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The Transition | April 2024
People and progress in solving the ocean plastic crisis
About OpenOceans Global. Our work centers on mapping ocean plastic, curating the best solutions, and linking together a community of ocean plastic experts and leaders. Learn more on the Weather Channel's Pattrn interview, NBC7/39's Down to Earth segment, and ArcNews.
Past issues of The Transition
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In This Issue: (links to articles below)
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OpenOceans and Trimble help plastic monitoring and cleanup on remote Henderson Island
The expedition team prepares a raft with bags of debris to be towed to the ship offshore.
Image credit: © Olivier Löser / Plastic Odyssey
We weren’t on-site, but OpenOceans Global helped Plastic Odyssey and Howell Conservation Fund with monitoring the extensive amount of plastic debris on the remote and uninhabited Henderson Island, known as one of the most polluted beaches in the world. This South Pacific atoll, part of the Pitcairn Islands, is more than 2,700 miles west of South America. OpenOceans Global, through its relationship with Trimble, arranged the donation of a handheld Trimble® Catalyst GNSS system and accompanying Trimble TerraFlex™ software to Howell Conservation Fund, which enabled very accurate geolocated and fully digitized data capture. The system was aligned with NOAA's MDMAP marine litter monitoring protocol in order to capture information about the number, weight, and type of marine plastic on Henderson Island’s East Beach, as well as take photos and capture location data. The group cleaned up 3,670 kilograms (8,108 pounds) of plastic and also removed 5,650 kg (12,456 lbs.) of plastic collected on a 2019 expedition. The 2019 expedition could not remove the waste because weather conditions didn’t allow transport of the debris to the ship. The total 2024 haul: 9,320 kg (20,547 lbs.).
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Taking a Deeper Dive
Plastic treaty talks reach a critical stage
Image credit: UNEP / Naja Bertoft / Unsplash
The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4), tasked with developing an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, is scheduled to take place April 23-29, 2024, at the Shaw Center in Ottawa, Canada. This session is critical since the deadline to conclude negotiations is at the end of November in Busan, Korea.
The revised draft of the treaty is still very much a work in progress, with multiple options proposed in most sections. The text for the third session of negotiations considered the zero draft, a first cut prepared by the secretariat as a starting point. The current treaty draft includes merged language from the zero draft and from three INC-appointed contact groups providing input.
Plastics News Assistant Managing Editor Steve Toloken provided a realistic summary of the status of the talks in his publication on April 11, 2024: “The first three sessions … they’ve not yielded the kind of progress people would have hoped for, or the kind of consensus or agreements or the space to negotiate compromises so far.”
It is this concern that makes the fourth session in Ottawa critical. Since the United Nations resolution starting the treaty process was approved in March 2022, several key conflicts have emerged that must be overcome if the treaty negotiations can be completed by November 2024:
- Limiting Plastic Production vs. Recycling. The High Ambition Coalition, which includes 55 nations led by Norway and Rwanda, along with environmental groups, wants to cut plastics production and limit some chemicals used in making plastics. Corporate interests want the focus to be on the circular economy, moving toward the capability to recycle 100% of the plastic produced.
- National Plans vs. Binding Commitments. Some of the same countries that want to focus on recycling also want country-by-country rules instead of legally binding international regulations. Using national plans has been modeled by the U.N.’s climate treaty with mixed results.
- Rules for Decision-making. Several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, China, and India, want treaty decisions to be adopted by consensus, giving individual countries veto power. Other countries — including the EU, the U.S., the U.K., and Norway — want rules to be decided by a two-thirds majority vote. The draft rules of procedure have not yet been adopted and ”continue to apply provisionally to the work of the committee.”
New report confirms the majority of plastics cannot be recycled
Image credit: CBS News
The Center for Climate Integrity released a report, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, in February 2024. While the intent of the report is to unveil the recycling strategies of fossil fuels companies, Part II provides a well-referenced and valuable overview of the well-established technical and economic limitations of plastic recycling. Here are some highlights from the report:
- There are “thousands of different types of plastic, each with its own chemical composition and characteristics.” The vast majority of these plastics cannot be “recycled” - meaning they cannot be collected, processed, and remanufactured into new products.
