 And we're honored to have with us the youngest member of the World Economic Forum here in Dalian. Her name is Isabel Weissen. She's from Bali, and she has a very compelling story of grassroots leadership to share with us today about plastics and plastic waste. Isabel, would you please come to the stage? So to start us off today, I'd like to invite everybody to join me on a little exercise. On the count of three, I want everybody to take a deep breath in. One, two, three. Take a deep breath in, and another deep breath in, and out. Now, I like to do this for two reasons. The first, because it's a nice way for me to calm the butterflies on stage, but the second is because yes, every first breath we take comes from the forest, from the trees and from the green. But it's also a nice reminder that every second breath we take comes from the ocean. My name is Isabel. I'm 16 years old, the co-founder of Bye Bye Plastic Bags and an environmental activist since the age of 10. I was born and raised on the island of Bali in a house 100 meters from the ocean, so as you can imagine, it's always had a huge influence over myself. And clearly it's had an impact on everyone if it contributes to over half of the oxygen we breathe. But not only that, studies have also shown that people are happier when they are near, surrounded by or in the ocean. And so you can ask yourself the question now, if our oceans are so important to us, why do we treat them so badly? I'm sure we've all seen the pictures of beaches overflowing with plastic waste, and sadly this is the harsh reality for my home island of Bali. No matter where you go, whether you're walking by a river, on the beach, in the mountains, on the side of the road, the plastic is always there. You cannot escape it. And I do recognize that this is not only an issue in Bali, it's a global problem. There's a fact that says that by the year 2050, there's going to be more plastic than fish in our oceans. That's an hour lifetime. Now let that sink in. If we look at the numbers, about 80% of the plastic waste you find in the oceans actually come from land. And in Bali, currently only 5% of that waste is being recycled. And so six years ago, my sister, Malati, who cannot be here today and I, we asked ourselves the question, okay, what can we do to help solve this problem? And so after doing a little bit of research, we found out that 40 countries around the world at the time had taken their stance against plastic by saying no to the single-use plastic bag. And so in our 10 and 12-year-old minds at the time, we thought, hey, if they can do it, come on Bali, we can do it too. And so we founded Bye Bye Plastic Bags, which today is an official NGO run by young people on the island of Bali to say no to single-use plastic bags. And through our six years of campaigning, it's been a crazy journey. I always like to think of Bye Bye Plastic Bags as a little bit of my life school, right? It's taught me things and skills that a normal textbook could have never been able to teach me. And some of these lessons I want to share here today. And the first one being it's all about the team, or as we like to use fancy words here, human capital, right? And this one we learned pretty early on. Yes, we did start at the beginning with just the two of us, my sister and I. But soon enough, Bye Bye Plastic Bags grew into a huge movement where locally today we have over 20 volunteers helping on a daily or weekly basis and up to 350 volunteers in our global teams, which brings us to lesson number two. Think outside the box. We constantly had to ask ourselves, okay, how can we overcome our challenges or obstacles in a creative way? How can we do things differently, uniquely, especially with a just do it mentality of young people? And so the story I like to attach to this is Bali's biggest cleanup. Now, at this point in our timeline, I think we were three years into campaigning and we realized we were losing slowly the momentum of the people. And so during one of our team meetings, we had a discussion on how could we get everyone on the island involved again? And somebody raised their hand and in a quiet voice, they said, hey, I have an idea. Why don't we organize Bali's biggest cleanup ever? And so within six weeks, we were able to organize the first one. But since then, for the past three years in February, we have been able to mobilize over 45,000 people in 325 different locations on the island and have collected over 135 tons of just plastic waste. Another story that we like to add to this lesson is mountain mamas. Now, we always get questions like, okay, if we're saying bye-bye to plastic bags, right? What alternatives are there to use? And so as a younger generation, we saw this as an opportunity to create mountain mamas, which is a social enterprise that empowers local women in the mountains of Bali to make alternative bags from pre-loved material. It's everything we love. But the thing that makes this enterprise so special is that we pay every woman individually for the bag that she makes, which works really well in the Balinese culture because it allows the woman to take ownership over their own working hours as well as their own income. Now, after we purchase the bags from the women, we sell them at a higher retail price and 50% of the profits actually go back into this community, not the women. Why? Because this ensures to create a better education, healthcare, and a better waste management system, which often lacks in rural and isolated communities in Bali. And so the system becomes a little bit circular, right? The only way to go. But of course, through our campaign, we have experienced many challenges, right? There's been many ups and many downs, one of them being