Name: プラスチック汚染。人間はいかにして世界をプラスチックに変えようとしているか (Plastic Pollution: How Humans are Turning the World into Plastic)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T07:46:38.000Z
Duration: 9 min 2 s

When the gods granted king Midas one wish, he wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.

ミダス王が神々に、一つ望みを
叶えてもらえることになったとき

Midas was delighted. Trees, rocks, buildings all gold.

触れたものがすべて金に
変わることを望んだ

But soon he found in horror that his food turned into gold as well.

When he hugged his daughter to soothe his pain, he realized his mistake too late.

木も岩も建物もすべて
金になったからだ

The richest man in existence was starving, heartbroken and alone.

しかし、すぐに食べ物も金になる
ことに気づき恐怖を覚えた

Humanity got a similar wish granted when we learned how to turn brown stinky goo into magic - plastic.

娘を抱きしめて自らの過ちに
気づいたときには遅かった

Cheap, sterile and convenient it changed our lives

世界で最も裕福な者が飢え
心は破れ、そして孤独になった

But this wonder of technology got a little out of hand.

魔法のプラスチックに
変える方法を覚えたとき

It has invaded the animals we eat and now it's finding its way into our bodies.

人類にもよく似たことが
起こった安価で清潔で便利なプラスチックは
私達の生活を変えた 

しかしこの驚異の技術は
少し我々の手に余るものだった

For most of our history humans used stuff we found in nature to build the things we needed.

プラスチックは私たちの周囲の
環境を満たしていった

But the invention of plastic roughly 100 years ago completely changed our world.

それは私たちが
口にする動物に侵入し

Plastic is made from polymers - long repeating chains of molecule groups.

今や私たちの体にも
入ろうとしている

In nature, polymers exist everywhere : the walls of cells, silk, hair, insect carapaces, DNA.

By breaking down crude oil into its components and Rearranging them, we can form new synthetic polymers.

我々は自然界で見つかるものを
使って必要なものを作ってきた

Synthetic polymers have extraordinary traits.

しかし100年ほど前の
プラスチックの発明は

They are lightweight, durable and can be molded into almost any shape.

Not requiring time-consuming manual work, plastic can be easily mass-produced

プラスチックはポリマーという
分子の長い反復から出来ている

and its raw materials are a vailable in vast amounts

自然界ではポリマーは
ありふれたもので

And incredibly cheaply, and so the golden era of plastics began

細胞壁も絹も髪も
昆虫の甲羅も

Bakelite was used for mechanical parts, PVC for plumbing electric gears and cases,

Acrylic is a shatter resistant alternative to glass and nylon for stockings and war equipment

しかしポリマーは人工的に
合成することも可能で

Today almost everything is at least partly made from plastic.

Our clothes, phones, computers, furniture, appliances, houses and cars.

それらを再配列して新しい
合成ポリマーを作れるのだ

Plastic has long ceased to be a revolutionary material instead it became trash.

合成ポリマーには
特別な特徴があり

Coffee cups, plastic bags, or stuff to wrap a banana. We don't think about this fact a lot.

軽量で耐久性があり
どんな形状にでも成形できる

時間のかかる手作業抜きに
大量生産が可能だ

Since synthetic polymers are so durable, plastic takes between 500 and 1,000 years to break down.

But somehow we collectively decided to use this super tough material for things meant to be thrown away.

かくしてプラスチックの
黄金時代が始まった

In the United States, packaging makes up 1/3 of all the waste that is generated annually.

PVCは配管に電気部品に
歯車やケースに

Since its invention, we have produced about 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic.

アクリルは破砕耐性が
あるのでガラスの代用に

ナイロンはストッキングや
軍装品などに使用されている

More than 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic have become waste since 1907.

こんにち、どんなものでも少なくとも
一部はプラスチックで作られている

Piled up in one place, that makes a cube with a side length of 1.9 kilometers.

衣服、電話、パソコン、家具
家電製品、家、車など

プラスチックは昔のように革命的な
新材料ではなくなりごみとなりつつある

コーヒーカップにビニール袋、
バナナの包装など

プラスチックは現れ
そしてそのまま消え去る…

A lot ends up in the ocean. Around 8 million tons a year.

残念ながら、プラスチックは
消え去ることはない

That's so much plastic that it will outweigh all the fish in the ocean by 2050.

合成ポリマーは耐久性が高いので

Because it's everywhere, marine animals keep getting trapped in plastic and swallowing it.

プラスチックが分解されるには
500年から1000年かかる

In 2015 already 90% of seabirds had eaten plastic.

ところがどういうわけか
我々はこの超丈夫な素材を

Many animals starve with stomachs full of indigestible trash. In 2018 a dead sperm whale washed up in Spain.

