Name: Hyped Pizza Robot Company Is Now Tackling Our Plastic Waste Problem
Uploaded: 2021-06-28T06:16:20.000Z
Duration: 13 min 20 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

There was a lot of hype in 2017 around Zume.

仮定法過去

What if there was a better way to make and deliver pizza to

All pizzerias out there, you're in trouble.

At the time Zume was a pizza company that used robots to

automate the pizza creation process and utilized large oven

carrying trucks to bake the pies as they traveled to customers.

The idea was a hit and earned Zume a $375 million investment

from SoftBank. So why are we talking about pizza made by

robots in a video about compostable packaging? That was

One of the problems that we encountered in pizza was our

beautiful pizza with no stabilizers in it in a

traditional box, declined in quality from the time you cooked

it to the time it was delivered to the point where we didn't

think it was good enough. So we designed a new pizza box.

At the beginning of 2020 Zume laid off half of its workforce;

This is another stumble for SoftBank's Vision Fund, which

invested $375 million into Zume, bestowing that unicorn status;

But the company kept going. Now Zume is dedicated to producing

compostable packaging that is durable and backyard

compostable, breaking down in a matter of 90 days. Zume is

breaking into the $274.2 billion sustainable packaging market,

which is expected to grow to $413.8 billion by 2027. But the

I wish I could say it was just the cost, you know, and cost is

gonna come down or it's just that we need one thing but it's

As the oceans fill up with plastic waste, and as companies

make pledges to switch to greener packaging, it could be

great timing for Zume. So let's take a look at some roadblocks

in the compostable packaging industry and what can be done to

Let's talk about the lifecycle of a package first using a

takeout container as an example. Takeout containers can be made

of many different materials which all have their pros and

cons, like plastic, metal, styrofoam, cardboard, and a

compostable material like molded fiber. Some plastics and metals

can be recycled, but they have to be perfectly clean in order

to be made into another product. They can also be down cycled,

which is where they're used to create something that cannot be

recycled again, like a park bench. But recycling has failed

in the US. In 2018, less than 9% of plastic waste was properly

recycled in the US. And it got worse in 2019 when China stopped

importing American trash. So most of what you think may be

getting recycled is actually getting sent to landfills or

The UN says that by 2050, we'll have more plastic than fish in

the ocean. Plastic's become so prevalent that every person on

the planet eats a credit cards with a plastic a week.

Plastic recycling has actually been considered by some to be a

ploy by oil companies to make plastic production seem more

environmentally friendly than it is. And even sending food scraps

When you're actually introducing those organics in a landfill,

you create a lot of methane. And as you know, methane is a very

important greenhouse gas emission. So then you want to

reduce that amount of organics that you send to the landfill.

But the US loves plastic. The country generated more than 14.5

million tons of plastic in 2018. It's not easy to get away from

Plastic's an amazing material, it's miraculous, and the

convenience of plastic has powered many of the modern

conveniences that we enjoy as consumers around the world. But

unfortunately, the things that make plastic great come with

Aluminum containers are a bit easier to recycle but still only

saw about a 35% recycle rate in 2018. Cardboard is recyclable

and compostable, but only if it's clean and doesn't have some

sort of coating on it. Virgin cardboard can also contribute to

the deforestation of endangered habitats. Styrofoam, or

polystyrene is technically recyclable, but not in a way

that is economically feasible or environmentally effective. Many

cities and states including New York City, Maine, Vermont,

Maryland, and a long list of cities in California have

completely banned the use of polystyrene and the trend is

growing. Compostable materials seem like a solution to these

recycling issues but come with their own set of confusing

marketing tactics and end of life difficulties. For instance,

the word biodegradable which is used to describe certain

materials like plastic made from corn has been scrutinized.

That necessarily does not mean that a bio acronym at the

beginning will mean that the polymer is from a based

resources or is biodegradable and if it's biodegradable that

doesn't mean that it's compostable either.

The word biodegradable on its own for a marketing term is seen

as potentially pretty misleading. So several states

have passed laws actually forbidding the term

biodegradable in marketing language when it comes to single

use items. So states like California, Maryland, and

Washington, Minnesota for bags specifically,

Some materials require composting in an industrial

facility like certain cutlery and coffee cup lids, which means

you can't just throw it in your backyard and hope it will break

down. It has to be sent to a facility that monitors the

chemical and temperature levels of a large compost pile. The

materials are also sifted to make sure everything has broken

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Hyped Pizza Robot Company Is Now Tackling Our Plastic Waste Problem

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