10 Ways To Turn Trash Into Cash

Key Takeaways

humans make more than 2 billion tons of trash each year and we keep finding new ways to use it from taking swamp reads to make a replacement for plastic bags to Turning coconut husks into portable coolers here are 10 stories about people trying to solve the global waste problem these filaments used to be plastic bottles and they're being turned into polyester the fabric makes up more than half of all of our clothing and one company in India called Shri ringa can turn about 1 and a half million plastic bottles into polyester in a single day that is going to be almost more than tripled in the next couple of years turns out there's plenty of appetite for it more and more fashion Brands like Adidas Nike and shin are trying to increase the amount of polyester made from recycled Plastics in their lines often marketing them as more sustainable but why is so much of what we wear made from plastic to begin with and how do you turn a bottle into clothing the Shri ranga company spends about 25 metric tons of polyester on a daily basis the founder K SAR is proud of every filament his Factory spins but it took him Decades of trying to get here I felt like doing something to the society by doing recycling today he runs the business alongside his son stho who quit his job in it to help his dad I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I wanted to be an entrepreneur in India globally we produce about 600 million of these bottles every year and most of them are not recycled in India waste Pickers collect and deposit them at sorting sites like this one where workers crush and bail them for sale every month Shri renga buys about 900 metric tons of trash from companies like this one but all it really wants is pet that's short for polyethylene talate one of the most common types of plastic at Shri rangas Factory the first step to getting it is separating the valuable bottles from the Caps labels and glue mixing in other Plastics could ruin the final material but getting to Pure pet is pretty timec consuming we have a lot of advanced sensing Technologies which are used to separate pet PVC all the other Plastics bottle caps are usually made from polypropylene a kind of plastic that Shri renga doesn't recycle so they sell them to another company that makes lead acid battery cases and all of the dirt and sand they collect from washing the bottles is pressed with Ash to make bricks that decorate the factory [Music] floor then machines crush the bottles into flakes the bagged flakes are then loaded onto trucks and delivered to another part of the factory [Music] here they are crushed again and passed over a Civ Shaker a machine that sorts the flakes by size making sure they're no larger than 14 mm smaller particles falling to the Shaker's bottom are used again to make pet pellets but the flakes still aren't 100% separated after a quick rinse machines transfer them into a Flo tank here the pet will sink and other Plastics can be skimmed off the top they are then washed 10 times to remove any remaining dirt and glue nothing is wasted in this vect that water is again used back the plastic is rinsed one final time leaving behind clear flakes which are dried and loaded into these sacks now it's time to turn them into fiber and pet is uniquely suited for this purpose it has long chains of molecules that hold tightly together creating lightweight flexible and strong materials the length of those molecular chains determines whether the plastic is used for things like bottles packaging or textiles chemically pet and polyester are the same thing making fibers starts by melting the plastic Flakes with colored pigments a technique known as dope dying the combined goop is then pushed through a spinnerette a metal plate with hundreds of small holes that can be adjusted for thickness when it melts and comes out it comes in the colored form we don't use a single drop of water we don't use energy for a coloring process Shri renga currently makes 200 different colors of fiber as they exit the filaments cool and dry after every use the plates are cleaned using high frequency sound waves which create microscopic bubbles that collapse and remove anything stuck to the spinner at the fibers are then stretched using a series of rollers which deposit them into these large buckets shutting down and restarting these machines is energy intensive and expensive so they have to run non-stop throughout the day if you have to stop then it it takes a long time for us to reboot again workers weigh the drums and bring them into this area called the draw line here 60 to 70 barrels are simultaneously routed through a series of eyelets pulling them into parallel [Music] strips polyester tends to hold static electricity so the FI are dipped in a starch-based lubricant to avoid sticking together another series of rollers makes them up to four times longer and yet another set of heated rollers stabilizes the fiber into its stretched State this machine crimps the fibers giving them a wavy pattern and making them easier to combine with other textiles like cotton the finished fibers travel to the top of this platform where they are cut down to a manageable size finally they are compressed bailed and shipped to another company for further processing at Shri kanatal Mills the fibers are spun into Yarns using a series of machines first workers load them into a bail opener which uses rollers and spiked drums to loosen the fiber they weigh the sheet before loading it into a cting machine it pulls the fiber over wire covered cylinders that comb through Tangles creating a thin web that is then condensed into a loose rope called sver these sver strands are coiled into large cans workers attach them to machines that combine several of the ropes [Music] together next the sers are run through something called a Simplex machine it uses a series of rollers rotating at different speeds to stretch the fibers and make them more parallel the result is a more Compact and uniform rope known as roving which is ideal for [Music] spinning workers feed the roving through a spinner that twists it into yarn finally the strands a ring spun onto bobbins [Music] Cil and his father