my name is Richard Hartmann I’m an
entrepreneur and a very accidental
environmentalist
and I’d like to explain my journey how I
got to this stage and standing on this
red dot this is a whale shark a whale
shark is a beautiful ocean-going giant
that lives in our oceans it gains its
nutrients from this big mouth its sacs
all that into its belly this really is a
beautiful beautiful creature when you’re
up close them it’s been a real
inspiration in my business for the last
couple of years but not only useful way
shocked endangered so where our seas and
it’s very environment being in caves
down a few years ago I had a realization
if you’ve ever had that thought when you
look at something in front of you and
you think and you know nothing about the
process but you’re watching it and
you’re seeing it and you think these
people are messing it up I can do this
better you have no understanding that
arrogantly you believe that you can do
it better I had the situation right here
in cave Sal about four years ago I was
having a very slow day at work I decided
to Bank off and I came down to the
waterfront about five minutes away from
where we are right now and had a cup of
coffee and in my caffeine infused
procrastination I watched two men in the
boat try and clean the waters here of
plastic waste it was a very windy day as
it can only be here in Cape Town some
litter today and a lot of trash was
going into the water
added to that the tide was going out and
I was watching the tide take the trash
out through the harbor walls as these
guys were trying to clear the water and
there were only defense to combat this
trash going out was the guy in the front
with a pool nice that was it his only
defense against nature a man’s inability
to tidy up after themselves so I mean I
mean the water fight that I’m watching
this tiger out and I only think to
myself not knowing anything about
maritime practice waste management in
water or how the men do they
in the boat I originally thought to
myself immediately I could do that
better I really thought I could do that
well I live my life by a few simple
rules one I believe sincerely that
necessity is the mother of all invention
that assumption is the mother of all you
thought it not me assumption is the
mother of all mistakes and an ignorance
is bliss an ignorance on my journey has
brought me to this place right here so I
started doing a little bit of research
which is very unlike me and I went onto
the internet to have a look at how this
kind of thing is done elsewhere in the
world surely in LA in London in New York
first world countries first world cities
had a first-world solution to picking up
trash out of the water and I came to
three conclusions number one it doesn’t
matter where you are in the world the
predominant way of taking trash out of a
water in a harbour or a marina is this
two men in a boat with a pool net so
South Africa is right up there with
technology in that respect the second
conclusion that I came to was something
that only the internet could throw up
and that was a rabbit warren of links to
data to videos to articles on just how
bad the waste in the ocean had gotten
and when I first started talking about
this in my head I thought to myself I’m
not so much worried about the trash I’m
more annoyed about the inefficiency in
this process but as I started going
through these rabbit warrens of links
and articles I discovered actually I’m
more worried about the planet safety
here so I needed to come up with a
solution let’s look at some facts very
quickly eight million tons of plastic go
into the ocean every single year now I’m
not too sure of eight million tonnes
really registers with anybody of my
sound like a lot to you it might not
sound like a lot to you but get getting
to that eight million tonnes of plastic
point if you know how little plastic
waves means we have to have a lot of
plastic maybe it’s easier to visualize
this this is a blue whale another
beautiful ocean-going giant it weighs
upwards of 200 tonnes at a time which
means that every single year humans
throw the equivalent of 40,000
blue whales into the water every single
year and maybe that still doesn’t
resonate so I brought along some props
it’s my job now to catch plastic on a
daily basis so this weighs about 1
kilogram standard plastic it’s come from
my household over the last over the last
couple of days embarrassing me off
weighs about one kilogram which means
there’s an 8 billion of these bags is
what we throw into the ocean every
single year 8 billion of these bags into
our beautiful pristine once pristine
oceans every single year the sad thing
about that is that problem only gets
worse tenfold over the next decade
this plastic floats around it gets taken
out into our oceans but it’s not getting
there by boats in the oceans and people
just randomly checking their plastic
over the sides
80% of any plastic that adds up in the
ocean comes from our shores it comes
from harbors marinas rivers ports
stormwater drains it gets taken out on
the tide into the sea and ultimately
ends up in our oceans once it’s there it
starts to break down it doesn’t break
down completely of course because that
takes a thousand years but it does break
down under weather conditions sunlight
of wave action so a point where it
becomes small enough for marine life to
start consuming it every single year we
lose 1 million seabirds to plastic
ingestion 100,000 sea mammals marine
mammals – plastic ingestion and untold
losses to our fish stocks that we
haven’t even been able to quantify just
yet but why would a fish eat a piece of
plastic so recent research that has come
out and showed us that fish like to eat
