Plastic is everywhere: In the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe... You eat a credit card’s worth of plastic per week. Your body is full of it. How does it affect you? Maybe sterility, cancer, obesity... And a lot of it comes from sea plastic killing millions of animals.
It was mentioned that the waste management in the Philippines is 100 times worse than the UK. While this might be true , the UK exports 2/3rds of its plastic waste mostly to poorer countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. That doesn't mean good waste management, surely? It would be interesting to know how much of this illegal dumping contributes to the waste run off to the rivers and oceans. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51176312
I like your two charities, but I think that you have ignored the elephant in the room! The obvious solution would be for rich countries like the US and Canada etc. to spend "small bucks" of tax money to improve waste management practices in the countries that are the source of the problem, starting with the Philippines. Here in Canada, we could easily save more than enough money by dropping our meaningless nuisance virtue-signaling programs to ban plastic straws and shopping bags.
The myopia that drives well-meaning people (including Justin Trudeau) to focus on the smallest parts of this problem while ignoring the largest parts seems to dwarf a similar form of myopia in the realm of abating global CO2 emissions. But at least in that field, there are vital needs that are being met by China's and India's and Africa's increases in coal-fired generation. I can see no similar needs being met when the world's rich countries sit idly by (or distract ourselves with trifles) while a few countries throw most of the world's plastic trash into the oceans.
I agree with you, Norm. This is the #TeamSeas project and I want to support it. But in the follow-up, premium article I'll go into many more specifics on how to solve the pbm, including things like what you just said
Totally agree Norm. This is a critical thing that I think you miss in this article Tomas, when you conclude with a bid for measures to clean up plastic from beaches, rivers & oceans, but not stopping it getting into them in the first place.
By far the most effective solution to this problem is for wealthy countries to fund poorer countries to have decent rubbish collection services.
Here is research I did on this issue in 2018 (drawing on work by McKinsey):
One other thing is that whilst I agree it's a problem for sea life, I'm not fully convinced it's a a big problem for human health. After all, one of the reasons plastics have become so popular is because they are so unreactive and benign. There is of course a risk, but I am particularly sceptical about your suggested correlation with obesity, especially given what you indicate plastic causes fish to eat LESS, plus trends in fast foods over recent decades (a more obvious cause of human obesity).
We need a simplified version of this text to publish in our local areas.
I live in Vietnam. I know many of the commonly read channels and could give this sort of thing massive distribution very easily. But the text needs to be in Vietnamese.
...And our beaches are covered in plastic! I've seen it 1 metre deep. So the locals know what the problem is.
There are a lot of concerned people here who would spread the word.
The channel needs to be understood as being extremely general. You are targeting 100 million people. The aim is to shock. The young Vietnamese adults are becoming aware of the problem, but they need high powered shocking text to publish onward.
after the simplification is done for Vietnam, the next logical step is to translate this into Indian / Malaysian etc . I can help with finding the right local 'spreader' who can taylor details (pictures if needed) to locals . One of the great resources is epsilon theory - ben hunts' the pack , I am member there. My email is anna.kn@forgottenanimals.org . I run an animal welfare NGO in russia, different subject but know people .
One of my contacts has suggested that the format should be a short video, even if it is actually a series of stills. It might be possible to get some creative help there.
I have made a general request to find a translator, and also asked a person who I know can do the job. Whichever resource we find, we'll need to do a back-translation check.
Start the simplification. I am 100% sure we will get help.
Aim at a shorter and more relevant message. Vietnamese people do not understand that single-use plastics are a disaster. They don't realise that the plastics that they throw away everyday end up in the environment that feeds them.
If you show that the typical VN person eats a few grams of plastic everyday, you are onto a winner.
I’ve worked in Growth my entire time. 99% of ppl underestimate how hard it is. If we don’t have specific channels, it’s worthless work to make the message more succinct
The channels will be specific Vietnamese FB groups that have large numbers of readers. Sending this information into the expat groups will get lots of support, but they are already converted. They can be used as multipliers, but not much else.
The target is the lower level VN people. These are commonly seen amongst localised "buy and sell" groups.
Vietnam has location oriented online media channels. These work on a ward, district, city, province level. Wards are a few thousand, districts are 10x, city can be 100,000-300,000 people, and province 3-7x that figure.
I have contacts into news media that cover province level.
The challenge is to make this a news media focus for the 50+ provinces.