that we are young people. And although we are seen as an inspiration, our age group is sometimes not taken very seriously. Sometimes this goes hand in hand with working with politicians. You know, we say it's a little bit like dancing with them. You take three steps forward, and then two steps backwards, and the cycle starts all over again. But I think the most common and one of the biggest challenges we've had to face is the need to see a change in consumer behavior and producing. It's the need to see a change in mindset and creating the new norm, which has proven to be difficult in history. But I think as consumers, we all have the responsibility to ask ourselves two questions when buying a product. The first one is, where does it come from? And the second is, where does it go? And if you can't answer one of these two questions, the truth is you probably shouldn't buy the product. But these questions, of course, also go to the producers. They have to be aware and responsible about where their resources come from. And in my eyes, I think they have the most responsibility here. But does this mean that we can't produce anymore? No. And does this mean that we have to say no to all plastics? No. But I do believe that we can say no to those single-use items. I mean, it is 2019, right? We're seeing here at this meeting alone that the creativity, innovation, and technology is here to show that solutions are just around the corner. More and more, these bigger corporations are understanding the importance and the value of changing their sourcing and materials. Many years ago, the three Rs were hot and to the point, right? Reduce, reuse, and recycle. But in today's climate, I think we have to add two new Rs. The R of refuse, for example, saying no to single-use plastics, and the R of replace. Once again, sourcing materials differently at the source of a production. And of course, lastly, personally, I have faced some challenges. Being the age of 16 and having started at the age of 10, it was sometimes hard to keep on going, right? But I think throughout it all, the support of our team has always been there. And so I cannot stress enough that you cannot do it alone. No matter how great of a leader you are, or how great of an idea you have, you will always need the support of your team in order to move your idea into a reality. But I think all of these obstacles and all these challenges has really led up to us learning lesson number three, which is persistence and commitment are key. I think this was probably the most important lesson we could have learned. And I'm sure to all the parents in the room, it's probably the hardest lesson to teach. It's that no matter how hard it gets, you have to keep on going. You have to go the extra mile to make sure what you committed to actually happens and follows through. Now, after six years of campaigning with our internal team and various other organizations on Bali, we realized that this lesson really did pay off. Even through a change in leadership from the old governor to the new governor, we were able to stay persistent with our message of making Bali go plastic bag free. And something very exciting to announce, all of this hard work resulted in an announcement in December of 2018 of Bali going plastic bag free, which was finally implemented on June 23rd of an island wide ban on plastic bags, straws and styrofoam. Yes, we did it. We did it and we could have not been more excited and to have had the help and the support of the Indonesian and Balinese government. As you can see here, both the old and the current governor of Bali. But as young change makers, we believe that change happens in the classroom. We have spoken to over 50,000 students worldwide. And of course, speaking on stages like the UN or today here at the World Economic Forum and being recognized by Forbes and CNN have definitely been a few of our highlights as well. But I think through our years of campaigning, we have learned that we are not alone, right? Youth are rising everywhere in every corner of the world. We are standing up for issues that are not a thing of the future but are currently happening today, issues that are occurring as we speak. No matter what our passions are, whether it is climate change, the environment, you know, the oceans, inequalities, human rights, dancing, arts, science, the list goes on. Whatever your passions are, we are seeing young people standing up for what they think is right and for what they believe in. Young people are demanding change because we realize that we don't have the luxury of time anymore to wait for someone else to make that difference. And we see this especially after when we were two years into our campaign, when other young people heard about our story, they got inspired and they reached out to us saying, hey, can we start up a buy my plastic bags back where we come from? And so today you can find us in over 45 different locations all across the world, all led by different young people, whether they are in middle school, high school, or university students. And now you might be asking yourself the question of what's next, right? Well, after this ban was in place, we know that just because the regulations are there and the policies are there, it does not mean that the work is done. It means that we have to work harder to ensure that these policies are really implemented and enforced into the community. But looking a little bit further down the line, our team is very excited to announce this as we have been working on it under wraps for a couple of years. But in the next two months, we are hoping to launch our next project. Introducing Youth Topia, where we aim to create spaces, platforms, and a headquarter for young