used these cones to make their clothing but before pet was ever woven into t-shirts it started out as a lab experiment when scientists at the chemical company Dupont developed the first synthetic fibers in the early 20th century they were celebrated as major scientific achievements that could replace silk and cotton modern Fabrics of today are all chemistry and and a yard wide Before the Breakthrough the US imported over 90% of its silk from Japan using it mostly to make stockings but all trades ceased during World War II collapsing the silk market after the war nylon stockings became a cheap popular substitute free nylons just for the scramble and in the 1950s polyester was built as a magical man-made fabric that wouldn't wrinkle for A New Concept in fashion clothes that pack well and need little care in the 1970s it became cheaper than cotton and fashion brands embraced it the material was strong flexible easy to dieye resistant to heat and stains and quick to dry in the 1980s cotton was the world's most popular fiber but over the next few decades polyester came to dominate the industry and is expected to keep growing with the majority of production outsourced to Southeast Asia the popularity was fueled by fast fashion brands like Gap H&M Zara and Forever 21 in 2020 the World produced enough polyester to fill about 2 and2 million garbage trucks less than 15% of that came from recycled material and one study showed that a single truckloads worth of clothing goes into a landfill or incinerator every second to bring that stat down more and more brands are working with recycled polyester made from plastic bottles including Adidas Nike Zara and even Sheen in early 2024 more than 120 clothing companies pledged to increase their use of recycled polyester Shri renga launched its own recycled clothing brand in 2021 called ecoline most pieces are made of 100% recycled polyester but sometimes they're mixed with cotton so once the fiber was made making Yarns and fabrics and garments was just an extension everything is still made in the same fac facilities workers connect hundreds of bobbins to a machine that weaves the yarn into sheets of fabric which then head to inspection if there is some defect that is found it will be marked with a marker and once that uh marker is seen in the cutting section they will cut that portion alone and keep it aside as waste that again gets recy all of the Fabrics they use are laid out marked and cut into various shapes for garment to add a design Shri renga uses a sublimation printer and once this uh the sheets are out we place them into panels in our Heat Transfer Machine this device applies heat and pressure to transfer dies directly onto the polyester the company sells 400,000 garments a year and plans to Triple production by 2026 we are boldly betting on this expanding our capacities thinking that the future is going to be sustainable fashion and we want to be well placed when that wave comes in 2023 the family received a huge Boost after India's prime minister Narendra Modi wore one of their vests known as a sadre I was literally in tears my product is own by prime minister of the country something wonderful it's something to convince someone to wear something out of trash and that we've been able to do with eoline clothes made from recycled polyester are often advertised as good for the environment but they still come with an impact washing any synthetic fiber can introduce microplastics less than 5 mm in length into our waterways some studies suggest that synthetic fibers contribute more than a third of all microplastics in the ocean and if it ends up in a landfill River or ocean it won't break down to top it off recycling polyester isn't as easy as recycling a plastic bottle polyester is often mixed with things like cotton spandex chemicals and dyes that must be separated before recycling the cheapest and simplest method for recycling clothing involves shredding it but that creates shorter fibers that need to be blended with the Virgin ones to make new clothes so they are typically downcycled into carpets and stuffing for insulation in 2020 a research institute in Hong Kong started experimenting with fibert fiber recycling it partnered with H&M to make this machine which turns used clothes into new ones in about 3 days first a technician like Emily sha examines the Garment so today we will recycle a old G this ozone chamber sanitizes the fabric in about an hour then Emily removes the buttons labels and zippers and cuts the Garment so the fabric is easy to work with the shredder strips the bits of cloth down further and then I will take off the open Fabrics but this part of the process does require some new materials so we're going add some Orin fibers into the Yarns to make it the stronger another machine mixes that cotton with a recycled skirt Emily then rolls the mixed fibers into clumps and feeds them into a machine that turns them into what's called a fiber web the fiberweb gets bundled into these snake-like sers the sers are then spun into ply yarn the building blocks for any new garment finally a machine knits a new sweater based on a computer design Shoppers pay about $65 to recycle clothing here how do we help consumers think about their clothes differently well that's one of the reasons why we have a glass box doing research in a shopping mall the H&M Foundation partnered with the Hong Kong Research Institute of textiles and apparel that investment allowed the company to license and install the technology at one of its stores in Stockholm where the company's headquartered H&M calls it the loop here Shoppers pay only $18 to see the recycling process in action that's about the price of a new pair of the brand sweatpants that's how it comes out and then this is the only part that has to be removed Virginia the technician trims the extra yarn and the Garment is ready to go it seems like a perfect solution but it takes 3 days to recycle just one garment a factory like this that can recycle thousands of tons of clothes a day doesn't exist yet but agent M says that eventually this kind of Technology could be a global solution for textile waste the O Grail is a garment to garment Recycling and that that's