BTW sorry, Chris, I was in a rush and had to respond quickly. I should have been a bit more tactful.
By lower level I assume you mean low middle-income ppl. I assume you mean that because they tend to be the ones who throw the mismanaged plastic.
From what I could read, the main issue with them is not just awareness, but the simple lack of garbage management in poor rural areas.
As such, rivers are seen as a garbage mgmt solution: you throw stuff there and it disappears.
If that's true, a more important pbm is the organization and funding of garbage disposal.
That said, I'm not sure about this yet.
In any case, awareness is the beginning of everything. Do you mind sharing with me the groups? If they're big enough, and you can recruit a few ppl in these groups to support you, I'll synthesize.
What type of message do you think would resonate the most? Can you show me a couple of such messages that had a big impact?
For sharing stuff with me, simply respond to any Uncharted Territories email!
Thank you Tomas for this well-researched and well-presented article on ocean plastic.
I knew about the mainly plastic problem in the Philippines, but I wasn't aware of the ton of plastics on the Mediterranean shore (I'm Italian). Very sad.
Anyway, I'm here to ask for your help on a common topic: climate change.
I know it's a vast topic, but in all sincerity, I find myself so confused by this topic that sometimes I sense a diverse range of feelings: a gut feeling of alarmism and a mind that tells me: "wait a minute: try to do more research about it".
I'm very uneducated on this topic. Although I tend to consent to the famous "97% consensus" and despite deniers, I'm nowhere near feeding the skeptical animal spirit that tells me: "don't believe all that MSM says".
I believe in surrounding ourselves with the best content creators, and given that I consider you one of those, may I ask you: Is there a blog, a company, or a person that earned some of your trust on this topic???
I hope not to have bothered you with this question, but I will appreciate if you'd like to share something.
No bothering at all! This is what the comments are for.
Yeah, I discovered the Mediterranean pbm doing this research too. Very sad.
Climate change --> yes, I agree. I have been working on something, but there's so much expertise out there that just to ramp up would take months of dedicated time that I don't have today. And my bar is high enough that I don't want to just contribute one more piece on it that could, on top of this, be wrong. So I won't publish for the time being.... unless I get some help on research! Which I'm open to
Yea, a high standard deserves a lot of research for sure. May I ask you what kind of help do you need? I'm not an expert on climate change, but maybe I could do something.
It's mainly research. There are 2 parts of the article:
1. Narrowing down the pbm
2. Exploring the solution.
In narrowing down the pbm, there's a LOT of assumptions of things ppl already know and accept. Eg,
1. carbon release is high in a historic sense
2. the carbon creates a greenhouse effect
3. the greenhouse effect warms the planet up to a level not seen in X millions of years
4. The warming of the planet is catastrophic for our current way of life
5. The solution is to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere
6. This means both reducing our emissions and capturing CO2
7. The reduction can't be solved through individual initiative nor business initiative. It needs to be solved through political initiative
8. Current political systems are not conducive to solving this since it's a global problem (tragedy of commons)
Most ppl agree with most of these things, but not all. Some are more polemic than others. Understanding which ones are most polemic and why would help focus on the ones we need to study further. Eg point 4 is debated by many ppl.
Then there's the solution. I have a hypothesis based on a political action analogy but need to research it further.
I assume substantial help for this would take 20-40h.
A fantastic (if very depressing) article and the two projects you are donating to look great. We recently came across another project that looks very innovative. It's called SeaChain and is an offshoot of the Pangea Ocean Project, which seems legit and also focuses on placing barriers in highly polluting rivers. Their innovation is that they use blockchain technology to raise funds via their SeaChain token (https://www.seachaintoken.com), with upcoming NFT games and collectibles. I read somewhere they are even exploring using blockchain to track plastic waste. We bought some tokens a few months ago to support them (originally called Pangea Ocean Cleanup (POC), now rebranded as SeaChain). If this project takes off and the tokens appreciate it will provide an incentive for more people to participate, providing a funding stream. Mark
Oooh interesting! Very similar to one of the projects I mentioned.
I'd like to see how they solve the trash pickup though. The source of the pbm in these countries tends to be that they don't have garbage collection services to start with...
Thanks for writing about this. Here in Japan, where a good percentage of the population is diligent about recycling, the collected plastic waste is mostly burned. So Japan is not one of the big ocean plastic offenders. But perhaps an analysis of what damage is being done by pumping all this plastic into the onion skin of an atmosphere we all depend on would open some eyes.