- As of 2021, the U.S. recycling rate for plastic is estimated to be only 5-6%.
- Despite decades of industry promises, plastic recycling has failed to become a reality due to long-known technical and economic limitations.
- Certain types of plastics have no end markets (i.e., businesses that buy and use recyclable materials to make new products).
- In 1991, the USEPA concluded that “it appears that at present only two types of plastic could be considered for making into high-quality objects, PET and HDPE,” specifically those sourced from bottles. These are known as plastics #1 and #2, respectively. This remains true more than 30 years later.
- While a minority of municipal recycling programs across the country may collect plastics #3-7, they do not actually recycle them. Instead, such plastics are incinerated or sent to landfills.
- Plastics can only be recycled - or, more accurately, “downcycled”—once, rarely twice. For this reason, plastics have a linear rather than circular lifespan.
- The toxicity of plastic and its chemical additives limits the recyclability of plastic. Many plastics commonly contain toxic additives such as stabilizers, plasticizers, coatings, catalysts, and flame retardants.
- The cost of producing recycled plastic is much higher than producing virgin plastic, and therefore plastic recycling is not economically viable.
- The petrochemical companies’ increased production of virgin resins further ensures that recycled resins cannot compete and that plastic recycling is not economically viable.
The Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) is a nonprofit organization “helping communities hold oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive costs of climate change.” CBS News covered the report on April 14, 2024.
Existing U.S. regulations can stem the flow of plastic pollution
Image credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium / National Academies of Science
A March 21, 2024, report by the Environmental Law Institute and Monterey Bay Aquarium “demonstrates the U.S. government can make important progress toward its goal of eliminating the release of plastic into the environment by the year 2040 under its current authorities.”
A press release announcing the report said the “legal analysis builds on a 2021 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which found that the United States is the largest global producer of plastic solid waste and that global plastics production could almost quadruple by mid-century. This new analysis focuses on identifying which existing policy options can be implemented in each stage of the plastics life cycle.”
The report concludes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) possess extensive authority to protect human health and the environment from the impacts of plastics and related pollution. “It also shares how other agencies and offices can play important roles – within their authorities – to provide coordination, research, and outreach across the U.S. government and help inform policymaking.”
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Image credit: Earthday.org
The environmental group Earthday.org announced “Mars Day” in 2024 as an April Fools' Day joke to bring attention to plastic waste.
- 1 in 3 Americans say they’ve reduced how much plastic they’re using, PBS News Hour, April 3, 2024
- Scientists develop a method to transform plastic waste into a powerful climate solution: It's a game-changer, The Cool Down, April 3, 2024
- Ocean Cleanup Researchers Are Detecting Plastic from Space, The Inertia, April 3, 2024
- Ocean floor a 'reservoir' of plastic pollution, study finds, PHYS.ORG, April 5, 2024
- US plastics recovery dips in 2022. Recycling Today, March 28, 2024
- Swiss leaders offer phaseout option for problematic plastics in treaty talks, Plastics News, March 29, 2024
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Help Locate Plastic-Fouled Coastlines
Each month we share an image of a beach fouled by plastic. To report a shoreline pervasively fouled by significant amounts of plastic debris, use our online plastic trash reporting app. Thank you!
This Month’s Coastal Hotspot: Seal Beach, California
Post-Tropical Storm Hilary trash sits on the northernmost part of the beach near the mouth of the San Gabriel River in Seal Beach, CA, on Monday, August 21, 2023. Image credit: Jeff Gritchen / Orange County Register / SCNG
Seal Beach is one of those iconic California beaches until it rains. The Orange County Register reports that “trash often covers the usually pristine beach after a downpour, a scene that is not just unsightly and detrimental to the ocean’s health, but a visual that puts a spotlight on the challenges of trying to control trash washed to the coast.” Stormwater from the San Gabriel River, a mostly concrete channel, picks up plastic and other trash, bringing it to the coast. There are booms in the channel to catch some of the trash, and beach cleanups address the problem, too. However, city leaders are trying to find ways to keep the plastic from reaching the beach at all.