for me where today most our investment going into and other large companies are making similar bets Gap and Zara's parent company inditex recently made major investments in an American Business called Amber cycle the company developed a chemical process to separate polyester from dyes and other Fabrics eliminating the need for Virgin materials the idea for Amber cycle is really just how do you take an old t-shirt and turn it into a new t-shirt instead of using natural resources the most difficult thing is scaling up the process from Pilot PL scale to tens of thousands of t-shirts that successive scale up is really hard it's especially hard when Virgin polyester is so much cheaper and easier to use than New Recycling technology less than 1% % of old clothes are recycled to new clothes so we don't actually have large or I would say commercial scale technology for recycling meanwhile fast fashion shows no signs of slowing down and its expected synthetic fibers could make up nearly 34s of all textile production by 2030 Brands and the industry wider needs to invest more into fiber to fiber recycling but at the same time we need to realize that this is not a silver bullet you know recycled polyester generates about 70% less emissions than virgin and Shri ranga has several certifications ensuring it limits the use of harmful chemicals and actually recycles the trash it buys from the end product you can trace everything back to the origin and we wanted that to be the core ethos of our brand and we positioned it that way some Advocates say it's better to just recycle bottles into new bottles since that can be done around 11 times but less than 10% of all plastic actually makes it to a recycling center so for now Cil and his dad are happy to save any plastic they can from landfills or the oceans even if it's only temporary for us when you make it into a garment it takes a longer time for it to reach the dust though there's a lot of work to be done he thinks Shri ranga is well positioned to make the most out of plastic trash whether it's recycling or renewable energy this is the year of sustainability and uh I think we're in the [Music] space demand for bamboo is growing whether it's straws spoons or even toilet paper bamboo products are springing up on grocery shelves everywhere usually branded as a Greener alternative to plastic and paper some species of the fast growing plant can Sprout more than 1 foot per day but are bamboo products really good for the planet and how do they stack up against the paper and plastic competition over the centuries people have used bamboo to build houses make paper and even cook into food today it's still often used as Scaffolding in places like Hong Kong using it to make disposable items like like cups and toilet paper is a much newer concept and it's on the rise bamboo forest in China the world's top supplier have more than tripled in size since 1950 and the US and India are two of the top buyers bamboo thrives on the island of Taiwan too in forests like this one it's one of the only food contact safe approved bamboo plantations in Taiwan that's where Taiwan company called lastic gets its bamboo after sawing down each stock Harvesters slice off the small branches and leaves those stalks will later become food wear like straws and lunchboxes the founder used to work as an importer of packaged foods and felt he was adding to the world's plastic problems at the production site the team sliced is open a bundle most of the workers here are part of a different operation that makes bamboo skewers for food plastic partners with them to use some of their leftover scraps inside a worker cuts the stocks into segments removing these tough joints called nodes the smaller chunks travel through this device which Cuts them in half and sorts them by size the team soaps bundles of these segments in water for for a couple hours a worker feeds the softened pieces into a machine that cuts out the skewer shapes plastic uses these leftover strands called off Cuts some of them will serve as fuel for the next step they're loaded into a bucket with pellets that are also made of bamboo all of it Powers a machine that dries the stringy offcuts and grinds them up next the bagged bamboo powder will be mixed with other ingredients plastic wouldn't show us that part but the recipe includes corn starch and minerals there's also something the founders call a bioadhesive it's technically a biodegradable plastic and it's made from Plants instead of fossil fuels it helps hold bamboo fibers together and makes them moldable like plastic Goods plastic has about 30 different formulas which can take nearly any shape including straws this machine can make 300 of them a minute the company also makes lunchboxes a sheet of the mixture is warmed up then vacuum pressure sucks it into shape at another facility machines press elastics formula into spoons forks and other color the final products are packaged and ready to be shipped out for now the team wraps the straw bundles in plastic but they're working on an alternative eventually all of our packaging will be this material but we haven't been able to qu Mass produ a bag yet Plastics customers include coffee shops packaging companies and straw makers some buy the finished goods others buy the bamboo mixture and make the goods themselves the idea is that manufacturers can easily switch from plastic to lastic can just use it in the same Machinery just switching some of the temperatures that things on the machines and we can make the exact same product the company says all products made from its material can break down in nature that's a key detail many compostable Plastics only break down at industrial compost facilities under very specific temperature and moisture conditions our product you don't need any special Machinery you can it decomposes a natural environment quite rapidly but don't just take the company's word for it it has seven different certifications backing this up including one of the world's strictest tests for compostability called as 5810 to hit that standard you have to prove that the product biodegrades in under 180 days in a home compost bin and that it's non-toxic even to worms living in the soil