Yeah so I believe this incineration just generates CO2, which is not great, but I think it's probably better than simply littering the ocean. I don't know where I read it or if I remember correctly, but I think. I remember that burning all our plastic would contribute ~17% of CO2 emissions. If that's true, it's seizable. Don't quote me on this.
The other thing about Japan is that I've heard they also *export* a LOT of plastic...
One thought re the solar powered thing to clear plastic from rivers: i can see this working for plastics that float. does the existing design also hoover up plastics that sink? okay these might be less mobile, less easy to filter out, and less visible but they still could do with being cleared out (even if it has to wait until the mk2 or mk3 version). there is life on and around the floor of our seas oceans and rivers and the plastics can be damaging for these creatures and those that feed on them.
Which includes anyone who eats any kind of seafood / crustaceans....
Yeah so that's the good thing, right? The plastic that sinks stays in the river at least, where it can eventually be cleaned up.
The pbm of sinking plastic in the ocean is the plastic that floats but THEN sinks. With this river system, that's caught too, so we end up with no plastic in the deep sea!
Great analysis as usual, but I'm wondering why the solutions chosen focus on getting plastic out of the stream, rather than blocking it going in ? Isn't this a bit like mopping the floor while the tap is still on ?
I should say though, that I'm so glad the Ocean Cleanup have moved to the rivers, cleaning plastic up in the middle of ocean gyre's - made no sense to me ... elevated cost (working in open ocean) and reduced collection (very dilute)
What I'd love to see are some numbers - specifically the cost per tonne of cleanup, lets prioritise supporting the groups with the lowest cost per tonne (or lowest realistic projection of cost at scale) rather than those with the fanciest videos.
I cover these other solutions in the premium article of this week. I did it because this is something tangible we can do today with a global community, which will raise awareness of the problem, and will get people like you to ask: what else can we do? :)
I agree on The Ocean Cleanup. Makes much more sense.
There are lots of studies on these topics. There's just very dry... I read a few. They talk about these things in depth. Here's one that I liked particularly.
If people asked "what else can we do" then that would be a success, but my fear is that when we do something tangible, but insufficient, in these days of social media then instead of asking "what else can we do" people walk away thinking the problem is being solved.
We also spend more time on solutions with fancy videos, rather than ones with a potential to work at scale - I've seen that in many fields, and its particularly pervasive in places where the problem occurs somewhere different than where the funds are being raised (as it does with plastic pollution).
For example - in some of the work I've done we would divide the sector into those whose products were clean energy, or clean water - and whose customers where the poor people being served, and those whose products were photos, videos, and reports and whose "customers" were the donors.
I'd like to see more upstream solutions - for example a table, not just on which COUNTRIES produce the most ocean plastic, but which COMPANIES, can we remove the social license to operate until those companies, take responsibility for collecting the waste.
Or even further upstream, why do people buy bottled water - because tap water is either dangerous or tastes foul (too little, or too much chlorine) - is that fixable (I'm an advisor to one company in that space).
I hear you and you're partially right. But the 1st step is awareness, and I think this article achieves that.
Agreed with solutions at scale. I haven't studied enough yet to narrow down which ones they are. Some studies are there, but they're confusing.
In any case, I wish I had enough time to devote to this pbm the way you describe it—that's the way to do it. Unfortunately, I believe there are other pbms where I can have a bigger impact, so I need to limit my effort on those. But I'm happy to collaborate with those who care about this. If you're one of them, or if you have ways I can help in a scalable way, we can talk.
I'll tackle this using separate answers fir each topic.
The bigger groups are the "Expats in ...." group such as https://www.facebook.com/groups/expatshcmc. That is 140k members. Each of the major cities has that sort of group. They largely consist of the expat-plus-VN-partner. And it's the VN partner we are trying to connect with. It's not difficult to drop onto those groups.
It's possible to substitute the city name in the search (expats in Phu Quoc) and you are sure to find the groups. But these are super spreaders. They spread the word to the other more localised groups. We need a trigger that motivates the spreaders.
At localised levels we get informal groups such as "Viet Lam xxxx" where xxxx is the locality. These groups are frequented by younger less well educated people.
