 Unless you've been living under a rock recently, you'll know that we urgently need to end our use of fossil fuels, getting our energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind instead. But we don't just use fossil fuels for energy. Millions and millions of everyday items such as clothing, makeup and phones are made using crude oils. But how can we make these items without digging up fossil fuels from the ground? What about these mysterious catalysts that turn raw materials into stuff? I'm at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London to meet a scientist who's hopefully going to clear this all up for me. Hi, I'm Esby. Nice to meet you. Hi, I'm Arianna. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for meeting me here today. Now I have to say this isn't the first place I think of when I think of a chemical engineer. Well, sports, chemistry and chemical engineering, they do have quite a lot in common and actually that is the energy. So first of all, how much of everything we use contains oil? Platform chemicals that we actually get from the crude oil are crucial for us. It's in the materials that we use every single day. When we think about the plastic packaging to medicine, shampoo and also various types of materials. So you need those building blocks and they all come from oil. They are the platform chemicals. Interesting. So if platform chemicals are the building blocks, what are the catalysts? Oh, that's an exciting part. I have a demonstration to show you if you want to follow me. So let's go. So this is Tom. And Tom's part of your demonstration, is he? Yes, indeed. So we talked about catalysts a little bit earlier on. What exactly is a catalyst, then? So more than 85% of materials are actually made with some sort of a catalyst. Catalyst is a chemical helper. It actually helps us to reduce the energy that we need to put in the reaction to be able to get the product. So Tom is actually going to demonstrate our energy input and he's going to go and run up the stairs. So Tom, if you want to go and run up the stairs, please. Yes, sure. Thank you. So what are we seeing in this demonstration? What does Tom represent? So Tom is actually an energy input. When you think about the reaction, you need the reactants at the start. So Tom running up to the top of the stairs is putting a lot of energy. And when you're on top of the stairs, because your products have lower energy, him coming down the slide would be the product in the end. There we are. Well done. So Tom, how did it feel to part of a chemical reaction? Yeah, fun. So what really happened is that Tom running up the stairs, he has put quite a lot of energy into the reaction. As a second part of this demonstration, we're going to have actually Tom running halfway through. And that would be with the catalyst. Okay, so he's going to start halfway up and then using a catalyst, he can get to the top with half the amount of energy. Indeed. So Tom, do you want to head to the lift and get a head start? I'd love to. Good. So how do you feel having done it with a catalyst? Was it a bit easier? That was much easier, yeah. So hopefully now you understood why the catalyst is so important and why it's very important to get the right catalyst with the platform chemicals that you're using. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for being a great demonstrator. You're very welcome. So where are we going to be getting platform chemicals from in the future and how does it relate to catalysts? At the moment, we are obtaining our platform chemicals from the crude oil. And if we want to move from the crude oil, we have to look for the different sources of our platform chemicals. And actually in our research is the biomass. It's actually the waste from other farms or even the breweries. So does that mean that the waste from beer could be turned into like plastic bottles, say? Hopefully yes in the future, but we still have a long way to go. We want to make sure that we use the waste as a new way to source those platform chemicals. So we're not going to throw away those materials like biomass in the landfills or the oceans. And having said that, I think it's really important to create new types of catalysts and also think about going away from the traditional catalysts. What about the catalysts? So the traditional catalysts, all the catalysts are doing is actually they're breaking the bonds between the carbons and hydrogens to something like this. And they're creating a smaller molecules. And these molecules in the reaction, they would rearrange and actually create new types of products in the end using less energy. And these kind of catalysts, if they get into the biomass, biomass is full of different waste and it would end up probably poisoning the catalyst. So we need new types of catalysts to treat the biomass. Well, this is so interesting. Thank you so much. And I really like the idea of closing the loop and having no more waste. So thank you so much for speaking to me today. Thank you. So next time you throw away a plastic bottle, wash your hands using soap or use a pen, remember that all these products have been made using chemicals transformed with the help of a catalyst. All these products are important to our standard of living and it's the engineers in chemists who ensure we can keep using them without costing the earth.