Category Archives: Plastic Pollution Articles & News

Presented by

.cms-textAlign-left{text-align:left;}.cms-textAlign-center{text-align:center;}.cms-textAlign-right{text-align:right;}

THE BIG IDEA

Does this count as recycling? | Seth Wenig/AP Photo

GUIDING LIGHT — Companies are talking the talk on sustainability. The Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to make sure they’re walking the walk, Jordan reports.As demand for sustainable products has skyrocketed, so have concerns about greenwashing. Public comments were due yesterday on the FTC’s first update in 11 years of its “Green Guides,” which are essentially advice for how companies can make environmental marketing claims.The nearly 60,000 comments shed light on what companies, industry trade groups and environmentalists are fighting over:— Recycling claims. Current FTC guidelines say companies should qualify claims of “recyclability” when products aren’t recyclable in at least 60 percent of their market. The EPA wrote that the bar “should be much higher,” while environmental groups want to clarify that at least 60 percent of products need to actually be recycled — not just collected. That coalition also wants to set a higher bar of 75 percent for store drop-off programs.The Plastics Industry Association wants the standards to stay as-is: The FTC “should not further complicate the issue by adding hurdles,” the group wrote. It also wants take-back or drop-off programs to be equally eligible to make unqualified recycling claims.— Corporate net-zero claims. Ceres, a nonprofit focused on corporate sustainability, wants the FTC to give guidance on how companies can use carbon offsets to make claims about their climate commitments and achievements. Sierra Club and a half-dozen other groups want disclosure of specific offsets’ climate benefits.— Chemical recycling. The American Chemistry Council and the Plastics Industry Association want to make it easier to claim that chemical recycling — a set of technologies that involve melting hard-to-recycle plastic down into its components — counts toward companies’ recycled content and recyclability standards. The ACC submitted a new poll showing that nearly 90 percent of consumers believe chemical recycling qualifies as “recycling.” Green groups are pushing back.— Enforcement. Environmental groups want the FTC to initiate a formal rulemaking process to codify the Green Guides (currently, the agency can bring enforcement action via violations of the FTC Act), with an eye toward California’s “truth in labeling” law. EPA seems to be on board, too, but the Plastics Industry Association opposes rulemaking.How much does this all matter? The FTC doesn’t do a ton of enforcement of green marketing claims: It’s taken enforcement action under the Green Guides 36 times since 2013. It hasn’t taken enforcement action based on recycling claims since 2014 — although it does send warning letters, which can nudge companies into compliance.The agency tends to pick big cases that send a signal — like its $5.5 million penalty last year against Walmart and Kohl’s over claims that they marketed rayon textiles as made from eco-friendly bamboo, when in fact converting bamboo into rayon involves toxic chemicals.But officials are signaling willingness to wade into the details on new technologies such as chemical recycling.“Our job is to not say what’s good or bad for society, it is to make sure that people aren’t lying,” James Kohm, associate director of enforcement in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in an interview. “We wouldn’t necessarily hesitate to get involved in a situation. What we don’t want to do is contradict the EPA, and we’ve been careful in a number of areas to not do that. There are a bunch of trade offs — that you have less trash, but you might have more air pollution, for example. If we had enough information, and we weren’t contradicting the EPA, we would probably give advice.”We could be in this for the long haul: The last time the Green Guides were updated, the process started in 2007 and didn’t end until 2012. There’s an initial public workshop on recycling scheduled next month. A message from American Beverage Association:
.intext-ad__copy-styles0 p {
color:#000000;
margin-top:0;
margin-bottom:1rem;
line-height:1.5;
font-family: Georgia,Times,serif;
}
.intext-ad__copy-styles0 a {
color:#007bc7;
text-decoration:underline;
}
At America’s beverage companies, we are committed to reducing our plastic footprint. That’s why we’re carefully designing our plastic bottles to be 100% recyclable, including the caps. Our goal is for every bottle to become a new one, so they don’t end up in nature. Learn more at EveryBottleBack.org.

Sustainable Finance

VENTURING OUT — Venture capital firms are coming together to set net-zero standards for themselves and their investments.The Venture Climate Alliance launching today has 23 member firms, including Prelude Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Union Square Ventures and World Fund. They’re committing to reaching net zero emissions within their own operations by 2030 and to align their investment strategies with reaching net zero by 2050.They’ve been working on it for more than a year and have gotten the blessing of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, the UN-affiliated umbrella group aiming to decarbonize the financial sector.VCs say they need their own sector-specific alliance partly because they’re focused on building up companies, which comes with unavoidable short-term emissions.“The question to ask that’s interesting is not, ‘Will your emissions go down from where they are today to tomorrow along a pathway to net zero to 2050?’” said Daniel Firger, managing director of Great Circle Capital Advisors and co-founder/lead adviser of the VCA. “We don’t exist today, and we will hopefully exist tomorrow and sell things to companies and have office space, so the question just philosophically begins from a different premise when you’re coming in thinking about venture investing as a category under net zero.”The group isn’t envisioning excluding firms based on their investment strategies. “There are some oil and gas companies that have made these commitments, and so it really is for every industry, for every company to think about this,” said Alexandra Harbour, a principal at Prelude Ventures and founder and chair of the VCA. “Every industry has the potential to achieve or contribute to impact, and that’s kind of the goal.”

WORKPLACE

New Window

Illinois corporate boards are lagging in diversity. | Courtesy University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

SLOW GOING — An Illinois law designed to diversify corporate boards is having mixed results, Shia Kapos reports.The numbers are meh: While women’s representation on corporate boards has reached more than 20 percent on average, they are underrepresented in most companies compared with their workforce, according to numbers compiled as part of compliance with the 2019 law, which requires companies based in the state to list their corporate board makeup based on sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.The state found that Illinois firms are more likely to have zero, one, or two female directors, as compared with S&P 500 firms, which are more likely to have three or more female directors.Non-white minorities are even more underrepresented than women relative to the state’s population. Of the firms reporting, 32 had no Black board members. Fifty-nine reported having zero Asian directors, while 72 reported zero Latino directors.The sponsor of the law, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, said he’s optimistic representation will get better. “Corporations want to make improvements,” he said. “We got their attention. I think it will only continue to improve.” A message from American Beverage Association:

YOU TELL US

GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. We deliver data-driven storytelling, compelling interviews with industry and political leaders, and news Tuesday through Friday to keep you in the loop on sustainability.Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporters Jordan Wolman and Allison Prang. Reach us all at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].Want more? Don’t we all. Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free!