The n there's the "Tin Duc xxxx" groups. These are unofficial sources of news. They pick up something they see as popular reading and duplicate it. In my area there is one for my province, one for my city and one for my ward.
Secondly we need to analyse the target readership. (I appreciate you are a very busy person so I'm trying to cut the text short.)
The young educated VNs are already on board. They will help spread the word. They will either copy and repost or they will comment. But they are really just big clique. They do not have many connections to the people who are causing the problem.
The people who are polluting with trash are older and/or they work in manual industries like fishing. They are largely in the lower class levels.
You are correct that there is few trash management schemes here. The People's Committee in my ward recently put CCTV cameras on a trash hotspot. You can guess what happened... The hotspot moved.
Sadly the attitude of the authorities has been "put your trash on the street at night, and we will collect it".
But trash on land is not such a problem. The real problem is in the sea. Our local fishermen throw hundreds of plastic bags into the water just because they don't know that they should dispose of them properly. (That's hundreds of bags per person.)
That is probably the most important message; "Take your trash to a bin".
1. Create a simple message that emphasises the problem and the consequences. ("You eat plastic because the seafood you love to eat has got plastic in it because you throw plastic in the water".)
2. Clarify the problem, and educate. ("This is what people are doing, and this is how you end up eating plastic that might kill you.")
3. Provide the big solution. ("Demand that your government provides a trash management solution for you.")
4. Provide the individual actions. ("Collect trash and put it in a bin.")
The new numbers should also be rolled through the article and corrected where appropriate. The article already misstates the 'yearly' number.
"5 g of plastic every week—a credit card weighs 5g—or about 18 kg per year."
That's not even close. 5g of plastic a week would be 260g a year. I see where you got the number from the graphic linked in the quote, but the graphic says 40 pounds in a lifetime, not a year. But even that number might be an order of magnitude off? Still not good! LOL But a far cry from 40 pounds in a year/lifetime.
(Sorry, saw that while reading and said, "damn that's a LOT. Wait a sec, that doesn't add up?" Came to the comments to see if anyone had addressed it.)
Great analysis as usual, but I'm wondering why the solutions chosen focus on getting plastic out of the stream, rather than blocking it going in ? Isn't this a bit like mopping the floor while the tap is still on ?
I should say though, that I'm so glad the Ocean Cleanup have moved to the rivers, cleaning plastic up at its most dilute - middle of ocean gyre's - made no sense to me.
What I'd love to see are some numbers - specifically the cost per tonne of cleanup, lets prioritise supporting the groups with the lowest cost per tonne rather than those with the fanciest videos.
Thanks for your prompt response!. One item more to add the preparedness for a pandemic; planning how to protect us reducing to the minimun the plastic thrash generation.
I am retired and living in the Philippines in Manila. The problem here is compounded by the large number of squatters ( informal settlers) who live along the river banks, streams, and canals, often building houses over the water as it is public space. This has been going on for decades and the government has had mixed success in relocating people away from these areas. Progress is being made and their have been cleanup campaigns along the shoreline for many years. "Bawal magtapan ng basura dito", (don't throw your trash here) signs are everywhere in Metro Manila. A large amount of plastic packaging and bottles - t(he tap water is generally not considered safe to drink) and the lack of sanitary landfills throughout the country means there is a lot of litter everywhere. Some of the cities here have banned plastic grocery bags. One writer said that throw away culture is a Filipino tradition going back to eating off a banana leaf and drinking from a coconut shell.
It was mentioned that the waste management in the Philippines is 100 times worse than the UK. While this might be true , the UK exports 2/3rds of its plastic waste mostly to poorer countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. That doesn't mean good waste management, surely? It would be interesting to know how much of this illegal dumping contributes to the waste run off to the rivers and oceans. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51176312
You're right. I look at plastic exports in my upcoming premium article.
I like your two charities, but I think that you have ignored the elephant in the room! The obvious solution would be for rich countries like the US and Canada etc. to spend "small bucks" of tax money to improve waste management practices in the countries that are the source of the problem, starting with the Philippines. Here in Canada, we could easily save more than enough money by dropping our meaningless nuisance virtue-signaling programs to ban plastic straws and shopping bags.
The myopia that drives well-meaning people (including Justin Trudeau) to focus on the smallest parts of this problem while ignoring the largest parts seems to dwarf a similar form of myopia in the realm of abating global CO2 emissions. But at least in that field, there are vital needs that are being met by China's and India's and Africa's increases in coal-fired generation. I can see no similar needs being met when the world's rich countries sit idly by (or distract ourselves with trifles) while a few countries throw most of the world's plastic trash into the oceans.
