Plastic is the new diamond. Interview with David de Rothschild

By Michèle Wannaz

David de Rothschild is famous as an eco-adventurer who has crossed the ocean in a boat made out of plastic bottles. But this is only one part of the story. In this interview, he explains that the Plastiki project was not primarily about courage and adventure, but much more about learning how to actually design and build a cradle-to-cradle system. And why plastics should be seen as the diamonds of the 21st century in order to save Spaceship Earth’s long-term future.

Two years ago, together with designers and biomimetic scientists, you built Plastiki, a catamaran made out of 12 500 reclaimed plastic bottles in which you crossed the Pacific Ocean.

Do you consider yourself a follower of the maker movement?

We did not think of Plastiki as a maker project when we started. At first, there was just the notion that people were finding it very hard to grasp the reality of the mostly invisible nature of climate change, e.g. the amount of carbon in our atmosphere, versus this very real and tactile fingerprint that is waste. What struck me most was how it could be so vast in scale, yet go unnoticed. So I realised that ecological awareness needed something to touch and feel. This insight ultimately led us to the making process. In a way, though, we were forced into manufacturing from the beginning – because we were innovating everything from the ground up.

So did the overall goal and message of the project also evolve with time?

Yes and no. On the one hand, the genesis of Plastiki was a process of discovery. On the other hand, we had a very clear goal from the beginning: to propagate the cradle-to-cradle philosophy. From the first day on our aim was to raise people’s awareness of the fact that materials should be circulating in healthy, essentially waste-free cycles as nutrients in nature’s metabolism. A big disappointment for me, though, was the fact that the media were far more fascinated by the question of whether we would survive our adventure. They thought the most interesting question was whether our small boat crew would live or die, not how the project could contribute to rescuing the whole of the world’s population. The most exciting stuff to come out of the Plastiki project is actually going on right now, two years after our journey. We are about to create a mainstream product based on our learnings and experience with Plastiki that will hopefully have a disruptive effect on the plastic industry.

Many makers say that creating things is the best way to learn about the nature of the world and therefore the best condition for innovation. Do you agree?

Oh yes, I can’t begin to tell you how true that is. I always laughed at people when they’d say: ‘Oh, I see, this is an R&D (Research and Development) project!’ I always said: ‘No, it’s just a D project. And the D creates the R.’ It really should be called D&R instead of R&D, because when you develop, you create the research and the data you need to actually make things. You learn much more from the experiences you gain while making stuff than from just conceptualising it theoretically. Innovation mostly comes from the most unexpected places. And very often the best solution only pops up when you make mistakes.

Couldn’t the trend towards creating also prove negative for the environment, for example if we were able to 3D-print any product we liked at home?

Of course you could argue that the mass production of everyday products at an individual level might use more energy, create more mistakes and therefore also use more material than goods made by industry. But the existing system is so inflexible in adapting to new, better technologies and so inefficient due to long transportation routes that this will have a much more damaging effect on our environment than the horizontal, decentralised, just-in-time manufacturing model that we are starting to see coming online right now. Because you can produce exactly the amount you need, you won’t be forced to buy a pack of six any more. Those gains, I think, will outweigh the negative side effects of the new technology. However, it is vital for us to feed the 3D printers with environmentally friendly materials.

Speaking of cradle-to-cradle cycles: how can we imitate nature’s system?

A very important step would be to build more interdisciplinary teams. Today, the manufacturing process is very disjointed, the different groups involved are very far away from each other and don’t communicate, leading to a dangerous mode of creation. In order to think about products from a sustainable point of view and create closed cycles, designers have to talk to materials scientists a lot more, the materials scientists need to talk to the selling and distribution team and so forth. If all the people involved share the same narrative, the same experience, this will create less waste, more innovation and a smoother, connected system.

Do we need a different mindset to achieve this?

In the first place, we have to really understand the extent to which we depend on nature. I always go back to a Buckminster Fuller quote from 1963. Even back then he used the metaphor of a spaceship for Earth. He said we would not be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully if we didn’t learn to find a way to use our resources responsibly and accept that our fate is common. I would take this even further. Unless we understand that we rely on nature as our foundation and that nature is us, not just a commodity for mass production and mass profit, we are going to kill the crew - nature - that is flying our spaceship. The crazy thing is that we all talk about an emergency but we don’t really act. It’s just a phrase we use while we are stuck in a sort of a shock. I think the well-known model for analysing grief and suffering is also a great method of understanding the psychology of society. When we lose someone or something we go through five stages – first anger, then denial, bargaining, despair and finally acceptance. At the moment, especially in media and politics, we are still stuck in that anger and denial stage when it comes to the idea of change, leading people to discredit science. There’s also a part of society that is bargaining right now: ‘How much of the climate change is man-made, how much is caused by natural developments? Maybe 50/50?’ But this is absurd, because the real question is: will it be life or death?