the faster a product breaks down in nature the less time it has to harm or entangle an animal but there's more to environmental impact than biodegradability like energy usage plastic shared a study showing its production emissions aren't that different from regular plastic but said it's just a rough estimate other research looked at more than a 100 different bamboo products and found most of them had lower emissions than similar items made of other materials including plastic that's mainly because the bamboo items took less energy to make one more complication the recipes for bamboo plastic vary widely and sometimes might even be unsafe in 2022 the European Union cracked down on the illegal import of food containers made of bamboo and plastic saying they could leak harmful chemicals in Risky amounts especially when heated the main issue isn't bamboo but mixing it with a type of resin called melamine which lastic does not use still for now the company can't sell products with bamboo and them in Europe meanwhile eating out of regular old plastic containers might have health impacts too there's evidence it can mess with people's hormones and fertility so long as bamboo products are safety tested and truly biodegradable there's a good chance they're a better option than plastic but how do they stack up against paper products unlike trees bamboo can regrow from its roots after it's cut down without replanting and it can be harvested every few years while pine trees take decades to mature an estimated 2 million trees are cut down to make toilet paper every day a company called real paper sources its bamboo from this forest in Southwest China these stocks are at least 2 years old after the bamboo is cut down the harvesting team sends it through a chipper from here the chips head to a paper mill inside these tanks the chips are heated with a chemical mixture until they're soft and lighter in color the pulp is dried and compressed into sheets at another facility they're turned into giant rolls of paper known as parent rolls machines wind the paper onto smaller cardboard tubes and slice them into the toilet paper rolls we know and love the process is basically the same for making standard toilet paper except that standard tissue uses the pulp from trees instead of bamboo Major Brands like charman and cottonil have gotten into hot water for sourcing tree pulp from Canada's boreal forest sometimes called the Amazon of the North it's a massive carbon sink and home to threatened species like Caribou these major brands are using Virgin Forest fiber from uh globally important forests for a product we use for a few seconds and flush down the toilet the region is also home to over 600 communities of indigenous people I Cry Sometimes I go when I when I sit at my house and think about the land how it's going to be destroyed and all the forestries and all the machinery paper companies typically don't own forest land themselves they get their wood from outside suppliers but toilet paper helps Drive Forest loss regardless of who cuts the trees down so can bamboo help well one report says the best option for toilet tissue isn't bamboo it's recycled paper and no that doesn't mean used toilet paper it's a toilet paper that's made using um paper that you throw in your recycling bin and or that is coming from an office building it has onethird the carbon footprint but bamboo is the next best choice it's better than using trees but not quite as good as the 100% recycled stuff that's because bamboo forests are still an important part of local ecosystems if you're shopping for bamboo tissue you can look for a seal from the forest Stewardship Council they do help to ensure that some um basic sustainability standard ards are met um as opposed to other certification systems that um are not nearly as rigorous but here's the thing there's more than one type of fsse certification look for fsse 100% if you want tissue made entirely from sustainably harvested bamboo ultimately even renewable resources have environmental impacts if sourced and used responsibly bamboo has a lot of Promise however some of these eco-friendly products are relatively expensive at Walmart one roll of real paper costs .67 compared to about $125 for roll of charman but both elastic Bendy straw and a traditional plastic one cost less than a penny meanwhile research shows many consumers are willing to pay extra for more sustainable options yet the team behind lastic says it might take regulation to truly compete more and more countries are looking into laws that hold polluting companies accountable an approach called extended producer responsibility or epr the idea is to make plastic and paper producers pay for collecting and recycling their products that could lead to higher prices making it easier to compete or to Major Brands switching to more planet friendly materials this bar of gold came from the trash in fact the materials inside the electronics thrown out every year are worth an estimated $60 billion there's plaum there's tantalum there's tin there's lead they're steel to extract the most precious metals you usually need brute force or a powerful acid bow in many places the Scavengers who process e-w can't afford proper safety measures so now a growing number of solo recyclers are proving they can make money by safely handling it in their own garages we could potentially recycle all of our ew domestically instead of exporting it overseas Wade collie is a dumpster diver on a mission to keep Electronics out of landfills his work led him to partner with a startup that grinds the circuit boards he collects and recovers metals from them using a secret brew that comes from nature some of it's microbial some of it's fungal so how much money do solo Scrappers really make and can they change the way the global e-w trade works we went to Sydney Australia to find out everyone knows when Wade collie is coming through town family nicknames it flash because it's red and it's electric and it buzzles around everywhere today he's on his way to a local repair shop that puts aside devices it can't fix they didn't really have a way of recycling things and they really wanted to over the past decade electronic waste