I agree with you, Norm. This is the #TeamSeas project and I want to support it. But in the follow-up, premium article I'll go into many more specifics on how to solve the pbm, including things like what you just said
Totally agree Norm. This is a critical thing that I think you miss in this article Tomas, when you conclude with a bid for measures to clean up plastic from beaches, rivers & oceans, but not stopping it getting into them in the first place.
By far the most effective solution to this problem is for wealthy countries to fund poorer countries to have decent rubbish collection services.
Here is research I did on this issue in 2018 (drawing on work by McKinsey):
http://davidthorp.net/energy-enviro/plastics
One other thing is that whilst I agree it's a problem for sea life, I'm not fully convinced it's a a big problem for human health. After all, one of the reasons plastics have become so popular is because they are so unreactive and benign. There is of course a risk, but I am particularly sceptical about your suggested correlation with obesity, especially given what you indicate plastic causes fish to eat LESS, plus trends in fast foods over recent decades (a more obvious cause of human obesity).
Good to see some people getting together and doing something about humanity's leaky nappy
We need a simplified version of this text to publish in our local areas.
I live in Vietnam. I know many of the commonly read channels and could give this sort of thing massive distribution very easily. But the text needs to be in Vietnamese.
...And our beaches are covered in plastic! I've seen it 1 metre deep. So the locals know what the problem is.
Chris, I'm willing to do that. I can take care of the simplification. I'd need:
- Ppl who can translate it
- A contact with those channels that would be interested in spreading the message, so I know how to best adapt the message to the channel.
You can respond to the email to reach me.
There are a lot of concerned people here who would spread the word.
The channel needs to be understood as being extremely general. You are targeting 100 million people. The aim is to shock. The young Vietnamese adults are becoming aware of the problem, but they need high powered shocking text to publish onward.
after the simplification is done for Vietnam, the next logical step is to translate this into Indian / Malaysian etc . I can help with finding the right local 'spreader' who can taylor details (pictures if needed) to locals . One of the great resources is epsilon theory - ben hunts' the pack , I am member there. My email is anna.kn@forgottenanimals.org . I run an animal welfare NGO in russia, different subject but know people .
Understood. I'll reach out when we have something!
One of my contacts has suggested that the format should be a short video, even if it is actually a series of stills. It might be possible to get some creative help there.
I have made a general request to find a translator, and also asked a person who I know can do the job. Whichever resource we find, we'll need to do a back-translation check.
Start the simplification. I am 100% sure we will get help.
Aim at a shorter and more relevant message. Vietnamese people do not understand that single-use plastics are a disaster. They don't realise that the plastics that they throw away everyday end up in the environment that feeds them.
If you show that the typical VN person eats a few grams of plastic everyday, you are onto a winner.
I’ve worked in Growth my entire time. 99% of ppl underestimate how hard it is. If we don’t have specific channels, it’s worthless work to make the message more succinct
The channels will be specific Vietnamese FB groups that have large numbers of readers. Sending this information into the expat groups will get lots of support, but they are already converted. They can be used as multipliers, but not much else.
The target is the lower level VN people. These are commonly seen amongst localised "buy and sell" groups.
Vietnam has location oriented online media channels. These work on a ward, district, city, province level. Wards are a few thousand, districts are 10x, city can be 100,000-300,000 people, and province 3-7x that figure.
I have contacts into news media that cover province level.
The challenge is to make this a news media focus for the 50+ provinces.
I'll take your advice. You are the expert.
How can I share some videos with you?
BTW sorry, Chris, I was in a rush and had to respond quickly. I should have been a bit more tactful.
By lower level I assume you mean low middle-income ppl. I assume you mean that because they tend to be the ones who throw the mismanaged plastic.
From what I could read, the main issue with them is not just awareness, but the simple lack of garbage management in poor rural areas.
As such, rivers are seen as a garbage mgmt solution: you throw stuff there and it disappears.
If that's true, a more important pbm is the organization and funding of garbage disposal.
That said, I'm not sure about this yet.
In any case, awareness is the beginning of everything. Do you mind sharing with me the groups? If they're big enough, and you can recruit a few ppl in these groups to support you, I'll synthesize.