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING

— A U.S. startup is working with a Danish concrete manufacturing giant to develop a new form of cement mix that could dramatically reduce energy use and carbon emissions, according to Bloomberg.— Near-shoring has been viewed as a way to ease supply chain problems, but it comes with its own set of problems, the Wall Street Journal reports.– A Democratic senator is planning to introduce legislation that would protect mining companies’ rights to dump waste on adjoining federal lands. The Associated Press has that story.CORRECTION: An earlier version of this newsletter included an inaccurate list of firms joining the Venture Climate Alliance. A message from American Beverage Association:
.intext-ad__copy-styles2 p {
color:#000000;
margin-top:0;
margin-bottom:1rem;
line-height:1.5;
font-family: Georgia,Times,serif;
}
.intext-ad__copy-styles2 a {
color:#007bc7;
text-decoration:underline;
}
America’s leading beverage companies – The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo – are working together to reduce our industry’s plastic footprint through our Every Bottle Back initiative. We’re investing in efforts to get our bottles back so we can remake them into new bottles and use less new plastic.  Together, we’re:  Designing 100% recyclable plastic bottles – we’re making our bottles from PET that’s strong, lightweight and easy to recycle.   Investing in community recycling – we’re marshalling the equivalent of nearly a half-billion dollars with The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners to support community recycling programs where we can have the greatest impact. Raising awareness – we’re adding on-pack reminders to encourage consumers to recycle our plastic bottles and caps.     Our bottles are made to be remade. Please help us get Every Bottle Back.

« View Archives

Antarctica is being changed rapidly by plastic pollution, climate change and krill fishing, according to marine biologist Emily Cunningham. (Emily Cunningham)Antarctica is beautiful but is being changed rapidly by plastic pollution, climate change and krill fishing, a marine biologist has warned.Demand for products such as Omega-3 supplements, farmed salmon and nylon clothes is changing the once-pristine continent, said Emily Cunningham.Cunningham, 33, hails from Staffordshire and has just spent a season in Antarctica on a scientific vessel, using submarines to explore beneath the surface.Speaking to Yahoo News, Cunningham said that as her trip to Antarctica unfolded, she began to understand the scale of the environmental challenges facing the continent.Read more: Antarctic records hottest temperature ever”At first, the impact it had on me was a feeling of, ‘Wow, how lucky am I to get to go to this incredible place,'” she said. “Then as I started to understand the scale of what is happening, my feelings turned to angst and grief about what we are losing.”Antarctica is the world’s least-visited continent, and was only discovered in 1820. Cunningham posted a viral Twitter thread about her experiences to call attention to how human activity is now changing Antarctica.Emily Cunningham’s visit to Antarctica inspired her to speak out. (Emily Cunningham)Cunningham said she remains haunted by the continent’s beauty, but hopes to raise awareness of the threats to life in Antarctica from krill fishing, which is used to feed farmed fish and for Omega-3 supplements, as well as climate change and plastic pollution.”I knew I was going to see lots of wildlife – that’s what drove me to take on the job, the opportunity to get to go to Antarctica and see the penguins and the whales. But the landscapes and the ice I hadn’t expected to be quite so mesmerising,” she said.”I had the opportunity to get down in the submarine and see the undersea environment. It was just like nothing else on Earth. It’s just like a living carpet, everywhere you look is life, it’s just spectacular.”Cunningham said that her season in the Antarctic – and speaking to veteran scientists who have spent 30 years on the continent – led her to realise just how much global warming is already impacting Antarctica.Penguins are among the species living on Antarctica. (Emily Cunningham)Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right”Global warming is happening five times faster there than the global average,” she says.”It’s getting stormier, the weather patterns are changing and it’s already impacting the penguin colonies –we saw colonies that are 70% smaller than they used to be.”Krill fishery – where ships harvest tiny crustaceans for use in Omega-3 supplements and food for farmed fish, among other things – is also posing a threat to the region.Emily Cunningham spent a season in Antarctica. (Emily Cunningham)Krill has already been impacted by climate change, thanks to the loss of sea ice – and the tiny creatures are at the heart of the Antarctic ecosystem and act as food for penguins, whales and seals.Read more: Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space”The krill fishery is becoming concentrated around the Antarctic Peninsula, where the warming is so fast, a lot of changes are happening,” she explained.Plus, the impact of the lack of krill is being seen in animals such as chinstrap penguins and whales, where a dearth of krill leads to years where pregnancies plunge, threatening populations, Cunningham added.The scientific community hopes to see regulated areas where vessels can’t fish for krill. (Emily Cunningham)But the demand for fish meal made from krill is growing by 10% each year, according to the marine biologist.As such, scientists hope to see regulated areas where vessels can’t fish for krill. At present, the only rules are around how much krill each vessel can catch.One of the projects Cunningham was involved in monitoring microplastics in the water – and she found plastic fibres that could have come from clothing in every sample.Indeed, there is now a theory that Antarctica is a ‘sink’ for plastics from all over the world.Read more: Why economists worry that reversing climate change is hopeless”Other researchers have found microplastics that are present in the air or snow, seawater and the sediment in Antarctica. They’ve even found microplastics in freshly fallen snow. It’s likely that they come by wind or by oceanic currents,” she said.Microplastics are also found in crustaceans like krill and that could mean they end up on plates around the world.”If you think krill are being fished at an industrial scale to be turned into fishmeal that goes into a salmon and it’s not a long way for the salmon to being eaten by people around the world,” Cunningham warned.Global warming has also seen invasive species such as king crabs flourish in Antarctica’s seas, putting the underwater communities at risk of irrevocable change.”They are finding that animals are hitchhiking on the nooks and crannies on the hole or the outflows of ships – what we call biofouling.”Antarctica is the least invaded habitat at the moment, but we need to make sure that it stays like that.”Cunningham added that she shared her Twitter thread to change people’s minds that Antarctica is a pristine wilderness – because it no longer is.”It’s an incredible place that is already being shaped by human activity, but we’re pulling up to a point of no return where we can no longer do anything about it.”I hope that I can raise awareness for people that wherever they live in the world, what they do has an impact on Antarctica – and they can make things better.”She said that the response to her Twitter thread was ‘amazing’, adding: “It was really heartening, because this fight can feel incredibly lonely.”Finally, Cunningham advised that the best thing people can do is to work to raise awareness of the threats to Antarctica – so that governments and businesses will take action before it is too late.She can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