around the world has grown by at least 60% as of 2019 it's over 50 million metric tons of trash every year Wade Works alone breaking down Tech with drills screwdrivers and these are actually electric Garden pruners but I have repurposed them to be able to cut through uh cable doing this work comes with risks but Wade takes precautions uh so I have to put my respirator on to take these fluorescent tubes out because if they break they contain mercury inside of them which is obviously poisonous after a few minutes of work he finally uncovers the treasure he's after so this is the uh main circuit board and this is where all the gold and silver uh is in all the little uh black chips we Works to ensure that every part of a device is properly handled even the hard to recycle plastic recovering the copper gold and Palladium inside circuit boards is possible at Mass massive recycling facilities but it's expensive and requires corporations and consumers to properly dispose of their devices today only about 9% of E-Waste in Australia is formally collected the US is only slightly better at 15% so unwanted Tech piles up on the curb waiting for Treasure Hunters to find it all right there's another nice board I Envision that small recyclers and Scrappers are going to continue to grow as a force both within the United States and a lot of other developed countries Ernie Petri is a retired Navy Captain who started scrapping in 2019 his YouTube channel shark Scrapper is one of hundreds teaching people about this business every minute that you spend scrapping stuff down is eating way into your margin and times you might only make uh you know a couple bucks an hour on something if you're just doing this as a oneperson operation out of the back of your truck you'd be better off to just go work at McDonald's scrapping doesn't really pay off until you can invest in heavyduty equipment that can cost tens of thousands of dollars when you put it on one of our shaker tables the metals go one way and the waste goes another way Jason gabber comes from the world of under underground mining but now he sells Crushers that can be used for E-Waste ew is going to be the richest ore of the future for many Es scrapping remains a side Hustle but for some of the world's poorest people it's the only way to make a living every year rich countries ship thousands of tons of ewaste to places like Deli India a world capital of unregulated E-Waste recycling gar was 14 when we talked to him in 2023 he's one of about 50,000 people who scavenge here mostly from piles imported from countries like the United States and China gzar starts his morning selling breakfast at his father's food cart after school he heads to trash piles like this one to sort through old cell phones computers and video game controllers few people doing this work have access to gloves or other safety equipment to get at the valuable Metals many scavengers burn E-Waste that's a problem that experts say has long lasting impacts on human health including stunted growth miscarriages organ damage and Bone density loss in 2021 India recycled a third of the 1.5 million metric tons of ewaste It produced a recycling rate about twice that of North America but only a fraction of Indian waste was handled by authorized recyclers not to mention the country Imports an estimated 50,000 metric tons of ewaste each year with his business rekindle me w trying to prevent e-w from getting shipped overseas it would have a really good impact globally instead of exporting it overseas and putting it on the less fortunate being able to take care of our own waste today Wade's dropping off a truckload of materials he's collected at mint Innovation a local startup that grinds circuit boards hey wa how's it going hello good thanks for coming past looks like a nice couple of batches here you brought past mint him about $3.50 per kilo so today he made about $3500 how much did you bring along today uh one tunnel together typically we're going to get something like I don't know um 250 300 kilos of copper could be in there and maybe you know anything from 100 to 200 Gr of gold we'll see where we get to with that um but I've got a a we sample here of gold from the processor I'll give it to you now as a down payment maybe you have to give it back that's that mint runs electronic waste through a liquid bath of bacteria fungi and other organic materials Business Insider first visited mints pilot facility in New Zealand in 2021 now the company scaled up with a facility here in Sydney Australia that's nearly five times bigger so this is our first plant uh and what we are gearing up is being able to build these in multiple cities around the world it's almost entirely automated preventing workers from coming into direct contact with hazardous materials the circuit boards heading up the two story conveyor belt contain about 70% Plastics and 30% metals like copper silver Palladium and gold this machine crushes them into smaller particles which will then be dissolved in liquid we got a big plastic tank behind me here uh it's 25,000 L it'll sit in this mixing tank for a few hours after that it'll be sent over to one of the filter presses this blue fluid contains a high concentration of copper tin and other less valuable Metals mint uses electricity to pull out the copper we simply put that through a series of plates pass it over that that have electric current flowing through them and that plates out the Copper from solution now the solution is ready to extract the gold that's where mint's special sauce comes in mint's team identified these tiny helpers in 2017 through a series of research trips to places like abandoned mines or Fields with Rusty equipment they collected species of bacteria and fungi that evolved to bond with specific Metals so you can see this residual dark purple color that's left over biomass that's got the gold stuck to it that's form these beautiful purple nanop particles the purple cake will go to an off-site refiner to be turned into something easier to recognize so this gold bar that I'm holding in my hands is about 1.2 1.3 kilos uh and that's the amount of gold that this facility is recovering each day it's an operation at today's prices