What type of message do you think would resonate the most? Can you show me a couple of such messages that had a big impact?
For sharing stuff with me, simply respond to any Uncharted Territories email!
Thank you Tomas for this well-researched and well-presented article on ocean plastic.
I knew about the mainly plastic problem in the Philippines, but I wasn't aware of the ton of plastics on the Mediterranean shore (I'm Italian). Very sad.
Anyway, I'm here to ask for your help on a common topic: climate change.
I know it's a vast topic, but in all sincerity, I find myself so confused by this topic that sometimes I sense a diverse range of feelings: a gut feeling of alarmism and a mind that tells me: "wait a minute: try to do more research about it".
I'm very uneducated on this topic. Although I tend to consent to the famous "97% consensus" and despite deniers, I'm nowhere near feeding the skeptical animal spirit that tells me: "don't believe all that MSM says".
I believe in surrounding ourselves with the best content creators, and given that I consider you one of those, may I ask you: Is there a blog, a company, or a person that earned some of your trust on this topic???
I hope not to have bothered you with this question, but I will appreciate if you'd like to share something.
Thanks for all your great article so far.
No bothering at all! This is what the comments are for.
Yeah, I discovered the Mediterranean pbm doing this research too. Very sad.
Climate change --> yes, I agree. I have been working on something, but there's so much expertise out there that just to ramp up would take months of dedicated time that I don't have today. And my bar is high enough that I don't want to just contribute one more piece on it that could, on top of this, be wrong. So I won't publish for the time being.... unless I get some help on research! Which I'm open to
Yea, a high standard deserves a lot of research for sure. May I ask you what kind of help do you need? I'm not an expert on climate change, but maybe I could do something.
It's mainly research. There are 2 parts of the article:
1. Narrowing down the pbm
2. Exploring the solution.
In narrowing down the pbm, there's a LOT of assumptions of things ppl already know and accept. Eg,
1. carbon release is high in a historic sense
2. the carbon creates a greenhouse effect
3. the greenhouse effect warms the planet up to a level not seen in X millions of years
4. The warming of the planet is catastrophic for our current way of life
5. The solution is to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere
6. This means both reducing our emissions and capturing CO2
7. The reduction can't be solved through individual initiative nor business initiative. It needs to be solved through political initiative
8. Current political systems are not conducive to solving this since it's a global problem (tragedy of commons)
Most ppl agree with most of these things, but not all. Some are more polemic than others. Understanding which ones are most polemic and why would help focus on the ones we need to study further. Eg point 4 is debated by many ppl.
Then there's the solution. I have a hypothesis based on a political action analogy but need to research it further.
I assume substantial help for this would take 20-40h.
Maybe a comparisson on banning chlorofluorocarbons, and why the world so strangely agreed on that to save the ozone layer.
A fantastic (if very depressing) article and the two projects you are donating to look great. We recently came across another project that looks very innovative. It's called SeaChain and is an offshoot of the Pangea Ocean Project, which seems legit and also focuses on placing barriers in highly polluting rivers. Their innovation is that they use blockchain technology to raise funds via their SeaChain token (https://www.seachaintoken.com), with upcoming NFT games and collectibles. I read somewhere they are even exploring using blockchain to track plastic waste. We bought some tokens a few months ago to support them (originally called Pangea Ocean Cleanup (POC), now rebranded as SeaChain). If this project takes off and the tokens appreciate it will provide an incentive for more people to participate, providing a funding stream. Mark
Oooh interesting! Very similar to one of the projects I mentioned.
I'd like to see how they solve the trash pickup though. The source of the pbm in these countries tends to be that they don't have garbage collection services to start with...
Thanks for writing about this. Here in Japan, where a good percentage of the population is diligent about recycling, the collected plastic waste is mostly burned. So Japan is not one of the big ocean plastic offenders. But perhaps an analysis of what damage is being done by pumping all this plastic into the onion skin of an atmosphere we all depend on would open some eyes.
Yeah so I believe this incineration just generates CO2, which is not great, but I think it's probably better than simply littering the ocean. I don't know where I read it or if I remember correctly, but I think. I remember that burning all our plastic would contribute ~17% of CO2 emissions. If that's true, it's seizable. Don't quote me on this.
The other thing about Japan is that I've heard they also *export* a LOT of plastic...
Super article.