There is plastic in our bodies; it’s in our lungs and our bowels and in the blood that pulses through us. We can’t see it, and we can’t feel it, but it is there. It is there in the water we drink and the food we eat, and even in the air that we breathe. We don’t know, yet, what it’s doing to us, because we have only quite recently become aware of its presence; but since we have learned of it, it has become a source of profound and multifarious cultural anxiety.Maybe it’s nothing; maybe it’s fine. Maybe this jumble of fragments — bits of water bottles, tires, polystyrene packaging, microbeads from cosmetics — is washing through us and causing no particular harm. But even if that were true, there would still remain the psychological impact of the knowledge that there is plastic in our flesh. This knowledge registers, in some vague way, as apocalyptic; it has the feel of a backhanded divine vengeance, sly and poetically appropriate. Maybe this has been our fate all along, to achieve final communion with our own garbage.The word we use, when we speak about this unsettling presence within us, is microplastics. It’s a broad category, accommodating any piece of plastic less than five millimeters, about a fifth of an inch, in length. Much of this stuff, tiny though it is, is readily visible to the naked eye. You may have seen it in the photographs used to illustrate articles on the topic: a multitude of tiny, many-colored shards displayed on the tip of a finger, or a lurid little heap on a teaspoon. But there is also, more worryingly still, the stuff you can’t see: so-called nano-plastics, which are a tiny fraction of the size of microplastics. These are capable of crossing the membranes between cells and have been observed to accumulate in the brains of fish.We have known for a while now that they are causing harm to fish. In a study published in 2018, fish exposed to microplastics were shown to have lower levels of growth and reproduction; their offspring, even when they were not themselves exposed, were observed as also having fewer young, suggesting that the contamination lingers through the generations. In 2020, another study, at James Cook University in Australia, demonstrated that microplastics alter the behavior of fish, with higher levels of exposure resulting in fish taking more risks and, as a consequence, dying younger.Last month, the Journal of Hazardous Materials published a study examining the effects of plastic consumption on seabirds. The researchers put forward evidence of a new plastic-induced fibrotic disease they call plasticosis. Scarring on the intestinal tract caused by ingestion of plastics, they found, caused the birds to become more vulnerable to infection and parasites; it also damaged their capacity to digest food and to absorb certain vitamins.It’s not, of course, the welfare of fish or seabirds that makes this information most worrying. If we — by which I mean human civilization — cared about fish and seabirds, we would not, in the first place, be dumping some 11 million metric tons of plastic into the oceans every year. What’s truly unsettling is the prospect that similar processes may turn out to be at work in our own bodies, that microplastics might be shortening our lives, and making us stupider and less fertile while they’re at it. As the authors of the report on plasticosis put it, their research “raises concerns for other species impacted by plastic ingestion” — a category which very much includes our own species.Because just as fish must swim through the blizzard of trash we have made of the seas, we ourselves cannot avoid the stuff. One of the more unsettling elements of the whole microplastics situation — we can’t really call it a “crisis” at this point, because we just don’t know how bad it might be — is its strangely democratic pervasiveness. Unlike, say, the effects of climate change, no matter who you are, or where you live, you are exposed. You could live in a secure compound in the most remote of locations — safe from forest fires and rising sea levels — and you would be exposed to microplastics in a shower of rain. Scientists have found microplastics near the summit of Everest, and in the Mariana Trench, 36,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific.In this context, most of the changes we make to try to protect ourselves from microplastic ingestion come to seem basically cosmetic. You can, for instance, stop giving your toddler water in a plastic cup, and it might make you feel like you’re doing something about her level of exposure, but only until you start thinking about all those PVC pipes the water had to pass through to get to her in the first place.In a study conducted last year, in which researchers in Italy analyzed the breast milk of 34 healthy new mothers, microplastics were present in 75 percent of the samples. A particularly cruel irony, this, given the association of breast milk with purity and naturalness, and given new parents’ anxieties about heating formula in plastic bottles. This research itself came in the wake of the revelation, in 2020, that microplastics had been found in human placentas. It seems to have become something close to definitional: To be human is to contain plastic.To consider this reality is to glimpse a broader truth that our civilization, our way of life, is poisoning us. There is a strange psychic logic at work here; in filling the oceans with the plastic detritus of our purchases, in carelessly disposing of the evidence of our own inexhaustible consumer desires, we have been engaging in something like a process of repression. And, as Freud insisted, the elements of experience that we repress — memories, impressions, fantasies — remain “virtually immortal; after the passage of decades they behave as though they had just occurred.” This psychic material, “unalterable by time,” was fated to return, and to work its poison on our lives.Is this not what is going on with microplastics? The whole point of plastic, after all, is that it’s virtually immortal. From the moment it became a feature of mass-produced consumer products, between First and Second World Wars, its success as a material has always been inextricable from the ease with which it can be created, and from its extreme durability. What’s most useful about it is precisely what makes it such a problem. And we keep making more of the stuff, year after year, decade after decade. Consider this fact: of all the plastic created, since mass production began, more than half of it has been produced since 2000. We can throw it away, we can fool ourselves into thinking we’re “recycling” it, but it will not absent itself. It will show up again, in the food we eat and the water we drink. It will haunt the milk that infants suckle from their mothers’ breasts. Like a repressed memory, it remains, unalterable by time.Writing in the 1950s, as mass-produced plastic was coming to define material culture in the West, the French philosopher Roland Barthes saw the advent of this “magical” stuff effecting a shift in our relationship to nature. “The hierarchy of substances,” he wrote, “is abolished: a single one replaces them all: the whole world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas.”To pay attention to our surroundings is to become aware of how right Barthes was. As I type these words, my fingertips are pressing down on the plastic keys of my laptop; the seat I’m sitting on is cushioned with some kind of faux-leather-effect polymer; even the gentle ambient music I’m listening to as I write is being pumped directly to my cochleas by way of plastic Bluetooth earphones. These things may not be a particularly serious immediate source of microplastics. But some time after they reach the end of their usefulness, you and I may wind up consuming them as tiny fragments in the water supply. In the ocean, polymers contained in paint are the largest source of these particles, while on land, dust from tires, and tiny plastic fibers from things like carpets and clothing, are among the main contributors.In 2019, a study commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature found that the average person may be consuming as much as five grams of plastic every week — the equivalent, as the report’s authors put it, of an entire credit card. The wording was somewhat vague; if we may be consuming the equivalent of a credit card, we can assume that we may equally be consuming much less. But the report was widely circulated in the media, and its startling claims captured an anxious public imagination. The choice of the credit card as an image had some role to play here; the idea that we are eating our own purchasing power, that we might be poisoning ourselves with our insistent consumerism, burrows into the unconscious like a surrealist conceit. When I think of it, I can’t help picturing myself putting my Visa card in a blender and adding it to a smoothie.David Cronenberg’s recent film “Crimes of the Future” opens with a startling scene of a small boy crouching in a bathroom and eating a plastic wastepaper basket like an Easter egg. The film’s premise, or part of it, is that certain humans have evolved the capacity to eat and take nutrition from plastic, and from other toxic substances. “It’s time for human evolution to sync with human technology,” as one such character puts it. “We’ve got to start feeding on our own industrial waste, it’s our destiny.”As grotesque as the plot device is, it’s also