that's nearly 80 $5,000 worth of gold the company says its Sydney plant could recover more than $30 million of gold every year mint also says its process has a smaller environmental footprint compared to other forms of industrial recycling what we've created is a closed loop system where what actually leaves the plant is benign uh and not a a chemical waster that's what helped convince Wade to process his Tri Treasures here it feels amazing to see that my circuit boards have finally made it to the right place and I know they're being recycled properly and it's really cool to see it all in place now Wade started collecting old electronics when he was just a teen he'd store them in his mom's garage and i' I'd constantly say it away do you do you think there's a way of you know condensing this a little bit just so that we can walk get out the front door this is a 1960s uh TV made in Australia this was my first old laptop or piece of technology that kind of started my obsession with just anything vintage and electrical and stuff like that yeah I just like to Tinker on them and um see if I can get them working again I think it's important as a historical standpoint to keep things like this because there's getting less and less by the day of these older systems and yeah they're actually worth far more than the gold and silver inside of them in my opinion but Wade may want to consider mining some of his own collection ever heard they don't build them like they used to well it's true starting in the late '90s many companies began using goldplated wiring instead of solid gold to lower costs for example integrated circuits from a 1982 IBM PC now sell for about $180 a pound an apple CPU something you'd find inside a neon iMac from 20 years later only only fetches about $4 a pound most of the computer uh Hardware is not that valuable um there is of course going to be some gold some copper some Platinum some plaum but minute amounts environmental activist Jim Pucket started the basil Action Network or ban in 1997 to Monitor and stop illegal exporting of hazardous trash like ewaste we need to think of handling our waste as a service to society because we don't want to be trashed with waste we don't want pollution Wade says his business will continue to earn a modest income until he can invest in new equipment but doing the right thing is what keeps him going motivates me in knowing that it's actually going to be recycled and not going to landfill and then my hobby kind of feeds into that cuz you know I when I get old stuff I quite enjoy that so it's yeah it's a really good feeling job for me [Music] across South Asia this golden fiber called J has been used to weave clothes mats and bags for more than 2,000 years by the 1900s J sacks were essential for the global trade of nearly all crops and the region that would later become Bangladesh was one of the world's biggest producers but synthetic materials replaced jute within a few Decades of the industry's peak now one scientist is trying to revive interest in this swamp plant by turning it into a biodegradable replacement for plastic the government of Bangladesh invested roughly $2 million into his idea after becoming the first country in the world to ban single-use plastic bags a law Mubarak Ahmed Khan was against because you don't have any suit Alternatives 20 years after the banned plastic trash in this country is still well everywhere so can jute offer an alternative to a world drowning in plastic and can Bangladesh once again become the world capital for this trade every day more than 200 tons of jute is delivered to one of the largest Mills in the country aan jut Mills is located about 4 hours Southwest of the capital hak Bangladesh exports nearly a billion dollars worth of jute each year there's even a whole government Ministry dedicated to it this Mill has five warehouses that are emptied and restocked within a week as the stuff is prepped for processing workers start by combing the reads over spikes to soften the fibers after they throw the raw juk into a spreader machine it separates the strands and forms them into large rolls that are placed back into the machine for more detangling the wheels are transferred here and covered with cloth for about 48 hours then pin rollers soften them and remove any impurities the other end spews out ribbon-like strands called sers to reduce their width and thickness they then go through a process called Drawing which involves crimping the fibers to enhance their strength and flexibility until they're ready for spinning these machines twist and lengthen the Chute into spools yarn consists of one strand while twine is made with two the next step is winding that's when any spinning errors are corrected to improve the yarn's performance some spools are used to weave rugs and bags workers crank out 2 to 3 million of these a month now this Mill employ about 3,000 people but the demand for J used to be much higher 2018 was the Mill's golden year every month it was exporting 4,000 metric tons of jute these days it sells nearly half that amount this region used to be part of Bengal in British India and has been harvesting and processing Jud at a massive scale since the 1850s the crop thrives in warm and humid environments so it's no surprise Jud grows well here Jud basically was the plastic bag of the early 1900s used to package and ship everything from sugar to corn to wool during World War I Europe imported over a billion Jud sandbags to use in trench warfare the industry peaked in 1970 with around 170,000 people working with the crop the world's largest J Mill The adamj Works near DEA J has always been an important product of this area and today this is a major industrial center by then the region was part of Pakistan and many were unhappy with the government the decline of jute started around the time of the Bangladesh Liberation War separatists fought for and won Independence in 1971 one but millions of people were displaced in the bloody war and many J Mills were left ownerless the newly formed country of Bangladesh took control of most mills which According to some critics led to corruption and mismanagement around the same time plastic was taking off in global markets