and they share private footage with us that has never been seen before. back to terminal stories of people 26 on g.w. . we humans can be very inconsistent we demand the most exotic of holiday destinations expected to be unspoiled but don't put much thought into the carbon footprint of our flight halfway around the globe a mate of mine is headed for the tropical paradise of the multi is chosen an island a little further away from the capital to avoid seeing the plumes of smoke that

rise from all the rubbish they've done a lot of which comes from mass tourism out of sight out of mind deep down we know it's there still we'd like to believe the promises industry make about going green that's a topic today on mate business short i was promised pristine beaches and crystal clear waters when i took a trip through in malaysia a few years back the island lived up to part of the deal it was absolutely beautiful but it didn't take long to stumble across the type of plastic waste that causes a painful death of marine mammals of course it also ends up in many fish which end up on our plates not that appetizing well some companies are trying to divert those ocean plastics into something more profitable how about a pair of running shoes made out of the stuff. that looks at the truth behind a very effective marketing ploy. saving the ocean by buying new recycled products.

for example with these. rocks. breaking in a scale there's no such thing as recycled plastic. so is recycling ocean plastic actually or is it just another lousy green washing method that companies. if you go shopping today recycle products are literally everywhere and the holy grail is recycled products from the . coca-cola laughs to use marine plastic for their marketing as well with their ultra boost sneakers i mean these as really make me believe that i can see the ocean by drinking a coke or buying a new sneaker but once you start looking into it there isn't really that much collecting of actual ocean plastic going on.

in the ocean you will have a really hard time getting it out again even when it's near the surface. you really wish it would be easy but surprise is not even close. sure you can deploy boats that fish for plastic but this is all very expensive and relative to the millions of tons of plastic that are already in the ocean most boats only retrieve 2 tons maximum per day. even projects backed by millions of dollars struggle this stupid was supposed to get rid of 90 percent of plastic in the ocean but it didn't work and the focus was shifted to reverse that. once you get plastic out of the ocean. you'll have dozens of different types of plastic to sort through like these last fishing nets

that professor gil young tried to recycle for a research project. at welding worth. see what we call. this batch is presorted but it's still a mess we need to separate out further. which we do. on the left side. sorting these nets according to their color is one thing but they also need to be cut down to recycle them but these really bloomed you far easily. it's really like your scissor. made out of wood. even recycling the stuff that we for in our bins is pretty pretty hard like i found out in my last video.

but this is really different. especially because ocean plastic has been degraded by soles and sunlight so it loses a lot of its regional quality. next step would be to get rid of oh say. even a tiny amount of sand seaweed or shells can make plastic non-recyclable. round about 5 percent it's really to use every site that can work with so if we give them the material to somebody who makes pellets out of it they say not more than 5 percent of courage that's pretty clear. even when cleaned industrial use sand can still be found on a microscopic level. which is why i know a lot of cases products contain a mix of ocean plastic and other recycled material but the ocean plastic can only

be a tiny tiny fraction of this bland but the airds still look like this. all of these products are made with nylon from because even the company markets its yard like it's made from actual marine litter such as discarded fishing nets known as. things that are not yet made from the new york which are made from. made from girls here and there is. literally you know both am is products are very very very let less than a percent less than a personal maybe. environmental scientist on the asteroids or has been in contact with economists several times about its problematic messaging in any email it can yield told me that ocean plastic only represents a small part of the c.r.

. for our next recycling step we had to use material prepared by professor gak or otherwise we would have been cutting here for days. these plastic pellets have been turned into a letter opener. so this is the final product and after all these steps we have just seen with us you can imagine how expensive such a opener that this. i would say one round about 200 euros. it's really each step. which these products are and they are made in the dust released but about the same price as non ocean plastic products this only works by using very little ocean plastic or plastic that hasn't actually been in the ocean. right now.