a perversely optimistic one: Our best hope might be an evolutionary leap that allows us to live in the mess we’ve made. (Although arguably it’s only optimistic in the way that Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is optimistic.) In interviews around the time of the film’s release, Mr. Cronenberg revealed a preoccupation with the recent news about the presence of microplastics in human bloodstreams: “Maybe 80 percent of the human population has microplastics in their flesh,” he said in one interview. “So our bodies are different than human bodies have ever been before in history. This is not going away.”As a parent, I am suspended between the desire to shield my children from microplastics — along with all the other things I want to shield them from — and the suspicion that the effort might be largely futile. A quick Google search revealed that these anxieties are increasingly common among parents, and the subject of a growing abundance of online content. In one article about protecting kids from microplastics, I read that the snuggling of soft toys in bed is to be avoided, and that such unexpectedly menacing beasts, rather than being left lying around the room or in the child’s bed, should be kept safely in a toy chest. (Later in the same article, the environmental scientist who makes this recommendation also counsels against instilling fear in our children.) As much as I would like to minimize ambient threats to my children’s health, I also don’t especially want to be the kind of parent who insists on their soft toys being stored safely in a chest when not in use — because of all the ambient threats to my children, the one I am most keen to offset is my own neurosis.And although concern about microplastics is obviously compatible with the larger discourses of environmentalism and anti-consumerism, it’s not exclusively of interest to lefty, liberal types like myself. Joe Rogan, perhaps our culture’s foremost vector of meathead masculinity, has been talking about the topic for several years. In an episode of his podcast last year, Mr. Rogan expressed concern about an alarming effect of phthalates, a chemical used to increase the durability of plastics, in human bloodstreams: Babies, he said, were being born with smaller “taints.” (The taint, he clarified, was the distance between one’s penis and one’s anus.)Not only were the taints of infants shrinking at an alarming rate; so, too, were penises and testicles themselves. “This is wild,” he said, “because it’s literally changing the hormonal profile and the reproductive systems of human beings, and making us weaker, making us less masculine.” A guest pointed out that there was something of a trade-off at play, in that while living in the modern world meant unprecedented exposure to such chemicals, it also meant living much longer. “Sort of,” said Mr. Rogan, “but you live like a bitch.” Just as climate change and pollution are the traditional concerns of the left, the demographic effects of falling birthrates are a source of anxiety to conservatives. Whatever your preferred apocalyptic scenario, in other words, microplastics have it covered.Microplastics have established themselves in the cultural bloodstream, and their prevalence in the zeitgeist can partly be accounted for by our uncertainty as to what it means, from the point of view of pathology, that we are increasingly filled with plastic. This ambiguity allows us to ascribe all manner of malaises, both cultural and personal, to this new information about ourselves. The whole thing has a strangely allegorical resonance. We feel ourselves to be psychically disfigured, corrupted in our souls, by a steady diet of techno-capitalism’s figurative trash — by the abysmal scroll of inane TikToks and brainless takes, by Instagram influencers pointing at text boxes while doing little dances, by the endless proliferation of A.I.-generated junk content. We feel our faith in the very concept of the future liquefying at broadly the same rate as the polar ice caps. The idea of microscopic bits of trash crossing the blood-brain barrier feels like an apt and timely entry into the annals of the apocalyptic imaginary.And the aura of scientific indeterminacy that surrounds the subject — maybe this stuff is causing unimaginable damage to our bodies and minds; then again maybe it’s fine — lends it a slightly hysterical cast. We don’t know what these plastics are doing to us, and so there is no end to the maladies we might plausibly ascribe to them. Maybe it’s microplastics that are making you depressed. Maybe it’s because of microplastics that you have had a head cold constantly since Christmas. Maybe it’s microplastics that are stopping you and your partner from conceiving, or making you lazy and lethargic, or forgetful beyond your years. Maybe it’s microplastics that caused the cancer in your stomach, or your brain.I myself am susceptible to this tendency. A few years back, I was diagnosed with I.B.D., a chronic autoimmune condition. As is typically the way of such ailments, it came out of nowhere, with no known cause. It’s not life-threatening, but there have been periods when it has made me ill enough to be unable to work for a week or two at a stretch, and when I have been so tired I could barely haul myself off the couch to go to bed at night. Every eight weeks, I present myself at a hospital infusion suite, where I am hooked up to a bag containing a liquid solution of a monoclonal antibody. (These bags are, of course, made from some kind of polyethylene, a fact which you must imagine me relating with an elaborate shrug, indicating great reserves of stoic irony.)In 2021, a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology found significantly higher levels of microplastics in the stool samples of people who were diagnosed with I.B.D., but who were otherwise healthy, than those without I.B.D. No direct causation was established, but given that earlier studies conducted on laboratory animals established microplastic ingestion as a cause of intestinal inflammation, it seems not unreasonable to assume that there might be some link.The more time I spent researching this essay, the more I found myself wondering whether microplastics might be at the root of my condition. My point here is not to make a factual claim either way, because I just don’t know enough to do so. My point, in fact, is precisely that the not knowing generates its own peculiar energy. I think it’s at least plausible that my illness might be caused by microplastics, but that it’s also equally plausible that it might not. And I am aware that this ambiguity is itself strangely seductive, that it is on such epistemological wasteland that great, rickety edifices of conspiracy and conjecture are raised.Until we know a good deal more than we currently do, at least, talking about microplastics can feel weirdly like holding forth on the harmful effects of cellphone radiation. (If you liked chemtrails, you’ll love microplastics!) The time will come, sooner or later, when we know what microplastics are doing to us, but until then the subject remains an ambiguous, and therefore a richly suggestive one.But isn’t there something obviously absurd in the claim that we don’t know whether we are being harmed by the plastic in our blood? What standards of harm are these, that we must await the test results before deciding how concerned to be about the thousands of little fragments of trash pulsing through our veins? Surely the fact of their presence is alarming enough in itself; and surely this presence, in any case, registers at least as strongly on a psychic as on a physiological level.Among the most indelibly distressing images of the damage done to nature by our heedless, relentless consumption of plastic is a series of photographs by the artist Chris Jordan, entitled “Midway: Message from the Gyre.” Each of these photographs depicts the body of an albatross in some or other state of advanced decomposition. At the center of each splayed and desiccated carcass is the clustered miscellany of plastic objects the bird had consumed before dying. The horror of these images is in the surreal juxtaposition of organic and inorganic elements, the sheer bewildering volume of plastic contained in their digestive tracts. The bodies of these once beautiful creatures are returning slowly to the earth, but the human trash that sickened them remains inviolable, unalterable by time: toothpaste lids, bottle caps, entire cigarette lighters that look like they would still work perfectly well, tiny little children’s dolls and a thousand other unidentifiable traces of our deranged productivity and heedless hunger.The whole subject of microplastics is possessed of a nightmarish lucidity, because we understand it to be a symptom of a deeper disease. The unthinkable harm we have done to the planet — that is done to the planet on our behalf, as consumers — is being visited, in this surreal and lurid manner, on our own bodies. When we look at the decomposing bodies of those trash-filled birds, we know that we are looking not just at what we are doing to the world, but at what our damaged world is doing to us.Mark O’Connell (@mrkocnnll) is the author, most recently, of “Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back.” His next book, “A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention and Murder,” will be published in June.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