plastic because it tastes like their
food in this paper that was released
this year it turns out that as the
plastic breaks down it’s colonized by
microorganisms that fish kind of like is
the same microorganisms they normally
find on their on their food so their
sensors trick them into eating the
plastic which
give them life is actually killing them
but the joke is actually on us because
the more and more that we do research
here we’re finding that that plastic is
returning to us on our plates we throw
our trash into the ocean the fish eat
the plastic we eat the fish and the
circle of life or death in this case is
completed I’m not an engineer my mother
is an artist my father is an engineer
which makes me a daydreamer and a
procrastinator who hates inefficiency
and time wasting years of therapy years
therapy but when I started researching
this problem I found that maybe I could
contribute a little bit I was quite
arrogant at the start to think that I
could change things but I started on a
journey and what we did was to build a
robot this little guy I don’t even know
him but I’ll explain if you don’t his
name is Wally he is the star of a Pixar
movie that came out a few years ago
Wally’s job was essentially to clean up
earth trash humans had left Earth in
fancy spaceships because they didn’t
want to live amongst their trash anymore
and I left Wally and a few of his kind
to clean up our mess what I liked about
Wally was that he did his job day in and
day out without complaining he went to
work cleaning up the trash came home
recharged next they went out and did the
same thing it’s a paraphrase very badly
I might add my business partner Oliver
he sees a world where robots do the
menial tasks the tasks too demeaning too
repetitive to not needed for humans to
do so robots get to work and humans get
to live my kind of like that story so
what does a man who was born in the 70s
grew up in the 80s with Star Trek Star
Wars and the imminent promise of
jetpacks that still haven’t arrived what
do you do you build a robot and this is
what we bought this is the waste shock
of the whale shark and it’s built on the
same principles as a whale shark it’s
got an enormous mouth it silently skims
the water and tracks down his prey keeps
it in his belly
I’ll show you a little video quickly
[Music]
[Applause]
[Applause]
[Music]
so that was my idea from a coffee to a
couple of years ago the version you saw
there could take up to about 200 liters
of trash out of the water in any one
deployment the batteries last for eight
hours a day so you can send it out as
many times as you want and it’s a robot
it’s a drone it goes out it could be
manually controlled with an Xbox
controller so the kids love it you can
also set it on a iPad to go in one
certain area tell you what it’s full and
bring the trash back what I really like
about it is that robots like to talk
they like to send and receive data
constantly so we’ve equipped our way
sharks with environmental sensors we can
take up to two hundred plus
environmental sensors on any one way
shot so we can tell you the depth of the
water the temperature of the water the
turbidity the chemical makeup the
salinity the conductivity it’s endless
these robots speak to us and they tell
us about their environment and what
really excites me
as we saw certainly leaves around the
world then in four or five years time
we’re going to know our water very very
intimately from a data point we’re going
to take our trash and harvest data
that’s me for a technology point of view
is very very exciting so if you haven’t
seen enough of me already I thought I’d
just give you four shots all different
lighting I was talking about blissful
ignorance a little bit earlier and about
four years ago three years ago I was
diagnosed with depression and I don’t
say that to get sympathy but it makes me
not more normal and more kind of aware
of what I’m doing and the blissful
ignorance in my in my in my part was
that I didn’t understand the journey
that I was starting I’m not an engineer
I’m not someone who thinks he can do big
things I’m not someone who automatically
goes out and makes a difference or wants
to make a difference but from the point
of having that idea I grabbed it I went
forward and I took it to Rotterdam where
we started building these things and
solid innovating and introducing
ourselves to a lot more clever people
than my
self to start dealing with these things
and I realized in the journey that if I
had known what we were going to face
over the last three three years the
financial crippling crippling this other
word that really sort of attack see as
you try and get these technology
companies off the ground all the mental
challenges that you have to face the
challenges to relationships the
challenges to my family being away if I
knew all of that beforehand not even
including what we had to do in order to
get to that video that you’ve just seen
there I wouldn’t have started my journey
in the first place I would have been too
scared I would have been too afraid I
would have gone no I’ll just say in the
waterfront I drink coffee and
procrastinate thank you very much so
that blissful ignorance to me really
turned me into an activist and
environment and accidental
environmentalist and I’m quite quite
proud of that this man the late Jacques
Cousteau environmentalist ocean explorer
said people protect what they love as an
accidental environmentalist I now truly
believe that our oceans needed to be
protected and I would like to impart
that and hopefully that you love the
ocean too and would also like to help
protect it in some small way thank you
very much
[Applause]