people to come together and connect. We hope because in Youth Topia, we believe that empowered young people accelerate change that can address and solve the current and relevant issues of today's world. It is very much inspired by the SDGs, and so it will not only encompass solutions to problems of the environment and plastics, but hopefully every world issue as well as peer-to-peer learning. So we hope to connect those who want to become change makers because we know that every young person can become a change maker, but not every young person knows how. And so we hope to give them the tools to grow their skills and to ignite their passions and to bring those incredible young people alongside those who are already on the front lines of change together to really create the solutions to collaborate and to work together, because that is the only way that we can create real change. And I want to leave you on this note, ladies and gentlemen, do not forget that us kids may only be 25% of the world's population, but we are 100% of the future. Thank you. So thank you, Isabel, for an incredibly inspiring talk, and it can tell that you have been doing this for at least six years already, but perhaps more than a third of your lifetime, so you are getting very good at it. Thank you. And I think many of us in the audience, we have children, and I think the first time I watched you, I had to think of my own kids, and I thought, I know they have that sort of passion, they want to do something. So your idea to start this youth topia, I think is a very, very interesting suggestion. And my first question is, where do we sign up? Where should I tell my kids to go to start to engage, and how can they benefit from this? So youth topia hopefully will be launched in the next two months, so we don't have a digital or online platform just yet. December, sorry, September is the first course that we are opening up to, to have our first youth topia course online, which is very exciting. And I think, you know, that will definitely be launched through our buy by plastic bags platforms in the current moment. So if you are interested or want your kid to be a part of it, I think that's definitely at this current moment where I could direct you towards. Great. Thank you so much, Isabel. Let's hear it up one more time for Isabel. Thank you. So I would now like to invite two more guests to the stage. One is Mary Ng, the Minister for Small Business and Export Promotion of Canada. And please come on, stand up. And the other one is Jonathan. Jonathan, sorry, pen rice. Pen rice of Dow Chemical, who is the chair of the Asia Operations of Dow Chemical. Please. Got the right seats. Yes, I think so. So we've got here an activist, a young activist, and we have here a business leader, and we have here a government representative. So I think we're fairly balanced on the stage here. And I think I'd like to start with business. We've just heard from Isabel from a young activist. John, what does business do about the plastic problem? A couple of points. I mean, first, Isabel's speech makes me fundamentally optimistic that we have a large problem. But with the passion that we can show, not just with the youth, but in government and in also the business community, we can solve it. But there's a big but here. We have to collaborate. We need the activism from the youth. We need the business community and the financial resources there. And we need the cooperation of government. Only by coming together are we going to have a chance to solve this. We have 93% of all plastic waste going through 10 rivers in Asia and Africa. So although it's an ocean problem, it's actually a river problem. And that requires action in infrastructure. So waste collection infrastructure. It requires education. It requires innovation. And we can talk a little bit more about some of the things we're doing in business to bring innovation. And then it requires the activism of cleanup. So we need to mobilize our own employees in now the alliance that we're part of and we're forming. And I'll talk more about that. But just generally in the community is getting everybody to appreciate that this is an issue and start to participate by cleaning up. You just mentioned this alliance. I thought that sounded exciting. Is that an alliance of businesses that want to do something together? Can you explain more about that? Yes, I think in business we wanted to make this actionable. And we realized that as single companies, we couldn't do this on our own. And we needed to find a mechanism to mobilize venture capital and entrepreneurs locally to be able to drive change. And so 30 of the largest global companies in this space came together, several of them in the room. And we formed the alliance to end plastic waste. And this is an alliance that has created a fund, $1.5 billion, so real money. And that fund will be made available to entrepreneurs. So anybody who has a project and maybe Utopia can start to come with projects here to say, we have an idea, we'd like to get it funded because we don't have the on the ground resources to be able to solve this. So we want to mobilize the local communities to be able to do not just pick up, but actually entrepreneurial things that puts a value on plastic. Plastic is an incredibly valuable material. We dig it up from the ground, we create value for it, it has value. So if I use an analogy of the aluminium cans and the way that those cans have been eliminated as a waste issue, there was money put on the can. So the can now gets picked up, it gets collected, it gets recycling. That whole infrastructure of recycling needs to be developed for plastics. It doesn't exist today. Well, it does, but it's in a very, very primitive