After establishing the world’s biggest online platform for long-distance carpooling, BlaBlaCar, in Germany, Christian Schiller took a year off to travel around the world. He was sailing between Colombia and Panama when the boat hit a garbage patch several hundred meters long. “When the rudder got stuck in the plastic trash in the Caribbean, I thought back to my time in Houston, Texas, where I had done an internship as a Fulbright Scholar with one of the biggest international construction companies,” he says via Zoom from his Hamburg office, shaking his head. “In Texas, I had seen the crazy effort we need to extract oil from under the earth. Then we use it once and it ends up in the ocean. I can hardly imagine a bigger waste of value.”
When he got back to Germany in the summer of 2018, he didn’t have a job lined up and started reflecting: What am I really passionate about? Where can I make the biggest difference with my background as a digital platform builder?
At an innovator conference in Berlin, he met software engineer Volkan Bilici who had worked as a software developer for plastic manufacturers. Together, they started Cirplus in the final months of 2018, an online platform designed to solve one of the most vexing problems this planet currently has: the plastic crisis. The company name for the world’s first global recycling platform for plastic is a wordplay, meant to indicate both the need to move to a circular economy and the outsized value of plastic. “This motivates me to this day,” Schiller says, “how wasteful humankind treats this incredibly valuable substance.” 