捨てられるものに使う
ことに決めてしまった

He had eaten 32 kilos of plastic bags, nets and a drum

プラスチックの40％は
包装に使用されている

While this is tragic and makes for great magazine covers, there's an even more widespread,

米国では包装は毎年発生する
廃棄物の1/3を占めている

その発明以来、我々は約83億トンの
プラスチックを生産してきた

Microplastics are pieces smaller than 5 millimeters

1907年以来63億トン以上の
プラスチックがごみになっている

Some of them are used in cosmetics or toothpaste,

それらを1箇所に積み重ねると一辺
1.9キロメートルの立方体となる

but most result from floating waste that is constantly exposed to UV radiation

私たちはこのごみを
どうしてきたのか

And crumbles into smaller and smaller pieces

51 trillion such particles float in the ocean,

Where they are even more easily swallowed by all kinds of marine life.

This has raised concerns among scientists,

especially about health risks from the chemicals that are added to plastic.

BPA for example makes plastic bottles transparent

2050年にはその総重量は
魚を超える

But there's also evidence that it interferes with our hormonal system. DEHP makes plastics more flexible,

広く偏在するので海棲生物は
プラスチックに囚われたり飲み込んだりする

すでに2015年には海鳥の90%が
プラスチックを飲み込んでいる

It would be pretty bad if micro plastics are toxic, because they travel up the food chain.

多くの動物が消化できない
ごみに胃が満たされて餓死する

Zooplankton eat micro plastic. Small fish eat zooplankton.

2018年のこと、スペインに一頭の
マッコウクジラが死んで打ち上げられた

So do oysters, crabs and predatory fish and they all land on our plate.

クジラは32Kgのプラスチックの
袋や網やドラム缶を飲み込んでいた

Micro plastics have been found in honey, in sea salt, in beer, in tap water and in the household dust around us.

これは痛ましく、多くの
雑誌の表紙になったが

他にももっと偏在する見えない
プラスチックの形態がある

have measurable amounts of phthalates, a common plastic additive in their bodies.

And 93% of people have BPA in their urine

マイクロプラスチックは
5mm以下のプラスチック片だ

There is little science about this so far and right now it's inconclusive.

化粧品や歯磨きにも
使われている

We need a lot more research before panic is justified.

しかしほとんどは
浮遊ごみが紫外線に晒されて

But it is safe to say that a lot of stuff happened that we didn't plan for. And we have lost control

Over plastic to a certain extent which is kind of scary.

海洋にはこのような粒子が
51兆個も浮遊していて

But just to make sure we should simply ban plastics, right?

全ての海棲生物に
容易に飲み込まれる

Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that.

これが科学者たちに
注目されるようになった

Plastic pollution is not the only environmental challenge we face.

特にプラスチックに添加されている
化学物質の健康リスクゆえに

Some of the substitutes we'd use for plastic have a higher environmental impact in other ways.

たとえばBPAはプラボトルの
透明度を上げるが

我々のホルモン系を
阻害する証拠がある

according to a recent study by the Danish government,

DEHPはプラスチックの
可塑性を向上させるが

making a single-use plastic bag requires so little energy and produces far lower carbon dioxide emissions

compared to a reusable cotton bag, that you need to use your cotton bag 7 thousand 100 times

マイクロプラスチックに
毒性があるとすると

before it would have a lower impact on the environment than the plastic bag.

食物連鎖をめぐることに
なって非常にまずい

We're left with a complex process of trade-offs. Everything has an impact somehow,

動物性プランクトンが
マイクロプラスチックを食べ

and it's hard to find the right balance between them.

Plastic also helps solve problems that we don't have very good answers for at the moment.

カキが、カニが、捕食魚が
それを食べ

Globally, one-third of all food that's produced is never eaten and ends up rotting away on landfills where it produces methane.

And the best way of preventing food from spoiling and avoiding unnecessary waste is still plastic packaging.

マイクロプラスチックは
蜂蜜や海塩、ビール、水道水

It's also important to note where the vast majority of the world's plastic pollution is coming from right now.

ハウスダストの中にも
見つかっている

90% of all plastic waste entering the ocean through rivers comes from just ten rivers in Asia and Africa.

赤ん坊の10人に8人、そして
ほとんどの大人の身体に

The Yangtze in China alone flushes 1.5 million tons of plastic into the ocean each year.

測定可能な量のフタル酸類が
見つかっているが

これはありふれた
プラスチックの添加物だ

そして93%の人の尿に
BPAが見つかっている

industrialized at an impressive pace in the last few decades,

これに関してはまだ科学的に
解明されておらず

transforming the lives of billions of people

パニックを正当化する前に
まだ多くの研究が必要だ

that the garbage disposal infrastructure couldn't keep up with collecting and recycling all the new waste this brought

しかし予期しないままに
多くの事態が進行しており

If politicians in Europe and the US want to address this issue,

プラスチック問題は
制御できておらず

investing in infrastructure in developing countries is just as important

恐ろしいことになっていると
考えた方が安全だろう

as fighting plastic pollution at home with campaigns and redesigning products to minimize unnecessary

しかし単純にプラスチックを
悪者にすればいいのか?

困ったことに事情は
もう少し込み入っている