form. If we put a value on something, economics will take care of it and eventually we will solve this problem. Now, it's complex, but the Alliance is very committed to doing that. We are launching this year. That fund will be active by September and we'll actually be able to start dispensing funds to entrepreneurs who can start to make a difference rather than we just talk about it. The other major piece we're doing is talking to governments. So also the WEF has the Global Plastics Action Partnership. We are engaging on governments because many of the governments just don't have the infrastructure that First World governments have. So particularly in Southeast Asia, they need help, they need help with education and they need help with just the basic infrastructure. So complex problem, but it's important we get action on this. Now, I'd like to move over to government. Mary, you're from Canada and maybe you can you first tell us a little bit about what's the Canadian government doing about this problem? Yeah, absolutely. I work in the administration of Justin Trudeau who's our prime minister and climate change in the environment very much is a commitment that we have made to the people of Canada and I will be very happy to also tell you know to tell Isabelle and everyone that Canada just a few weeks ago announced a ban on single-use plastics and we hope that we will get that done by 2021. So whether it is you know as you know as was said you know when you put when you put economics into it then then there are some sort of incentives that will that will create a change of behavior. So whether it's putting a price on pollution or putting a ban on single-use plastics or providing investments we have a hundred million dollar fund that is actually going to help the world that take advantage of how they will be able to get rid of you know plastics in you know in their you know in their countries. So we are contributing as we're doing our bit at home but we're also contributing internationally as well. The other piece that is really sort of simpatico as I hear as I hear you speak is the work that we have been doing to incent for solutions. So clean tech solutions you know the government of Canada has put out a venture capital fund same kind of idea that is going to fund for solutions by companies by startups and by those who are creating solutions that is going to take plastic out of the current system. Find solutions that is going to you know that's going to reuse and create sort of that circular the circular use of it. In fact I have a you know a Canadian entrepreneur and you know I'm here at Web so I can't you know I can't lose the opportunity to plug a Canadian entrepreneur but ERS fuels who makes these things. This is made out of plastic. It takes plastic out of the you know out of out of use but it is also a fuel source so this is intended to also be the replacement to coal. So this is one type of a company or another company in Atlantic Canada that is just created in entire construction an entire house out of plastic. So the ability to be able to incent our private sector to come up with solutions that's going to take plastic out of our system but at the same time be able to find solutions that will also reduce the use of as in the case of banning single-use plastics is what we are doing some of the things that we are doing as a Canadian government. Thank you very much Mary and you know what I find personally so exciting about the whole plastics discussion is the way from very quickly I think only a couple of years ago many of us weren't thinking about this apart from Isabel of course but now we are sitting together and there's so much interest also in this room here you know for for finding solutions to this problem you know and I think governments around the world and companies around the world are all keen to to do this so there's a lot of a lot of energy here and and you know maybe I'd like to go back to you Isabel knowing that there is so much interest what would you like to see more of among this community? Yeah I definitely think you know as you mentioned before I think collaboration is key right everybody has something unique to bring to the table the youth you know with their activism and their creative ways of thinking you know the industry with their solutions and their technology and the government as well with their support of you know the platform and so I think even more if you're looking at other parts of the puzzle there's not only one solution right of course the short term solution is you know turning off the tap and saying no to those single used plastics but in the long term it's making sure that we are using plastic in a responsible way and stopping this mass consumerism mindset that we have to it and so I think definitely in the future in order to create you know a sustainable system in which we use our resources we definitely need to collaborate with each other and I think we can all agree that there definitely needs to be a change in mindset. I love what the youth are doing though the youth and Isabel what you are doing I see that in Canada as well I travel and visit schools all across you know all across you know in my own community that I represent but the Prime Minister has a youth council and that advises him very particularly on the issues that matter to him and I can tell you the environment climate change is absolutely right up there at the top so thinking about how we work as government together with private sector but also also our young people how we can actually drive for that change through those collaborations and through the right investments and harnessing the power of the private sector and the collaborations with corporates I think