Crushed by negative news?
Sign up for the Reasons to be Cheerful newsletter.

Schiller’s idea seems simple: connect recycling companies with manufacturers and distributors to close the loop. Currently, the low level of digitalization and the opaque market for different kinds of plastics make it difficult to even get an overview of the available material. Cirplus uses its own software to follow the material across the globe and create transparency for buyers and sellers of recyclates — think post-consumer shampoo bottles, caps and more. Once broken down, they can be used to make new products. The platform — which Schiller hopes will one day be the Amazon for recycled plastic — currently has 2,500 users, including packaging giants that handle big labels.
But speaking with Schiller makes it obvious that Cirplus is only one piece of the puzzle in the complex process of handling our trash crisis. Despite recent advances in local and national laws, with entire countries such as India and the EU banning single-use plastics, plastics production continues to grow. “By 2050, plastic production is estimated to hit more than one billion tons per year,” Schiller says. With the amount of plastic grows the amount of plastic trash — currently 240 million metric tons per year, according to the World Bank. Barely five percent gets recycled, and the US tops the world at 287 pounds of plastic waste per person per year, according to a 2020 estimate.
The Cirplus platform lists recycled plastic for sale. Credit: Cirplus
Plastic is one of the most difficult materials to recycle because of its various components, but reducing and recycling the material is also one of the most urgent. The recent train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, raised public awareness about the often highly toxic additives involved in plastic manufacturing. Schiller was perplexed after starting Cirplus when plastic manufacturers openly admitted to him that they didn’t know where their plastic trash ended up. 
“They told me, ‘To be honest, we weren’t forced to bother with that,’” he says. “It’s actually pretty shocking: In Europe, we don’t know what happens to eight to 15 million tons of plastic trash.” But we do know that at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year. 
New legislation aims to change that: Starting in 2030, the EU will force companies to use a percentage of recycled plastic in their manufacturing, not just virgin plastic. “It is really unfair that the industry was allowed to keep the profits while passing on the environmental costs to everybody else,” Schiller comments. (Exxon, the world’s largest producer of virgin polymer derived from petrochemicals, just announced a record $56 billion in earnings for last year.)
Schiller once studied law and international relations with the goal of becoming a career diplomat, but an internship in the German embassy in Washington, DC made it clear to him that bureaucracy was not his strong suit. In a way, he’s now becoming a global diplomat for plastic recycling. 
Recycling plastic is fiendishly complex. Many people think the plastic we put in the recycling bins will be recycled. The EU officially claims a recycling rate of 13 to 15 percent for plastic but recent reporting unmasked the truth. “When you take out the PET bottles that have a higher recycling rate because of the deposit system, you end up with less than five percent of plastic recycling,” Schiller acknowledges.
Volkan Bilici (left) and Christian Schiller. Credit: Cirplus
One issue is the web of local recycling options that might differ from one city or community to the next. The EU alone has 27 different recycling laws. Another are the often toxic additives plus contaminants in post-consumer plastic. And even after this is dealt with, melting down plastic components creates a stink that is hard to mask. 
“Which problem are we actually solving?” Schiller therefore asks. “The lack of transparency of trash and recycling streams is one of the biggest.” Without a global platform, a manufacturer in, let’s say, Belgium, doesn’t know where he can buy a ton of plastic recyclates while a plastic waste collector in East Europe is sitting on a ton of recyclates. “The buyers at the big labels such as Procter & Gamble, Henkel or Beiersdorf need to reliably secure recycled plastic in a consistent quality before they seriously transition from virgin plastic to recycled plastic,” Schiller says. 
Currently, virgin plastic is 20 to 30 percent cheaper than recycled plastic, and he says that he hears from manufacturers: “‘We don’t have the buy-in from our CEO to buy the material for 20 percent more. Talk to me again in a year.’” Others want to include recyclates, “but reliability in quality and quantity is essential. It is simply more difficult to achieve the exact color blue a brand might be known for from recyclates.” Second, he says, nobody wants to deal with 300 different recyclers. “The big producers have three to five big suppliers where they order a million tons of plastic for the next year.” Also, he notes, “This is an industry that still relies on fax machines and phone calls. It needs a major investment in digitalization.” As long as recycling is more expensive than virgin plastics, few invest in innovative recycling methods. “If you really want to move to a circular economy, you have to look at the recycling market like we currently view the energy market,” Schiller says.
Cirplus is still a small startup with only 12 employees, based in Hamburg. However, the platform has offered up to 1.3 million tons of available plastic. Cirplus and its competitors such as Plastship are emulating Metalshub, a rapidly expanding digital platform to trade metals, started in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 2016 that has moved $3 billion worth of material. How much material was actually traded through Cirplus is unknown to Schiller because until recently, companies could look up suppliers and then cut a deal outside the platform. A relaunch this April will change the business model of Cirplus and prompt clients to trade on the platform itself. Schiller expects that the platform will truly take off when the 2030 legislation approaches. “Manufacturers still tell us, they are opting for the cheapest, easiest option, which is virgin plastic, and they will only pivot to recyclates when they are forced to by either the laws or consumer pressure.”

Become a sustaining member today!

Join the Reasons to be Cheerful community by supporting our nonprofit publication and giving what you can.

Join

To really solve the plastics crisis, Schiller pushes for bold and big moves. In 2022, he was instrumental in establishing a new standard for plastic recyclates, DIN SPEC 91446, to streamline recycling. He points to Sweden, where a plastic recycler is currently building the world’s largest plastic recycling facility, Site Zero, with the ability to handle 200,000 tons of plastic packaging every year once completed later this year. Norway is recycling 97 percent of its plastic bottles and is leading the negotiations to hammer out an international UN treaty to reduce plastic pollution, similar to the 2015 Paris climate accord. 
Until then, Schiller advocates for the classic “3 Rs” mantra for the move to a truly circular economy: reduce, reuse, recycle.
He sees himself as an “activist-entrepreneur,” meaning his platform is as much about solving the problem as raising awareness about the multifold aspects of the crisis.
Last summer, he visited the world’s largest landfill in Jakarta, Indonesia, which absorbs more than 7,000 tons of waste daily. Hundreds of waste pickers sort through the stinking trash, searching for valuable metals. For years, they overlooked plastic, but the Plastic Bank with its “social plastic” program has created new incentives for locals to collect and process ocean-bound plastic. The program claims to have diverted more than 1.5 billion plastic bottles from the ocean. 
Every recycled pound is a pound less of plastic in landfills or oceans.

CNN
 — 

Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii.

In a new study published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal on Monday, a team of researchers revealed that dozens of species of coastal invertebrate organisms have been able to survive and reproduce on plastic garbage that’s been floating in the ocean for years.

The scientists said that the findings suggest plastic pollution in the ocean might be enabling the creation of new floating ecosystems of species that are not normally able to survive in the open ocean.

Unlike organic material that decomposes and sinks within months or, at most, a few years, plastic debris can float in the oceans for a much longer time, giving creatures the opportunity to survive and reproduce in the open ocean for years.