and as the MS go by Jud is losing more and more ground to synthetic fibers and in the 8s many farmers abandoned Jud for other cash crops nearly half of the Mills had closed by 1998 and by 2001 jud's export earnings had dropped from 90% to under 5% today the demand for Jud remains low as cotton and plastic fibers are relatively cheaper but mberg hopes to restore the crop's Lost Glory by using it to solve Bangladesh's plastic problem I know the jute and I know how to cultivate it jute makes a good substitute because of its high concentration of cellulose the structural component of plant cell walls that give them strength and rigidity the state run Latif bani Mill has been working with mubarok since 2016 to make these plastic-like bags here the juk comes from traders who buy it directly from Farmers first raw juk fibers are shredded into 4 mm sized bits then they're mixed with some secret chemicals to extract the cellulose for about 4 hours the leftover pieces are bleached and dried in an oven until they look like this next workers mix and modify the cellulose to make it water soluble and combine it with substances called binders and cross linkers molecules that Bond it all together to make the solution even more like plastic workers load it into a heated reaction chamber for 3 hours like your pressure cooker in your house once the liquid cools they blend it with a plant- derived polymer and natural food coloring Mubarak says his concoction doesn't include any waste or petroleum products but he wouldn't tell us every ingredient out of fear that someone might steal his invention that is the most secret point of my recipe the end result is poured directly into the film casting machine here the composite rotates on a steel belt and is dried with hot air until it becomes a colorful film most of these machines had to be custom [Music] built this workers cut the film sheets by hand and use sewing machines to stitch the material together the final product consists of 70% Juke it's called the sonali bag after the Bengali word for Golden Bangladesh could be the golden on the golden by selling this bags the project is still operating on a pilot basis under his Direction and is completely funded by the ministry of textiles in Juke today ltif bani has the capacity to make 15,000 sonali bags per day but it doesn't always run full scale the number depends on how many orders are received corporate customers for the bag once included British American Tobacco electronic stealer rahima fro and fashion brands like Sara lifestyle but the Partnerships didn't last since the sonali bag project doesn't have the production capacity to meet even a fraction of what these companies needed finding the investment to scale up remains a challenge we need money we need the infrastructure we need the management and now we don't find any real business guy who going to use this uh technology so how does it compare to a single-use plastic or polypropylene bag when you put side by side you cannot differentiate it but only burn it then you can see this produced Ash and poly bag is produced that picture that's because plastic is made from oil and jute is biodegradable so when it eventually decomposes the stored carbon stays within the soil instead of being released back into the atmosphere so far only the government of Bangladesh has certified that the sonali bag is biodegradable but each one is designed to dissolve within 3 months in soil and 8 hours in water and it can hold roughly 35 lbs compared to a traditional plastic bag's 20 lb capacity the main problem is Sali bags cost about 10 times more than plastic ones and about five times more than other biodegradables like paper bags but as muber scales up production he expects the price to drop these days some stores Brands and environmental groups buy salali bags on a small scale to test their durability like Sultan Mar in chatram the country's second largest city owner Sharif Ahmed says his brother bought the bags for him directly from Bangladesh J Mills Corporation he claims they don't take very as easily as plastic ones some customers can hardly tell them apart from traditional plastic bags the made quality is also very good I I I like the fact that it's it's made in a way that it can be decomposed very easily and recycled very easily Mubarak understands the challenges behind shifting away from such a cheap commonly used material like plastic when you go for new water in the market nobody accept it because always they compare with the the existing products and right now sonali bags just aren't as affordable the government has been supportive of his initiative but it hasn't been fully enforcing the back Ban two decades after it was enacted the average city dweller consumes three times more plastic over the years a series of natural disasters like Cyclones and floods have diverted attention away from the cause even though plastic waste makes the floods worse by blocking waterways political instability and Corruption have also disrupted progress other countries have had some success with similar bans Kenya enacted a ban on plastic bags in 2017 and now 80% of the public has stopped using them in Rwanda authorities go as far as confiscating plastic bags from luggage as people enter the country perpetrators are subject to steep fines or even jail time Bangladesh has its penalties to a wide range of fines from about $450 to $9,000 or an imprisonment of 1 to 10 years depending on how the judge rules but here businesses and individuals aren't regularly monitored for violations making a viable alternative is a huge step forward but the country has a long way to go before sonali bags are more common than plastic ones after more than 20 years of working on this project Mubarak still believes J can solve the plastic problem not only in Bangladesh but everywhere else too this is our duty to produce the Jud globally and show the your vary and your beauty of the Jud in all over the world each Garland in this garbage truck started as an offering to the gods after their used in worship tons of them get dumped into rivers or the sea every day alongside other religious leftovers like Idols immersed in waterways at yearly festivals now a handful