excuse me I think is um is where we need to be charting the road into the future. I think Isabel also makes a great point on using the right material for the right use so we also have to be a bit careful here of the overall sustainability including also carbon because you know you got things like food waste you know 30 percent of food waste globally if we stop using plastic in some of those areas we'll increase food waste and then we'll increase carbon so carefully assessing which material is used which application and then figuring out how we dispose and reuse is a science in itself and it is pretty complex but you can have some perversive incentives here you know where you ban one thing and then create a a worse problem somewhere else so you know life cycle analysis is really quite a complex tool there aren't enough people doing those analysis because it really is if you do it properly it is a pretty complicated analytical tool so if we if we look at this holistically what is the right material to use for the right application then we're going to use plastics in the right places and other materials where that's more sustainable sustainable option yeah thank you you know one thing comes to mind is that China has recently started an import ban on on waste and also including plastic and that's had a lot of repercussions around the world and some governments complained about the fact that it was introduced so quickly and that it gave little time for for people to adjust and and I guess personally I'm also working for an environmental NGO I do worry sometimes that perhaps waste that's destined that's traveling around the world inadvertently ends up in the ocean doesn't really get treated properly and so this is this is something that in a way is good you know when China says no to this everybody wakes up to the reality that so much of this waste has been shipping around the world and that actually creates a lot of risk inherent in the system so I think we've had quite a bit of words from the panel I'd like to open up to the audience we've got a roaming microphone is there anybody who would like to interact or has has good ideas for how we can move forward on this thank you my name is Tetsuji Iida I'm a science news writer best in Tokyo I'm reporting him but I'm quite a long time recently I'm a plastic news writer sorry I couldn't quite hear what my name is okay my name is Tetsuji Iida I'm an environment news writer based in Tokyo and in these days I'm plastic news writer and my question goes forward to the minister from Canada the one of the good things and bad things of plastic is too cheap too cheap plastic is very cheap do you have any incentive systems or policy to make alternative products make more competitive with budget plastics yeah you know one of the things that you know we are taking is that we know that we know that the you know the production of you know the production for plastics is you know is hydrocarbon and we have put a price on pollution in Canada and and as a way of encouraging companies to be able to take their own climate action because it's going to cost them I mean you know to you know to produce so that's one of the things that we're doing by way of you know by I think your phrase was if you if you implement something where the you know where there is an economic impact then then it does in fact incent and change and modify behavior let's see more hands who else wants to contribute I see one hand over here too maybe you can both go ahead and ask and then we can respond in one go okay so my name is David David Wang from a builder as a Swiss company we heavily certainly working a lot on you know putting interest in really in our innovation interest in this plastic thing one question probably to you know Jonathan probably you will be as a corporation you know I would say the global leading corporation a chemical side do you guys think of any technology roadmap for example you know biodegradable or whatever try to drive this in a given time and see or align with any other you know sort of you know agencies you know companies to drive the progress I mean more from technologies you know point of view you have any insights about that we'll take that one okay yet let me um let me talk about some of the um the innovations that we are looking at and this is partly as Dow but also the alliance members are doing similar things um so that the first of which is can you get another life from plastics so um we're finding no applications now like your little brick but do we have um we have now a construction brick which you can um shred mechanically shred the the plastic reconstitute it um and actually make a um a brick and we built a house in Brazil with these bricks um another example we've just finished our first one kilometer of um road so replacing bitumen with plastic um and using that to be able to bind together the asphalt and laying that down in um we built a road in Thailand so that's not fully circular so we're using one application of plastic finding another um the other the other piece and it's a longer term piece but it's it's probably the ultimate solution is around feedstock recycling which is taking that plastic all the way back into a material that we can then start again and get the the loop to be fully circular um so you know innovation is going to be a very very important part of this um mobilizing technology obviously from our own type of companies big companies around the world but also from from startups you know so we're going back to this idea of the funding you know if people have great technology ideas um you know what is it that can help to make plastic circular um so you know technology will definitely be one of the um the contributory