzyme and here's the key chain with the esther bond. the links that will be broken, the man's arm comes like a pac man, and it goes off the individual ester bonds, leading to a basic building blocks parabolic assets and ethylene glycol. and from them we can make new plastics. i was coming,

i mean the noise plastic systems on injectors team have now moved on to the next step. they want to modify the enzymes, dna so that it eats plastic even faster. to do this, they're experimenting with many different modifications. they analyze each variant individually. selecting the most efficient ones for further study, they're also turning to modern technology and artificial intelligence to help bio technologist ronnie frank is assisting them. so give on, it's also no one to scale up our technology. so we have our new prototype here that will allow us to analyze around $100.00 enzyme samples at once. and we've been studying multiple layers at the same time on stopping to get that will generate the data we need to feed our a. i to then train it to identify new, improved enzymes that can break down plastic. they're analyzing thousands of enzymes each day in search of a super enzyme and they have

a larger vision to yeah, well, any manufacture ultimately we want to get the market to work more with poly yesterday. that are easy to break down with enzymes and damage that will allow us to develop really efficient. circular economy is good enough for you when we have no alternative. because right now we can cope with the plastic waste of money. so we're looking to the future and we're having a vision of recycling, plastic waves, sustainable fluid is also not high just for me. so i think the most plastic is made from crude oil, which was produced long before we came along. our norful keentonia from el salvador, such as a question about that. and how is crude oil made crude oil wouldn't be possible without the smouldering animals and puffs clinton. it's not just food for sea creatures. the petroleum being extracted today, foamed over millions of years,

and tiny creatures just like these. as soon as clinton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. since there is barely any oxygen at gray to depth, the plant and does not decay. instead, it mixes with different settlements, like clay and found on the sea, but these settlements flowed from rivers into the oceans. together with your gun at clinton, they formed became sludge, the souls for real petroleum. over the course of $10000.00 to several 1000000 years, settlement trulia is stuck on top of each other, becoming hundreds of meat as high. this process increases the pressure on the petroleum sole struck, raises the temperature. when the temperature reaches 80 degrees celsius, the petroleum sol struck begins to transform the loan chain hydrocarbons that make it up. but he can to show to chains. this process is known as cranking define grains digested sludge transforms into viscous crude oil. what does the most

complex organic compounds on our planet? extreme pressure force is the oil out of the rock that migrate spotwood and collects any impermeable layers of salt, mostly defined clay, creating an oil deposit. today about 15000000 liters of black gold are extracted from deposits every day. new crude oil is still forming all the time. as long as there is clinton, there were the substances needed to form petroleum, but it won't be ready for millions if you use the petroleum has been hiring industry for the past 150 years and driving climate change to electricity is one alternative. but electric cars, for example, need rechargeable batteries, and they're still full of precious raw materials. so scientists are looking into

how to recycle them efficiently. the black box engine side chunks of old batteries. they might not look like it, but they're very valuable. inside are lots of rare metals, including the much sought after lithium the company are correct and they failed. germany has been recycling old batteries from across europe for more than 20 years. engineer diagnose like a is a battery recycling pioneer. p things. battery recycling has untapped potential and not fixed. the market is huge right now, but relatively few batteries are being returned because many countries still don't have the collection infrastructure. the contacts cause the awareness of how batteries are collected for recycling is not very pronounced here in germany.

either. this is within the best so some other countries have higher collection rates exceeded by lots of batteries getting mixed in with electronic waste, or they're exported in such a way that we're not able to trace their route just enough. so it does so the overall return rates are pretty bad. decent is in fact less than half of all batteries get recycled. that causes big problems for recyclers. there's not enough demand to build the recycling machines needed to carry out the process. in this pilot plant depleted lithium batteries are being heated to 550 degree celsius design, not ones. i said, we develop this treasure here ourselves and it's a pilot plant, a larger one that will go into operation. in a few weeks. we've plants like this one don't exist anywhere on earth to get this means the batteries have only been on the market for 5 to 10 years. so it's the same demand for them went up quickly and now they're being recycled to the recycling itself is still very young. and that's why pilot plans like this one are

enormously important if you want to recycle on a large scale in cost. and last up to visit so large amounts of lithium ion batteries will be ready for recycling. these gold colored crumbs are clay minerals used to safely store lithium ion batteries, which are prone to catching on fire. sorting batteries is still laborious. manual work, their components are very different, but from the outside they're virtually indiscernible. there is no description of which chemicals are inside, so each battery is a unique surprise. right next door recyclers are working on a destroyed car battery. it might still have some residual charging it. that's why special high voltage electricians are at work here engineer diagnose so like a says it's worth the effort due to the value of the coveted contents. been

a lot of this, if we just focus on the metal lithium, it's one of the metals that's most available on the planet, but it's very finely distributed across the earth's crust. find a tie it in the costa. here we get the material for free. inside the lithium batteries about 10 minutes concentration of the 234, or 5 percent fide if you would since one test. and so these are of course, in easily accessible source about whom austin not to why distracted, very laboriously from nature when i can get it free of charge when recycling fly, it can be fun. lithium recycling may soon become big business, but at the moment it's still in the pioneering phase 2 but to the company itself. that's what we use of the batteries have just come out of paralysis where we've removed the plastics and it he's, it was coming to him and of i'm not so yeah, we're left with the material mix of metals like steel aluminum, copper,

and black matched meaning. we now have to separate those metals as fonts muscle to be we're working closely together with our w t h often on there to see how i'd often susan our w t. h. often there's one of the leading institutes in germany when it comes to recycling use batteries. scientists like powers up on i develop recycling concepts for all types of use batteries, including this use, the ion battery. the coveted raw material is in the black dust between the thin copper foils. the 1st step is grinding it all into a fine powder. the blackboard wouldn't be active mass, also known as black mass contains all the valuable materials that you make up a battery from lithium to nickel cobalt to gratified the all of which are extremely rare, but critical according to your opinion standards. i think that's why it's very,

very important that we can extract the individual elements out of the black mass of them into is currently 16, ph. d. p. c's are being written the simultaneously on lithium recycling, lead me on to reach, had specialized and what is known as hydro metallurgy. in this process, the black masses skirt into a water the lithium dissolves into the water, but the other metals do not, which makes them easy to filter out. lilian trees transforms the black broth into a clear solution. around to 90 percent of the lithium contained in the black mask gets recovered this way. it's laboratory work on the verge of becoming an industrial process. you're going to see them in the water here. it's aiyona and then we can recover it from the solution using environmentally friendly process is like membrane technology, your i and exchange is when we do that. so let's see, and we get looks like this. you see a white powder, which is lithium carbonate,

a products that can be sold in this form. it can then be used in the production of new batteries. scientists and industry are predicting that that will be the case in the coming years. extracting elements like graphite, copper, iron, nickel, and cobalt from old batteries. is we pass the laboratory phase. now the focus is on extracting lithium industrial, the, the white gold of the green energy transition. red, why do you have a science question? send it to us as a video, text or voice message. if we answer it on the show, we'll send you a little surprises the thank you. so come on, just ask the pencil for this week's edition of tomorrow today. joining us again next week for more science

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the this is dw news line from bell in nicaragua takes germany to calls over its support for israel, the international court of justice and the hague begins hearing the claim by nicaragua, that berlin is facilitating alleged genocide, him gaza. germany says the case is not justified. also coming up under our people in gauze, i've had tons of the homes. officer israel, surprise withdrawal from san eunice palestinians are rushing to discover what is left of that neighborhood. and german troops arrive in this way and yeah, as nights or shows up defenses on its eastern flank. it's the boat in this vast 1st

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