of startups are proving they can make money by turning flower waste into natural dyes incense and products sold by International Brands so far these companies have together handled thousands of tons of Temple leftovers can this upcycling keep Rivers clean while respecting an ancient practice we went to India to see how entrepreneurs are cashing in on sacred flowers D our flower Mar Market is one of the largest in Mumbai the main customers are smaller vendors who weave them into garlands to sell elsewhere like outside the nearby City vayak Temple but about 40% of the flowers produced in India don't actually sell including these ones piling up behind the Market Street the offerings that do make it inside temples pose another challenge most Hindus consider it disrespectful to throw them in the trash opting to return them to Nature instead some people bury leftover offerings in gardens or flower pots others leave them out for animals to munch on but for temples that have to dispose of tons of offerings they often have few options besides dumping them in local waterways which in India are already contaminated with industrial pollution and raw sewage even though flowers are natural tossing tons of them into the water has consequences pesticides and other harmful chemicals sprayed on flower crops can affect water's pH and as bacteria eat the organic waste they use up oxygen putting the entire ecosystem at risk Rupa traed grew up offering flowers at temples she started to pay attention to the impact of religious waste about 15 years ago so she started a pure nature to turn flowers into natural DY for clothing I thought that if I could recycle and reuse something out of it even if it'll be only a drop in the ocean even a drop will make a difference and I really wanted to set up a business which had some soul in it and which could always represent that soul to the world well Bas one of rupa's employees is stationed outside the temple for a few hours every day he disassembles garlands and sorts the flowers by color twice per week another worker chiman travels 15 km each way to collect used offerings the temple Parts with the flowers for free but Rupa says paying workers to sort and collect Temple offerings actually cost more than buying new flowers for her Fabrics it is definitely more expensive the purpose is that there are Temple blessings that are recycled and so there is a definite meaning to the flowers here at the workshop in mbai workers unload the hall they separate pedals from the stems by hand so the marol are segregated and they are converted into petals and then it's kept for drying maragold are one of the most popular flowers in Hinduism they're said to be beloved by many different deities each flower has several meanings it's believed gods and goddesses each have their preferences like hibiscus for Gesa holy basil for Vishnu or pink Lotus for Lakshmi A's process uses a combination of fresh and dried petals which workers lay here to dry out meanwhile others take on the more technical task of preparing the Fabrics the dying team weighs the material and calculates the rest of the recipe they measure out other ingredients that help color attached to fibers and then add it all to hot water once it reaches about 60° C or 140° F it's ready the Dyers lay out the damp Fabric and begin applying pedals this is the core uh technique that we've come up with which is called the Ecco [Music] print this steamer helps the natural pigment transfer to the fabric mkar and tabasum have each worked here for more than a decade the team washes the fabric in water and hangs it on a line to dry some natural dyes have unexpected results like red roses which can actually turn fabric blue with the right techniques and every time I've showed this as a as a scarf to anyone it they are just kind of flabbergasted then how can you get this uh red roses be this color these roses mainly come from the Ali mosque where they were used as decorations Rupa says the mosque provides up to 100 kilg of flow waste each week while the sanak temple can provide that much in a single day adiv used to send its petals to a local composter but the pandemic put a on that we have no option but to throw them away and I am hoping that maybe you know very shortly we'll be again be able to do what we were doing before so for now the pedals still end up in the trash but not polluting waterways or littering the streets from here the dyed fabric Heads next door to the Garment makers alav has worked here for 17 years [Music] Rupa says hiring people who might have trouble finding work was one of her main goals when starting the business I believe that each of us have an artistic quality in has it is inherently there whether dormant or completely alive altogether adiv processes about 40 metric tons of petals from the nearby mosque and Temple each year not counting the stems plastic bits and other stuff they can't use but that's still less than half of the flower waste those places of worship produce a isn't the only business to taking on India's religious leftovers Ankit Agarwal founded fool which is the Hindi word for flower in 2017 the company turns flower waste into incense and I decided to quit my job and come back to kpur the reaction of the people I knew was I've gone Bonkers that I want to leave a job as automation scientist and work with temple flow fo's process also starts with with collecting from temples followed by sorting de pedaling and drying once the petals are dry the team grinds them into a fine powder it's mixed by hand with water and essential oils until it reaches a clay-like texture then it's time to roll workers dip their fingers into the Flower Powder while rolling to create an even thickness the company employs more than 700 women many of them used to work as waste scavengers we have been able to provide them with health benefits insurances retirement benefits and even a busing service the team lets the sticks dry before dipping them again in essential oils each worker can produce over 500 incense sticks in an hour anit says that in the beginning temples were reluctant to to hand over the sacred flower waste so there's this line in the Hindu arti which says which basically mea