um solutions to this sorry I I want to follow up on on that one with a question so I've heard that some plastics when they are called biodegradable or whatever that they actually end up uh breaking down but they break up break into these micro uh plastic particles is that true for for all biodegradable plastics or are there any technologies for plastics that don't have that um property yeah the a couple of um confusing words we throw the word bio out there so there's two two bios was biosourced and if you if you create a biosource plastic it really doesn't make any difference to the the the waste issue because you know where it came from it's still a piece of waste plastic um the the other issue is the one you refer to when you have biodegradability um and by the whole nature plastic if you want to create a plastic film for a piece of food um you don't want it to degrade um and so the the the dilemma here is if you make it biodegradable um you end up almost making the problem worse because you can't control the rate of died biodegradability um and the pace at which it biodegrades so there may be some technology that comes along that allows you to be very specific but at the moment biodegradability is is is probably not an easy answer to the the problem all right so biodegradability is uh yesterday um who else has a question thank you Douglas McCauley I'm a professor of ocean science at the University of California Santa Barbara it sounded like there's some interesting things happening on the R&D side for circularity and some really great policy actions I I uh celebrate and uh and applaud Canada's leadership a question on the government side for promoting this kind of move for new innovation and innovation towards circularity some really exciting things pulling levers to help reduce use of single-use plastics what kind of levers can governments pull is Canada considering for promoting circularity or for actually accelerating some of this innovation that sounds like it's happening inside labs of industry to get us new materials and get us to do structures that help facilitate onboarding of this circularity so for government it's being able to provide an environment that allows for an acceleration of these kinds of collaborations and partnerships in fact Canada is hosting the world's circular economy conference in 2020 it's where the world can come together and we can actually look at what we are doing in other jurisdictions to tackle the issue of uh you know of plastics in our you know in our society but it really is being able to bring sort of some of the very best brains and some of the very best solutions that could potentially come together but the way we've sort of done this is that um you know part of it is putting bands in place or putting a hundred million dollar fund to help developing countries also tackle the issue of plastics prohibiting microbeads in our toiletry so some of these are sort of the regulatory work that Canada has done the other part is very much creating the incentives that you know in clean tech so whether it is startups or whether it is collaborating with the corporates to really create that environment that enables for that kind of work to take place so you know we in the last five years have put over 800 million dollars in venture capital alone so it's government venture capital that actually is going to leverage private sector capital which now is made Canada the second um next to the US jurisdiction that has robust venture capital but some of this is going to go into those very innovations that is getting developed whether it be in our research institutions and universities or elsewhere where Canada is very open to collaborating with but I think being able to convene and have particularly a conference that we're hosting on the circular economy is creating that kind of environment for us to together tackle some of the some of these issues and in fact identify the opportunities so it's it's it's a suite of of interventions and actions but it really is about leadership and providing the context for business and others to take their part in it who else wants to to make a comment or ask just like to talk about the correct problem statement it's not a plastics it's the plastics of wits plastics it's not a devil we could not leave without plastics thank you if I can add on to that I think we definitely see you know how resilient plastic can be as a resource and how useful it can sometimes be but I think in in in the way that we are now especially in developing countries and in my home island of Bali you know one of the reasons why plastic is such a big problem is because we are not seeing a proper way for us to sustain sustainably process our waste right there is a lack of island wide or even nation wide facilities and infrastructure to deal with plastic waste which often forces the local people to either burn their waste bury their waste or just litter it right which which is quite that's when plastic really becomes the issue so yes for sure I definitely agree with you yeah that's an interesting point isn't it I mean the fact that governance is can be pretty weak in some countries and I can imagine perhaps in Indonesia people even though they know it's a problem it may be a problem to some and and not such a problem to others and so you know still so much of it ends in the ocean we've heard very conflicting statistics about how how much of the waste in the play in the ocean comes from China I work in China and it's confusing and so the Chinese government says no it's not that much and others say yeah you're like a third of the problem and so you get the finger pointing but I think they're in China they're ready to do something about it as