We live in the Age of Technology where technology has made many useful wonderful devices, made our lives easier; for example, we have remote controls for all sorts of things and we have packages – nicely packaged so it's easy to find what we need, easy to keep them together, otherwise they would get lost. And we have wonderful technology. So, for example, we have the mobile phone,
small, lightweight, very powerful, very beautiful. We have a modern computer – thin, lightweight, beautiful texture, known for its looks, known for its utility. But suppose that you need to change the battery. Well, we just open it up ... Gee – how do you open it up? How do you change the battery? What happens when new chips come out, so it would make it faster?
Can you add the chips? No. Can you upgrade it? No. New camera? No. Same with a cell phone – the batteries go bad; can you change it? Well, yeah, a professional can change it but not the average person. So, we live in the Age of Plenty, we live in the Age of Technology and Luxury, but we also live in the Age of Waste. The Age of Plenty has led to the Age of Waste.
And why is that? Well, some of it is because we try to make things so convenient, we forget that the convenience comes at a cost. So, for example, a package of grapes. Interestingly, these grapes were grown in Peru, and I'm sitting here in the United States, in California, so this has been shipped a long distance. And it's packaged – you can hear it – in a plastic bag. Now, when I'm finished with the grapes, what do I do with the plastic bag?
I throw it away. And where does it go? Can it be decomposed? No. Can it be reused? No. It goes into a waste, big landfill. All around the world there are these big waste piles – piles of things that are burning often because we throw away our electronics there as well. And when the electronics get old, the batteries start getting hot and catching fire. And so, *waste*. We carry things in plastic bags. It's really convenient to do that.
When you're finished using them, we throw them away. Coffee cup. Well, you know, it's paper, right? We can just recycle it – we can reuse the paper? No, because you don't really want coffee in cardboard; it would soak into the paper. So, the cardboard is coated with a very thin coating of plastic; and unless the company that does the recycling
can remove that plastic, it cannot recycle it. How do you know the company which does your recycling can remove the plastic? There's no way. So, let's take a look at what nature does. Well, take a banana, for example; it's nicely packaged, easy to open, easy to use – and when we're all finished, the banana peel can be reused by nature. If we throw it away on the ground, for example, it naturally decomposes and
adds fertilizer and nutrients to the soil so other plants can grow. So, why can't we manufacture things in this way? We call this *the circular economy*. That is to say, *no waste*. Everything that is built, everything that is used can be *reused*, *recycled*. Not just recycled the way we do it today, which is actually quite wasteful, but recycled so that the same parts can be reused or in the case of nature
it naturally decomposes into useful nutrients for the next cycle.