One thought re the solar powered thing to clear plastic from rivers: i can see this working for plastics that float. does the existing design also hoover up plastics that sink? okay these might be less mobile, less easy to filter out, and less visible but they still could do with being cleared out (even if it has to wait until the mk2 or mk3 version). there is life on and around the floor of our seas oceans and rivers and the plastics can be damaging for these creatures and those that feed on them.
Which includes anyone who eats any kind of seafood / crustaceans....
Yeah so that's the good thing, right? The plastic that sinks stays in the river at least, where it can eventually be cleaned up.
The pbm of sinking plastic in the ocean is the plastic that floats but THEN sinks. With this river system, that's caught too, so we end up with no plastic in the deep sea!
Great analysis as usual, but I'm wondering why the solutions chosen focus on getting plastic out of the stream, rather than blocking it going in ? Isn't this a bit like mopping the floor while the tap is still on ?
I should say though, that I'm so glad the Ocean Cleanup have moved to the rivers, cleaning plastic up in the middle of ocean gyre's - made no sense to me ... elevated cost (working in open ocean) and reduced collection (very dilute)
What I'd love to see are some numbers - specifically the cost per tonne of cleanup, lets prioritise supporting the groups with the lowest cost per tonne (or lowest realistic projection of cost at scale) rather than those with the fanciest videos.
I cover these other solutions in the premium article of this week. I did it because this is something tangible we can do today with a global community, which will raise awareness of the problem, and will get people like you to ask: what else can we do? :)
I agree on The Ocean Cleanup. Makes much more sense.
There are lots of studies on these topics. There's just very dry... I read a few. They talk about these things in depth. Here's one that I liked particularly.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2020/07/breakingtheplasticwave_report.pdf
If people asked "what else can we do" then that would be a success, but my fear is that when we do something tangible, but insufficient, in these days of social media then instead of asking "what else can we do" people walk away thinking the problem is being solved.
We also spend more time on solutions with fancy videos, rather than ones with a potential to work at scale - I've seen that in many fields, and its particularly pervasive in places where the problem occurs somewhere different than where the funds are being raised (as it does with plastic pollution).
For example - in some of the work I've done we would divide the sector into those whose products were clean energy, or clean water - and whose customers where the poor people being served, and those whose products were photos, videos, and reports and whose "customers" were the donors.
I'd like to see more upstream solutions - for example a table, not just on which COUNTRIES produce the most ocean plastic, but which COMPANIES, can we remove the social license to operate until those companies, take responsibility for collecting the waste.
Or even further upstream, why do people buy bottled water - because tap water is either dangerous or tastes foul (too little, or too much chlorine) - is that fixable (I'm an advisor to one company in that space).
I hear you and you're partially right. But the 1st step is awareness, and I think this article achieves that.
Agreed with solutions at scale. I haven't studied enough yet to narrow down which ones they are. Some studies are there, but they're confusing.
In any case, I wish I had enough time to devote to this pbm the way you describe it—that's the way to do it. Unfortunately, I believe there are other pbms where I can have a bigger impact, so I need to limit my effort on those. But I'm happy to collaborate with those who care about this. If you're one of them, or if you have ways I can help in a scalable way, we can talk.
Here is a classic answer: The history of bottled water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0
Children should be educated as soon as possible on this matter.
Hi Tomas, thanks for replying.
I'll tackle this using separate answers fir each topic.
The bigger groups are the "Expats in ...." group such as https://www.facebook.com/groups/expatshcmc. That is 140k members. Each of the major cities has that sort of group. They largely consist of the expat-plus-VN-partner. And it's the VN partner we are trying to connect with. It's not difficult to drop onto those groups.
It's possible to substitute the city name in the search (expats in Phu Quoc) and you are sure to find the groups. But these are super spreaders. They spread the word to the other more localised groups. We need a trigger that motivates the spreaders.
At localised levels we get informal groups such as "Viet Lam xxxx" where xxxx is the locality. These groups are frequented by younger less well educated people.
The n there's the "Tin Duc xxxx" groups. These are unofficial sources of news. They pick up something they see as popular reading and duplicate it. In my area there is one for my province, one for my city and one for my ward.
Secondly we need to analyse the target readership. (I appreciate you are a very busy person so I'm trying to cut the text short.)
The young educated VNs are already on board. They will help spread the word. They will either copy and repost or they will comment. But they are really just big clique. They do not have many connections to the people who are causing the problem.