So how can we get to that stage of acceptance soon?

As an individual I certainly cannot stop the environmental destruction, I cannot make a difference. The issues need to be tackled systematically. As a society we should live like a healthy organism and learn from the environment. Most people go to the mountains or to the ocean when they need to get back to themselves. So nature is something like a truth remote. Transferring this back to us, I think we need a holistic approach, a systemic change beyond today’s fragmented and compartmentalised system that includes a harmony between business, government and citizens, allowing specific analysis of causes and effects. A first step is to create platforms where people from different fields of activity can talk to each other – and recognise that the fragmented parts of our society are interdependent. This will then build the basis for education, political regulation, business incentives.

Aren’t we educated enough yet? It seems that theoretically at least we should know what to do.

I would like to challenge you on that. Some of the most educated people I’ve met had the biggest gaps when it came to the effects of the use of their skills. It’s horrific how many politicians and business leaders have no idea that we are losing 200 species a day, that 80% of our oceans have been used up or that there is an island of plastic in the ocean as big as the state of Texas. They really don’t have a clue about the true impact of their politics and services. And even if they did, it’s a long way from knowing with your head and understanding with your heart. Our society definitely doesn’t understand yet what pollution really means. Oddly, we identify much more easily with possessions than with nature. People get absolutely furious when somebody bumps their new car or when they drop their mobile phone. But those just forms of nature that have been manipulated by us into possessions. Nevertheless, we don’t feel as personally affected when our oceans and forests are destroyed.

Is “making” a chance to bring people closer to nature again?

One thing that the maker movement does is create transparency. If you start making something, you start to understand not only what materials it takes but also the process that is required to make it. And that can bring you back to the source, to nature. Also, it makes you appreciate things more, because you know what has had to go into them – and they even have a greater emotional value, because you made them yourself, you decided what they would look like and would be able to do. That could make an impressive reduction in the amount of our waste.

So could recycling, which is also an important topic in the maker movement. But many people argue that recycling is a waste of energy.

And they’re right. In theory, recycling is great. But there is still very little infrastructure for doing it properly. We are very much uninvolved when it comes to recycling, because there are such strong interests coming from the industry that produces new goods. So there is still a huge energy footprint and a huge chemical footprint coming out of the extrusion and re-formation of the material that we recycle into something that is often even of lesser quality, what we call downcycling. This is an enormous problem, especially when it comes to plastic. So what we really need to do is change the value perception of the material that we use, specifically plastic.

How can we do that?

We have to change the narrative. Just think of the analogy between diamonds and plastic: the plastic industry is controlled by a few companies, the diamond industry is controlled by a few companies. Diamonds are everywhere, plastic is everywhere. Both last forever. But plastic is presented to us as a valueless, single-use item that we can throw away without thinking. Diamonds, however, are priceless because on the one hand somewhere down the line there was a marketing genius who told us they were a symbol of eternity and of marriage and that every engagement ring should be a diamond – on the other, diamond prices have been kept high artificially by a highly controlled market. This is fake value. It’s just a rock that can be found all over the place – with a great story attached to it. So why don’t we do this with plastic and other materials, to create a far higher value perception than they have today?

Or we enhance the status of plastic by finding new ways to upcycle it.

Exactly. When plastic can be reused for even better purposes than before, it will automatically have more value. Aluminium is a great example. You can take an aluminium can and build a helicopter blade out of it, hence something of far greater value. And look at us: we don’t throw aluminium away so readily. It is as simple as that.

David de Rothschild is a British adventurer and ecologist and head of Adventure Ecology, an expedition group aimed at raising awareness about climate change. A member of the English banking family of the Rothschilds, he studied Political Science and Information Systems in Oxford and natural medicine in London. In 2010, he crossed the Pacific in a catamaran made of plastic bottles and recycled materials to draw attention to marine pollution.