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The Transition | July 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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Survey Says – plastic, aluminum, or glass soft drink packaging?
Last month we asked readers to choose the most sustainable packaging alternative for beverages. Although the survey size was small, 60% chose aluminum and 40% chose glass. We also asked why beverage producers choose plastic over aluminum or glass for their packaging. The consensus answer is that plastic is cheaper to produce with no downstream cost for waste disposal. Other answers included the ease of screw tops on plastic bottles, it is lightweight for transportation, and the cost of shifting to a new supply chain.
Esri User Conference - understanding precedes action
OpenOceans Global was pleased to attend the Esri User Conference in San Diego, July 15-19, 2024. Esri is the world’s leading developer of geographical information system (GIS) software. There were more than 18,094 registered in-person attendees and 22,022 digital attendees. Esri software powers OpenOceans’ maps and online app. Attending the user conference helped sharpen the use of our mapping technology while introducing us to new concepts. The conference’s theme was “GIS—Uniting Our World,” and Esri President Jack Dangermond emphasized that “understanding precedes action.”
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In This Issue: (links to articles below)
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Did you know?
Fiji Water produces and exports from Fiji more than half a billion plastic bottles of water each year.
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Taking a Deeper Dive
Fiji is an example of the real story of global plastic pollution
Image credit: Time / Adam Ferguson
A July 3, 2024, article in Time serves as a dramatic case study to understand the tension between economic benefits and the creation of plastic waste. It also illuminates the real challenges of ocean plastic pollution not seen very often in the developed world.
Fiji Water, owned by California-based The Wonderful Company, produces and exports more than half a billion plastic bottles of plastic water each year. It is also one of Fiji’s biggest employers and largest single taxpayer, - a financially important company to the island nation.
Fiji's huge plastic waste problem
At the same time, Fiji has a huge plastic waste problem with 330 islands and only one sanitary landfill and two municipal dumps. High-end resorts ship their plastic waste back to the main island. Because many of Fiji’s island communities can’t afford to do the same, most of Fiji’s plastic waste is burned, buried, or allowed to leak into the environment and the ocean.
The trash flows to the sea and then returns to shore after mixing with debris from other areas. Both the hospitality industry and local residents clean the beaches and burn the trash.
While burning the plastic does remove it visibly, it releases toxins that persist in the local environment. These practices are repeated daily around the world, according to Time.
Billions of plastic bottles means jobs
Meanwhile, Fiji Water continues to provide jobs and produce billions of bottles of water from this island nation, creating a dilemma. How can rules be made to address plastic pollution in Fiji without eliminating a primary economic driver for the nation?
This is the problem the world must solve. It’s not a few flip-flops, potato chip bags, and plastic bottles on California beaches; it is the pervasive pollution from plastic in developing countries that will have no real solution until the developed nations that profit from plastic production decide it’s time to stop it.
Can paper products be a substitute for plastic?
Image credit: Forbes / Wood Mackenzie
A study* analyzing the applicability of replacing plastic products with paper substitutes has determined that more work needs to be done. The authors write that “paper products have unparalleled desirability of promoting environmental sustainability, and they have the advantages of recyclability, biodegradability, and low cost. However, paper has limitations when compared with plastic. The study looked at five possible categories of substitution:
- Food packaging products. Paper products are normally opaque, porous, and not heat-sealed and don’t repel oxygen or water vapor, which can degrade food products. One solution is adding layers of polymers or metal foil, which limits recyclability. Another is adding chemical additives, which can violate food safety standards. Bio-based polymers and mineral particles enhance the strength, water resistance, and barrier properties of the paper packaging.
- Molded pulp products. Molded pulp products have potential use as food containers and tableware, electronic product packaging, compostable containers for agricultural seedlings, medical and health products, building materials, and living furniture. Chemicals added to resist moisture are not environmentally friendly. New sustainable additives are required.
- Shopping bags. High cost and inferior mechanical strength have limited large-scale replacement of plastic shopping bags with paper. The development of sustainable additives and advanced manufacturing technology is needed to produce high-performance paper shopping bags.
- Agricultural mulch. Agricultural plastic mulch is not biodegradable and must be landfilled at the end of the growing season. Paper mulches have several deficiencies and fully biodegradable paper mulches need to be developed.
- Nanocellulose and self-assembled nanostructures. Nanocellulose is a modern form of the natural plant-based polymer, cellulose. It can be used as an alternative to traditional plastic for packaging, flexible electronics, biomedical devices, and water treatment. Materials to replace plastics are expected in the near future.
*The study was conducted in 2020 by the Tianjin Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper at the Tianjin University of Science and Technology in conjunction with Auburn University’s Department of Chemical Engineering.
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“Another way of looking at it is if this was 1965 and I were to say to you, in 40 years you're going to be buying water in plastic bottles and you're going to be paying more for that water than the equivalent amount of gasoline, you would look at me like, nobody's going to do that. And yet here we are. That's ‘adaptation to diminishment.’” - Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd
Image Credit: Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory
This image of a blue plastic pile represents the cumulative amount of plastic waste that would be generated between 2010 and 2050, enough to cover the entire island of Manhattan and ten times the height of the Empire State Building, under a business-as-usual scenario where no aggressive policy actions are taken.