entrepreneur and a very accidental
environmentalist
and I’d like to explain my journey how I
got to this stage and standing on this
red dot this is a whale shark a whale
shark is a beautiful ocean-going giant
that lives in our oceans it gains its
nutrients from this big mouth its sacs
all that into its belly this really is a
beautiful beautiful creature when you’re
up close them it’s been a real
inspiration in my business for the last
couple of years but not only useful way
shocked endangered so where our seas and
it’s very environment being in caves
down a few years ago I had a realization
if you’ve ever had that thought when you
look at something in front of you and
you think and you know nothing about the
process but you’re watching it and
you’re seeing it and you think these
people are messing it up I can do this
better you have no understanding that
arrogantly you believe that you can do
it better I had the situation right here
in cave Sal about four years ago I was
having a very slow day at work I decided
to Bank off and I came down to the
waterfront about five minutes away from
where we are right now and had a cup of
coffee and in my caffeine infused
procrastination I watched two men in the
boat try and clean the waters here of
plastic waste it was a very windy day as
it can only be here in Cape Town some
litter today and a lot of trash was
going into the water
added to that the tide was going out and
I was watching the tide take the trash
out through the harbor walls as these
guys were trying to clear the water and
there were only defense to combat this
trash going out was the guy in the front
with a pool nice that was it his only
defense against nature a man’s inability
to tidy up after themselves so I mean I
mean the water fight that I’m watching
this tiger out and I only think to
myself not knowing anything about
maritime practice waste management in
water or how the men do they
in the boat I originally thought to
myself immediately I could do that
better I really thought I could do that
well I live my life by a few simple
rules one I believe sincerely that
necessity is the mother of all invention
that assumption is the mother of all you
thought it not me assumption is the
mother of all mistakes and an ignorance
is bliss an ignorance on my journey has
brought me to this place right here so I
started doing a little bit of research
which is very unlike me and I went onto
the internet to have a look at how this
kind of thing is done elsewhere in the
world surely in LA in London in New York
first world countries first world cities
had a first-world solution to picking up
trash out of the water and I came to
three conclusions number one it doesn’t
matter where you are in the world the
predominant way of taking trash out of a
water in a harbour or a marina is this
two men in a boat with a pool net so
South Africa is right up there with
technology in that respect the second
conclusion that I came to was something
that only the internet could throw up
and that was a rabbit warren of links to
data to videos to articles on just how
bad the waste in the ocean had gotten
and when I first started talking about
this in my head I thought to myself I’m
not so much worried about the trash I’m
more annoyed about the inefficiency in
this process but as I started going
through these rabbit warrens of links
and articles I discovered actually I’m
more worried about the planet safety
here so I needed to come up with a
solution let’s look at some facts very
quickly eight million tons of plastic go
into the ocean every single year now I’m
not too sure of eight million tonnes
really registers with anybody of my
sound like a lot to you it might not
sound like a lot to you but get getting
to that eight million tonnes of plastic
point if you know how little plastic
waves means we have to have a lot of
plastic maybe it’s easier to visualize
this this is a blue whale another
beautiful ocean-going giant it weighs
upwards of 200 tonnes at a time which
means that every single year humans
throw the equivalent of 40,000
blue whales into the water every single
year and maybe that still doesn’t
resonate so I brought along some props
it’s my job now to catch plastic on a
daily basis so this weighs about 1
kilogram standard plastic it’s come from
my household over the last over the last
couple of days embarrassing me off
weighs about one kilogram which means
there’s an 8 billion of these bags is
what we throw into the ocean every
single year 8 billion of these bags into
our beautiful pristine once pristine
oceans every single year the sad thing
about that is that problem only gets
worse tenfold over the next decade
this plastic floats around it gets taken
out into our oceans but it’s not getting
there by boats in the oceans and people
just randomly checking their plastic
over the sides
80% of any plastic that adds up in the
ocean comes from our shores it comes
from harbors marinas rivers ports
stormwater drains it gets taken out on
the tide into the sea and ultimately
ends up in our oceans once it’s there it
starts to break down it doesn’t break
down completely of course because that
takes a thousand years but it does break
down under weather conditions sunlight
of wave action so a point where it
becomes small enough for marine life to
start consuming it every single year we
lose 1 million seabirds to plastic
ingestion 100,000 sea mammals marine
mammals – plastic ingestion and untold
losses to our fish stocks that we
haven’t even been able to quantify just
yet but why would a fish eat a piece of
plastic so recent research that has come
out and showed us that fish like to eat
plastic because it tastes like their