well which is very encouraging and then I think the governance in China is relatively strong you know I could see major steps being taken in the next in the next year or two that's my prediction anyway I think this issue that Isabel raises though with the third the third world waste infrastructure is really the biggest problem here because you got you got two problems together which is education to know that you shouldn't throw the the plastic in the river in the first place and that's a social education program that isn't easy but then you got the practical issue of there really is no waste collection infrastructure so in those kind of countries that's got to be the priority no for sure and if I can add on that you know if you think about it saying no to single use plastic bags you can make that change overnight yourself individually right it shouldn't take six years of campaigning for it to happen that's an insanely long amount of time but the reason that it took so long was definitely because we had a main focus on education and socializing within schools communities to really get the message out there to local communities to understand why these regulations needed to be put into place right because if you know the governor just says okay we have to ban plastic bags and the local people do not understand why then it will not be implemented and it will not be followed and so that's why we as you know a grounds up people movement really saw the value in doing those social awareness campaigns and education so yes good morning thank you very much for your discussion I want to ask about the psychology of tipping points because we've been emitting carbon for a long time then all of a sudden we are finding ourselves in a climate crisis we've been using single use plastics for quite a long time staring up cocktails without any moral dilemma until now and I was intrigued about Prime Minister Trudeau's youth council and I'm thinking what else can we do in society to make sure that this we don't get to these tipping points and I'm just thinking about the United Nations biodiversity report which maybe there are a couple of articles here and there but you know that when is that going to hit us in the face and how can we make sure that we are more systematic about dealing with issues as they as they emerge rather than when they become a crisis sorry I just wanted to point out that solutions are there so by myself are involved in two projects one to be the reverse engineering of plastics in back into original form to the field and the other one was to make create another different field on there so but what we come in is that you know although that Mr. Prendress is saying there is funds in there that there's recognitions in there we do not and we cannot identify those and as for the NGOs as well to come and actually see for themselves how these industry has changed and is able to give that change back to the community so there's that support there's lack there's a lack of support that I should say that from all the responsibles you know makers and breakers if you call them from those people that to come and support the industries that are actually finding solutions thank you so we have another minute or so I'll give one quick opportunity to respond to the last comments and I want to give a final word to Isabel it is maybe a comment on that and I think it's tying up the dots between entrepreneurs governments big business and trying to find better ways of communicating because I agree with you there are solutions out there the entrepreneurs out there there's goodwill there's money there's regulation there's youth activism but it's forums like this actually which we need more of so that actually there's a better connectivity yeah no for sure I want to echo off of that on my last note is definitely the the importance of connecting the dots and bringing everyone together right like you said there's a bit of lack of support for the industry and I feel you know often as young as a young voice and young representative there's sometimes a lack of support for the younger generation in a standing up and being part of you know forums like this and so on and I I can imagine that every different person has their own you know sort of setbacks and having said that I do want to ask a question really quickly to the audience is anyone here in the room under the age of 20 I think you know the answer already I didn't think so physically or mentally no but I just wanted to sort of highlight and leave you guys all with the you know the thought that when world economic forum reached out to us saying hey we would love to have you know you come to our annual meeting of the young champions to be the voices of the youth you know and I we absolutely jumped on the opportunity because we really believe in the importance of giving young people a seat at the table right and so hopefully next year I hope when I ask you know to a room full of people who's under 20 we have more than just me and we have an entire panel of young people and young voices really highlighted highlighted here at the conference because I think it's also more important than you know just being here for the three days or for you know the the days that you make those important decisions but it's really to allow us to be a part of the process and we see that you know with the world economic forum and their global shapers which are incredible but that's still above 20 and so we'd love to see next year's definitely the age you know being reduced and and to really bring in the the younger youngest generation so let's hear it up for Isabel one more time and our panel and thank you for your interest in the plastic revolution now let's keep it going