- Republic Services Polymer Center Honored as Industry’s 2023 Sustainability Game Changer, Waste Advantage, July 24, 2024
- Biden endorses ‘ambitious' plastics plan, less virgin resin production, Plastics News, July 19, 2024
- Plastics Industry Association seeks block on subpoena in recycling case, Plastics News, July 18, 2024
- MrBeast’s TeamSeas Initiative Pulls 34 Million Pounds of Trash From the Ocean, My Modern Met, July 18, 2024
- Shell calls its chemical recycling goals unfeasible, Plastics News, July 18, 2024
- What plastic pollution does to your body, and what you can do about it, Medical X Press, July 12, 2024
- Inside the Factory Turning Trash Into Olympic Podiums, Waste Advantage, July 8, 2024
- New industry group pushes back as California considers bigger bag ban, Plastics News, July 8, 2024
- Evaluating strategies to increase PET bottle recycling in the United States, Journal of Industrial Ecology, June 18, 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: Playa de la Pineda, Tarragona, Spain
Volunteers sift sand to remove plastic nurdles on Playa de la Pineda. Image credit: Good Karma Projects
Playa de la Pineda, a popular surfing beach in the city of Tarragona on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, suffers from “recurrent and constant pollution from plastic pellets” (nurdles) used in plastic production. The Chemical Business Association of Tarragona, reports 19.3 metric tonnes of plastic were produced in Tarragona in 2017. According to the nonprofit Good Karma Projects, “calculations show an accumulation of approximately 1,000 pellets per square meter in the area sampled.” On one day in November 2023, volunteers removed 800,000 plastic pellets from the beach using the sand-sifting machine in the photo above. The pellets flow down the Rio Francoli, into an industrial harbor which empties at the beach. This is only one instance of plastic pellet pollution throughout the Mediterranean region.
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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: Ghost Fishing Solutions
Image credit: Ghost Fishing Solutions
An estimated 640,000 metric tons of fishing gear is left in the ocean annually. Ghost fishing is a global issue and occurs when fishing gear is abandoned, lost, or discarded. This gear can include nets, traps, pots, lines, and buoys and can have devastating consequences for marine wildlife and habitats, and is a major plastic polluter of island nations. Fishing gear is expensive and most is unintentionally lost. A tech company, Ghost Fishing Solutions (GFS) is providing the fishing industry with a game-changing solution. The solution is a preventative tool that alerts users promptly when a fishing line detaches from its buoy or submerges deeper than intended, enabling a quick response and recovery. GFS is a cost-effective, reusable device that can be mounted on fishing equipment and monitored and operated using a mobile phone. The notification service allows the equipment to be retrieved before it is lost, making a trifecta win-win for fishing operators, marine life, and reducing ocean plastic.
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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.
Mary Ellen Ternes, Attorney, Earth and Water Law, LLC
Mary Ellen Ternes (center) at INC3 in Nairobi, Kenya. Image credit: Empowered
Mary Ellen Ternes is an attorney with Earth and Water Law, LLC, a firm focused on solutions for both business and the planet. Ternes brings almost 40 years of experience in energy, manufacturing, air quality, hazardous waste management, infrastructure, and disaster preparedness and response. Her understanding of the legal measures already in place in the United States to address plastic pollution is bringing to light options available for plastic regulation utilizing OSHA, the Clean Air Act, solid and hazardous waste regulations, and previous precedent-setting litigation. Ternes is also a former chemical engineer. Before her 29 years as an environmental attorney, she served the U.S. EPA in emergency response, hazardous waste site remediation, and permitting. She then shifted to industry, focused on commercial hazardous waste incineration, before returning as a law clerk to EPA’s Office of General Counsel. Her presentations have been increasingly aimed at plastic regulation. Ternes has been an author, coauthor, or contributor to several plastic-related publications, including Plastics, Global Outlook for Multinational Environmental Lawyers, Waste Plastic: Challenges and Opportunities for the Chemical Industry, Reckoning with the United States Contribution to Global Ocean Plastic Waste, and Existing U.S. Federal Authorities to Address Plastic Pollution. Ternes is a past president (2020) of the American College of Environmental Lawyers, a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and a senior fellow at the Global Council for Science and the Environment (GCSE) for environmental law and policy. She received her B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law.
Salvador Rico, Founder, Cleaning the Rivers of the World
Image credit: Rotary International
Salvador Rico, is a long-time member of the Rotary Club of South Ukiah. He owns Alliance Auto Service in Ukiah, California and is the founder of Cleaning the Rivers of the World, an initiative that started in his Club in 2009, supported by the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group ( ESRAG). ESRAG’s goal is to inspire action around environmental sustainability and climate change. Cleaning the Rivers of the World challenges Rotary clubs across the globe to clean up a river. Rivers bring the vast majority of ocean plastic to the sea, making them primary targets for cleanup. A new initiative underway is Community Action for Fresh Water ( CAFW), a joint project of Rotary International with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). CAFW expands upon the success of Rotary members who have been protecting and restoring freshwater ecosystems under the pilot program Adopt a River for Sustainable Development. Rico cleaned his first river, the Russian River, in 2009. With the support of Rotary clubs, through the years, he has expanded the work to projects in México, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, India, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Venezuela, and other parts of the U.S. He learned the value of clean water as a youth in Mexico when upstream cities polluted the rivers near his home and school, and his sister died of polio, believed to have been contracted after swimming in the Ameca River. “I always hoped I could go home and do something to turn all the sewage into pristine waters,” Rico says. “Now I can say, with a clear conscience, I did everything I could to leave a better world for our kids.” Note: if Salvador Rico's image is not visible, please click here to view the newsletter in your browser.
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