“It was surprising to see how frequent the coastal species were. They were on 70% of the debris that we found,” Linsey Haram, a science fellow at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the study’s lead author, told CNN.

Haram and her colleagues examined 105 items of plastic fished out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between November 2018 and January 2019. They identified 484 marine invertebrate organisms on the debris, accounting for 46 different species, of which 80% were normally found in coastal habitats.

“Quite a large percentage of the diversity that we found were coastal species and not the the native pelagic open ocean species that we were largely expecting to find,” Haram said.

They did still find a lot of open ocean species, Haram added. “On two thirds of the debris, we found both communities together … competing for space, but very likely interacting in other ways.”

Haram said that the consequences of the introduction of new species into the remote areas of the ocean are not yet fully understood.

“There’s likely competition for space, because space is at a premium in the open ocean, there’s likely competition for food resources – but they may also be eating each other. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on, but we have seen evidence of some of the coastal anemones eating open ocean species, so we know there is some predation going on between the two communities,” she said.

How exactly the creatures get to the open ocean and how they survive there remains unclear. Whether, for example, they were just hitching a ride on a piece of plastic they attached themselves to by the coast, or whether they were able to colonize new objects once they were in the open ocean, is unknown.

Oceans of plastic

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is twice the size of Texas, is the largest accumulation of ocean plastic in the world.

The patch is bounded by an enormous gyre – the biggest of five huge, spinning circular currents in the world’s oceans that pull trash towards the center and trap it there, creating a garbage vortex.

It’s a mistake to think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as an island of trash, though, Matthias Egger, the head of environmental and social affairs at The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit developing technologies to rid the oceans of plastic, told CNN.

“If you’re out there, what you see is just pristine blue ocean,” said Egger, who helped Haram’s research by collecting the samples in the patch, fishing them out with a net.

“You can think of it like the night sky. If you look up at night, you see all those white dots, that’s essentially what you see in the garbage patch. It’s not that dense, but there are a lot of them … out there, you start seeing more and more plastic the longer you look,” he said.

The Ocean Cleanup initiative estimates there are about 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch that weigh an estimated 80,000 tonnes. The majority of the plastic found in the patch comes from the fishing industry, while between 10% and 20% of the total volume can be traced back to the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the world produces around 460 million tons of plastic a year, a figure that — without urgent action – will triple by 2060.

Globally, only around 9% of plastic waste is recycled, according to UNEP. As much as 22% of all plastic waste is mismanaged and ends up as litter, with large amounts eventually making it into the oceans.

Scientists have warned there has been a “rapid and unprecedented” increase in ocean plastic pollution since 2005.

“The problem is getting bigger and bigger by the minute,” Egger said. “We see turtles that are entangled in ghost fishing nets. Sometimes it’s even just turtle carcasses. We see ingestion of plastic fragments. Then there’s also the pollutants – chemicals.”

The Ocean Cleanup has built a huge trash-collecting system, a U-shaped barrier with a net-like skirt that hangs below the surface of the water. It moves with the current and collects faster-moving plastics as they float by.

“We want to look into what’s the impact on marine life. And once we know for sure that it’s safe and it benefits the environment, then we want to scale up,” Egger said.

But cleanup is only part of the solution. A study published last month said that without urgent policy action, the rate at which plastics enter the oceans could increase by around 2.6 times between now and 2040.

The UN Environment Assembly passed a historic resolution last year to end plastic pollution and create the world’s first global plastic pollution treaty by 2024 – a legally binding agreement that would address the full life cycle of plastic, from its production and design to its disposal.