there is no such thing as recycled ocean plastic. an international distributor for something called an ocean bound plastic the term refers to plastic waste that is found within 50 kilometers of coastlines and is likely to end up in the ocean it applies exclusively to countries with poor waste management systems. and when you dig a little all way way deeper you'll find that a lot on companies websites land based ocean bound plastic is everywhere. this makes it a lot easier to collect and process them plastic that has actually been in the ocean so it's cheap. let's look at prices per ton for that version plastic cost $762.00 euro and recycled plastic goes for about $870.00 euro's ocean bound plastic is around $920.00 euros. this seems relatively

affordable compared to actual ocean plastic judging from the 200 year old letter opener so production costs are likely to be much higher if real ocean plastic is used. there is no need for brands to overreach their marketing beyond what is such a powerful story of cleaning up our coastlines and supporting coastal communities why do we have to pretend that it's actually coming out of the ocean instead of just saying what it is and delivering to customers are. like us who marketed the oceans. as made from actual ocean plastic when in fact ocean bound plastic was used to produce the ship even smaller companies have difficulty proving whether plastic actually comes from got back the german backpack manufacturer advertises its products as created from actual ocean plastic they use

a network of fisherman and women who collect plastic as. but as of now they haven't certified this production so we don't really know if it's actually plastic what we do know recycling hony world as a last resort and using ocean ocean bound instead of virgin plastic is a small win for the environment just not as big as some companies want you to believe so really look at what you're buying read the fine print yes that annoying person embrace it otherwise your good intentions will probably just say that. at this point the cynics among us may feel justified in leaning back and saying oh that recycling racket makes no difference anyway the plastic will end up in my fish fingers no matter what but there is a lot of evidence to show recycling makes

a difference here's a look at the virtues of the circular economy which isn't much different from the way nature operates. this is me. good bye to that empty to go cap on the way to work. farewell to that pair of worn out shoes the ass it takes not so long. our daily lives are dominated by a relentless round of production and consumption in the process we waste valuable resource squandering finite commodities like oil gas and smash holes. throwing things away creates a lot of trash and harmful emissions. maybe we should look to nature as an example it works in cycles plants grow and die they need to transfer load back into the ground and the process starts all over again can't we create cycles in which

today's products become the woman teria was of tomorrow absolutely this principle is known as a circular economy. the goal is to preserve commodities reduce carbon emissions and avoid mountains of trash. most high tech electronic devices contain rare earth elements and precious metals so broken t.v. can be used to make the latest tablet but it's not always so simple certain products like batteries for example are chock full of chemicals and valuable materials that aren't so easy to bring back into the cycle separating all those parts from each other is costly and labor intensive but the process works well with p.t. bottles germans use about $17000000000.00 of them annually. p.t. is an artificial substance made from crude oil and natural gas. the cycle begins with the production of p.t. subsequently they fold up and end up on supermarket shelves before being sold once

their contents are consumed their vendor positive into bottle recycling machines in recycling centers they turned into granulated which is used as the basis for new products such as new p.t. bottles shopping bags and football jerseys and that's how 100 percent of the recycled p.t. bottles end up back in the circular economy. and effective example of recycling unfortunately recycling plastic is usually more expensive than making it from scratch so there's often a lack of incentive we turn now to the world's forests another great area of concern where good intentions alone on to nuff climate change is devastating some german forests a problem for the environment and the economy one international study put the value of germany's forests at 725000000000 euros. for the past decade a global initiative as aims to plant millions of trees and it's seen

a measure of real success as we found out it's nowhere near enough. the world's trees are disappearing at an alarming rate in brazil alone 4 and a half football fields of primeval forest are lost every minute globally of forests of shrunk by 10 percent over the past 30 years. yet these forests are essential to our survival they slow the global rise in temperature produce oxygen and bind carbon dioxide a mixed forest that is well managed provides wood and creates prosperity and jobs. reforestation involves planting new young trees like in this nursery where oak tree cuttings are being used to raise up new forest. wondering is will it work can the world's forests be resort.

10 years ago representatives from many countries met in the german city of bonn where they agreed to restore deforested and degraded landscapes it was called the bond challenge each country set its own goals. countries all over the globe committed to planting 1500000 square kilometers of new forest by 2020. taking that's an area about half the size of the indian subcontinent. but that's not all. by 2030 they're aiming to have planted up to 3500000 square kilometers that's like covering an area larger than the whole of india with trees. it's the world's largest ever reforestation program from peru in the andes to countries across africa new forests are appear.