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Solutions to the Ocean Plastic Crisis
See more solutions on our ocean plastic solutions page. Have a solution we should know about? Submit it here.
This Month's Featured Solution: Interceptor Barricade
Image credit: Ocean Cleanup
The Interceptor Barricade is a river innovation from The Ocean Cleanup as the organization continues to expand is work from oceans to rivers. It consists of a standalone floating barrier anchored in a U-shape around the mouth of a small river. The barrier intercepts trash and buffers it until it is removed from the water. The Interceptor Barricade above was installed in Guatemala’s Rio Las Vacas to halt the tsunami of trash that floods down the river during the rainy season. To withstand these exceptional high-level events, the Interceptor Barricade consists of two booms. The upstream barricade takes most of the pressure and waste and is best suited for extraction. The downstream boom catches any plastic missed or lost due to pressure build-up.
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Meet the Experts and Leaders
OpenOceans Global is identifying ocean plastic experts from around the world. Here are two experts leading efforts to reduce plastic pollution that you should know about.
Luis Vayas Valdivieso, Chair, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution
Image credit: IISD / Earth Negotiations Bulletin
Luis Vayas is a career diplomat of the Ecuadorian Foreign Service, currently Ambassador of Ecuador to the United Kingdom, and now the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. “This is one of the most important international negotiation processes for the future of the world. I thank everyone for their commitment and hard work. Together, we will achieve better days for human health and the environment,” he said. Ambassador Vayas has extensive experience in multilateral negotiations and as a university professor. Between 2022 and 2023, he became the first Ecuadorian diplomat to hold both positions as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Minister of Human Mobility. From 2017 to 2019, he was vice-president of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Before that, he served three terms (2010-2011, 2013-2015, and 2015-2017) as vice-president of the Conference of the Parties of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and from 2011 to 2013, was also vice-president of the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Vayas has been decorated as a Knight of the Order of Río Branco, Brazil (1989) and a Knight of the National Order of Merit, Ecuador (1997). He is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Sciences and holds a Master's Degree in Comparative and International Law.
Marie Constantin, Co-Founder, Louisiana Stormwater Coalition
Image credit: Jeannie Frey Rhodes
Baton Rouge is not on the ocean, but Louisiana Stormwater Coalition co-founder Marie Constantin is an ocean plastic expert nonetheless. Baton Rouge is on the Mississippi River, and Constantin decided to do something about the massive amounts of litter going into the region's lakes and streams, including the Mighty Mississippi, which dumps litter into the Gulf of Mexico. Constantin is a professional photographer who was inspired by the work of Mother Teresa. She started picking up litter and then learned that Louisiana did not have a stormwater management utility to address flood management and litter control. She co-founded the Louisiana Stormwater Coalition to achieve that end and attracted a community of caring community volunteers who have picked up more than 5,300 bags of litter along the way. In May 2022, the Louisiana Senate passed HB713, creating the state’s stormwater utility. Last year, Constantin was honored in Baton Rouge as a 2023 Capital Region 500 Most Powerful and Influential Business & Community Leaders for her work advocating for stormwater management utilities to reduce flooding and litter. Before her environmental work, she became an LSU Manship Hall of Fame Inductee, was honored as an Influential Woman in Business, and was awarded the Pete Goldsby Lifetime Achievement Award. The Vatican chose one of her photos of Mother Teresa to hang in St. Peter's Square for Mother Teresa's 2003 Beatification Ceremony before 300,000 people. Constantin's work compliments OpenOceans’ sense that to solve the ocean litter problem, you have to look upstream.
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