food in this paper that was released
this year it turns out that as the
plastic breaks down it’s colonized by
microorganisms that fish kind of like is
the same microorganisms they normally
find on their on their food so their
sensors trick them into eating the
plastic which
give them life is actually killing them
but the joke is actually on us because
the more and more that we do research
here we’re finding that that plastic is
returning to us on our plates we throw
our trash into the ocean the fish eat
the plastic we eat the fish and the
circle of life or death in this case is
completed I’m not an engineer my mother
is an artist my father is an engineer
which makes me a daydreamer and a
procrastinator who hates inefficiency
and time wasting years of therapy years
therapy but when I started researching
this problem I found that maybe I could
contribute a little bit I was quite
arrogant at the start to think that I
could change things but I started on a
journey and what we did was to build a
robot this little guy I don’t even know
him but I’ll explain if you don’t his
name is Wally he is the star of a Pixar
movie that came out a few years ago
Wally’s job was essentially to clean up
earth trash humans had left Earth in
fancy spaceships because they didn’t
want to live amongst their trash anymore
and I left Wally and a few of his kind
to clean up our mess what I liked about
Wally was that he did his job day in and
day out without complaining he went to
work cleaning up the trash came home
recharged next they went out and did the
same thing it’s a paraphrase very badly
I might add my business partner Oliver
he sees a world where robots do the
menial tasks the tasks too demeaning too
repetitive to not needed for humans to
do so robots get to work and humans get
to live my kind of like that story so
what does a man who was born in the 70s
grew up in the 80s with Star Trek Star
Wars and the imminent promise of
jetpacks that still haven’t arrived what
do you do you build a robot and this is
what we bought this is the waste shock
of the whale shark and it’s built on the
same principles as a whale shark it’s
got an enormous mouth it silently skims
the water and tracks down his prey keeps
it in his belly
I’ll show you a little video quickly
[Music]
[Applause]
[Applause]
[Music]
so that was my idea from a coffee to a
couple of years ago the version you saw
there could take up to about 200 liters
of trash out of the water in any one
deployment the batteries last for eight
hours a day so you can send it out as
many times as you want and it’s a robot
it’s a drone it goes out it could be
manually controlled with an Xbox
controller so the kids love it you can
also set it on a iPad to go in one
certain area tell you what it’s full and
bring the trash back what I really like
about it is that robots like to talk
they like to send and receive data
constantly so we’ve equipped our way
sharks with environmental sensors we can
take up to two hundred plus
environmental sensors on any one way
shot so we can tell you the depth of the
water the temperature of the water the
turbidity the chemical makeup the
salinity the conductivity it’s endless
these robots speak to us and they tell
us about their environment and what
really excites me
as we saw certainly leaves around the
world then in four or five years time
we’re going to know our water very very
intimately from a data point we’re going
to take our trash and harvest data
that’s me for a technology point of view
is very very exciting so if you haven’t
seen enough of me already I thought I’d
just give you four shots all different
lighting I was talking about blissful
ignorance a little bit earlier and about
four years ago three years ago I was
diagnosed with depression and I don’t
say that to get sympathy but it makes me
not more normal and more kind of aware
of what I’m doing and the blissful
ignorance in my in my in my part was
that I didn’t understand the journey
that I was starting I’m not an engineer
I’m not someone who thinks he can do big
things I’m not someone who automatically
goes out and makes a difference or wants
to make a difference but from the point
of having that idea I grabbed it I went
forward and I took it to Rotterdam where
we started building these things and
solid innovating and introducing
ourselves to a lot more clever people
than my
self to start dealing with these things
and I realized in the journey that if I
had known what we were going to face
over the last three three years the
financial crippling crippling this other
word that really sort of attack see as
you try and get these technology
companies off the ground all the mental
challenges that you have to face the
challenges to relationships the
challenges to my family being away if I
knew all of that beforehand not even
including what we had to do in order to
get to that video that you’ve just seen
there I wouldn’t have started my journey
in the first place I would have been too
scared I would have been too afraid I
would have gone no I’ll just say in the
waterfront I drink coffee and
procrastinate thank you very much so
that blissful ignorance to me really
turned me into an activist and
environment and accidental
environmentalist and I’m quite quite
proud of that this man the late Jacques
Cousteau environmentalist ocean explorer
said people protect what they love as an
accidental environmentalist I now truly
believe that our oceans needed to be
protected and I would like to impart
that and hopefully that you love the
ocean too and would also like to help
protect it in some small way thank you
very much
[Applause]
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