The people who are polluting with trash are older and/or they work in manual industries like fishing. They are largely in the lower class levels.
You are correct that there is few trash management schemes here. The People's Committee in my ward recently put CCTV cameras on a trash hotspot. You can guess what happened... The hotspot moved.
Sadly the attitude of the authorities has been "put your trash on the street at night, and we will collect it".
But trash on land is not such a problem. The real problem is in the sea. Our local fishermen throw hundreds of plastic bags into the water just because they don't know that they should dispose of them properly. (That's hundreds of bags per person.)
That is probably the most important message; "Take your trash to a bin".
So in summary, I suggest something like this:-
1. Create a simple message that emphasises the problem and the consequences. ("You eat plastic because the seafood you love to eat has got plastic in it because you throw plastic in the water".)
2. Clarify the problem, and educate. ("This is what people are doing, and this is how you end up eating plastic that might kill you.")
3. Provide the big solution. ("Demand that your government provides a trash management solution for you.")
4. Provide the individual actions. ("Collect trash and put it in a bin.")
"You eat a credit card’s worth of plastic a week."
While extremely widely quoted, this statistic is widely off, as flagged by e.g. Nature News editor Richard van Noorden:
https://twitter.com/Richvn/status/1389879170646396930
Amazing link. Thx!
"How does it affect you? We know nothing."
This is also somewhat hyperbole, see e.g. recent report by the EU Group of Chief Scientific Advisors:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/support-policy-making/scientific-support-eu-policies/group-chief-scientific-advisors/environmental-and-health-risks-microplastic-pollution_en
Sorry I followed your link and didn't find much beyond what I detail in the article.
Yes, in that sentence, "nothing" is a hyperbole. But I detail it further in the article.
Fair enough!
Neither of these comments are meant to detract from the urgent need to take action, but we should be scrupulously accurate in how we frame the issue!
The new numbers should also be rolled through the article and corrected where appropriate. The article already misstates the 'yearly' number.
"5 g of plastic every week—a credit card weighs 5g—or about 18 kg per year."
That's not even close. 5g of plastic a week would be 260g a year. I see where you got the number from the graphic linked in the quote, but the graphic says 40 pounds in a lifetime, not a year. But even that number might be an order of magnitude off? Still not good! LOL But a far cry from 40 pounds in a year/lifetime.
(Sorry, saw that while reading and said, "damn that's a LOT. Wait a sec, that doesn't add up?" Came to the comments to see if anyone had addressed it.)
Great analysis as usual, but I'm wondering why the solutions chosen focus on getting plastic out of the stream, rather than blocking it going in ? Isn't this a bit like mopping the floor while the tap is still on ?
I should say though, that I'm so glad the Ocean Cleanup have moved to the rivers, cleaning plastic up at its most dilute - middle of ocean gyre's - made no sense to me.
What I'd love to see are some numbers - specifically the cost per tonne of cleanup, lets prioritise supporting the groups with the lowest cost per tonne rather than those with the fanciest videos.
Tremendous article about plastic and its damage over our planet. I wonder how much has been added during this COVID-19 pandemic?
Thanks Silvina. Well, back of the envelope, that's probably about 20M tons...
Thanks for your prompt response!. One item more to add the preparedness for a pandemic; planning how to protect us reducing to the minimun the plastic thrash generation.
I am retired and living in the Philippines in Manila. The problem here is compounded by the large number of squatters ( informal settlers) who live along the river banks, streams, and canals, often building houses over the water as it is public space. This has been going on for decades and the government has had mixed success in relocating people away from these areas. Progress is being made and their have been cleanup campaigns along the shoreline for many years. "Bawal magtapan ng basura dito", (don't throw your trash here) signs are everywhere in Metro Manila. A large amount of plastic packaging and bottles - t(he tap water is generally not considered safe to drink) and the lack of sanitary landfills throughout the country means there is a lot of litter everywhere. Some of the cities here have banned plastic grocery bags. One writer said that throw away culture is a Filipino tradition going back to eating off a banana leaf and drinking from a coconut shell.
An economical plan to clean the oceans of plastic trash: https://evadeli.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-novel-and-economical-plan-to-clean.html
In that map I see that there are one river in my city (105 tons/year).
I will question the city government and two cities aside (112 and 118 tons/year) !