Tankers of vinyl chloride were going halfway across the country, government records show, a trip highlighting the risks of transporting chemicals as plastics production grows.When a freight train carrying more than 100,000 gallons of hazardous chemicals derailed and burned in East Palestine, Ohio, this year, it set off a panic over rail safety and the toxic fallout for communities downwind.But less has been known about the origins of the chemicals themselves and their intended destination.Much of the train’s vinyl chloride freight — which was ultimately incinerated by emergency responders to avert a wider explosion — came from a chemicals plant in La Porte, just outside Houston, Texas, that is run by OxyVinyls, the chemical arm of Occidental Petroleum, according to the shipment records released by the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemicals were on a 1,600-mile journey to an Oxy plant in Pedricktown, N.J., that makes plastic used in PVC flooring.The details of the cargo were included in an administrative order filed last month by the E.P.A. that was based on shipment data provided by Oxy and other shippers. Oxy had more than 700,000 pounds of vinyl chloride on the train that derailed, the records show. An E.P.A. official on Monday confirmed the accuracy of the information.Tracing the Norfolk Southern train’s volatile load to its source sheds light on the environmental and health risks of the nation’s soaring manufacturing and use of plastics. The chemicals shipped by Oxy were key ingredients in PVC, a rigid material widely used in water pipes, furniture, floor tiles and packaging.Plastic manufacturing is booming in America, fueled by cheap and plentiful shale gas. It has become an increasingly important business for Occidental, a major oil company based in Houston, as nations start moving away from the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.Texas and Louisiana, in particular, have become global chemical hubs as oil and gas companies expand their plastics production to offset the possibility of declining demand for oil as fuel.While tiny East Palestine has drawn considerable attention for the inferno and its potential health consequences, communities nationwide are regularly grappling with the health and safety implications of the surge in chemical manufacturing and transportation.The OxyVinyls plant in La Porte, Texas, that made much of the vinyl chloride that was burned in the East Palestine derailment.Mark Felix for The New York TimesLast year at Oxy’s La Porte plant, a midnight explosion and fire drew a major response by emergency personnel. More recently, some of the firefighting wastewater from the Ohio train fire, which contained toxic chemicals, was trucked back to a processing facility in Deer Park, Texas, which borders La Porte. And in 2012, a train carrying vinyl chloride — bound for the same plastics plant in New Jersey that was the destination of the Ohio train — derailed and plunged into a creek, releasing 23,000 gallons of the chemical and prompting evacuations of nearby homes.OxyVinyls plans to spend $1.1 billion to expand and upgrade its La Porte plant, the company said in regulatory filings last year. Shintech, the world’s largest producer of PVC, and whose shipments also burned in the Ohio disaster, according to freight records, is spending more than $2 billion to build out its operations in Texas and Louisiana.Oxy officials didn’t respond to several requests for comment.Overall, chemicals companies have invested more than $100 billion in new or expanded plants since 2010, with another $99 billion in the works, according to a tally from the American Chemistry Council. Much of that investment has been in plastics.As plastic production has proliferated, more hazardous materials have been on the move. According to data from the Association for American Railroads, rail shipments of chemicals used in plastic production grew by about a third over the past decade.Chemicals have become a particularly important business for railways because one of their traditional mainstays, coal transportation, has fallen steeply with the drastic decline in the mining and burning of coal. Over the past decade, coal traveling by rail fell by almost half. Agricultural rail cargo, like grain and soybeans, has stayed flat.While derailments have declined since the 1970s, the costs of derailments of trains carrying hazardous materials have increased. Most accidents, injuries and deaths involving hazardous materials in transit happen on the road, and incidents there have jumped by more than 50 percent since 2012, according to Bureau of Transportation statistics.For residents at the starting points for these shipments, concerns over exposure to cancer-causing substances have long been a constant.Sema Hernandez lives near the OxyVinyls La Porte plant. “It could be a normal day, and all of a sudden there’s a siren,” she said.Mark Felix for The New York Times“You get headaches, you get nauseous, and you get chronic respiratory issues that affect you,” said Sema Hernandez, a community organizer who lives with her four children about a half-mile from Oxy’s La Porte facility. Headline-grabbing accidents like the Ohio derailment may bring temporary attention to chemical hazards, she said, but for communities like hers with chemical plants as close neighbors, they are a daily threat.“It could be a normal day, and all of a sudden there’s a siren that goes off that tells you, this is not a drill, to shelter in place,” she said. “That can happen at any time.”Though making plastics doesn’t typically involve burning the oil used in manufacturing them, the production process brings with it other potential hazards. Since the 1970s, for example, numerous studies have found that workers exposed to vinyl chloride, which is made from fossil fuels and is primarily used to manufacture PVC, developed malignant liver cancers. Vinyl chloride has also been linked to brain and lung cancers, lymphoma and leukemia.An analysis published this month by Toxic-Free Future, a nonprofit that advocates safer products and chemicals, found that PVC plastics plants reported releasing more than 400,000 pounds of vinyl chloride into the air in 2021. It also found that people of color were overrepresented in communities near such plants, making up more than 60 percent of the almost 400,000 people who live within three miles of a vinyl-chloride, PVC-manufacturing or PVC-waste-disposal facility, compared with the 40 percent share they make up of the general population.Cleanup at the site of the plastics recycling plant that burned in Richmond, Ind.Michael Conroy/Associated PressUnited Nations officials said in 2021 that pollution-linked cancer risks in predominantly African American districts near a cluster of petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River far surpassed those in districts with predominantly white populations. Last month, residents of St. James Parish, La., at the heart of that region, sued the local council for a pattern of racist land use practices that has placed petrochemical plants in predominantly Black neighborhoods.In recent days, an unrelated fire at a plastics recycling plant in Indiana highlighted the risks at the end of the plastics life cycle. Recyclers nationwide have been struggling to process all the growing supply of discarded plastic, which can end up in piles at facilities in what experts have long called a fire hazard.Some cities in the United States and elsewhere, including New York, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, have adopted policies aimed at phasing out the use of PVC and other products linked to pollution, limiting public purchases and mandating alternatives. A handful of countries, including Canada, Spain and South Korea, have restricted or banned the use of PVC packaging, and legislators have pursued a similar ban in California.Sweden, which adopted restrictions on PVC use almost three decades ago, is phasing out its use altogether, for example, by replacing PVC packaging with less toxic kinds of plastic, including plant-based materials.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch does not seem like it would be a hospitable place. It is more than 1,000 miles from the nearest streak of land. The sun is brutal and unrelenting there, the waters nutrient poor. There is nothing much to see except the eponymous garbage.But look more closely at this plastic garbage, as scientists did recently, and you’ll find plenty of life: sea anemones as small as a pinky nail or as large as the palm of your hand; white, lacelike bryozoa; hydroids sprouting like orange feathers; shrimplike amphipods; Japanese oysters; mussels. None of these creatures belongs here. They are all coastal animals, adapted to the turbulent, nutrient-rich shores where water meets land, but they have all somehow learned to survive in the open sea, clinging to plastic.According to a new study, these animals are now living side by side in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with creatures that normally inhabit the middle of the ocean. Coastal and open-sea ecosystems are blurring together into a single, plastic-bound one. “As humans, we are creating new types of ecosystems that have potentially never been seen before,” says Ceridwen Fraser, a biogeographer at the University of Otago, who was not involved in the study. The Garbage Patch, far from being some barren wasteland, is the site of an active experiment in biology.Coastal podded hydroid and open-ocean gooseneck barnacles live on floating plastic. (Courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup, in coordination with Smithsonian Institution)The scientists behind this study were originally intrigued by debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami: Even after six years, debris was still washing up in the U.S. laden with creatures native to the Japanese coast. The scientists counted more than 60 species of mollusks alone. If coastal creatures could survive a six-year ocean crossing on plastic, how much longer could they survive? Could they be living on the high seas permanently? Ocean currents tend to trap floating objects in one of five gyres around the world, the most infamous of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, between California and Hawaii. If coastal animals have found a new, plastic-based home anywhere in the open ocean, it would be here.The “patch” is less a solid island of trash than a soupy swirl of debris ranging from microscopic pieces of plastic to larger objects such as fishing nets and buoys. Getting there is not easy, because it is so far from land. The scientists teamed up with the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that was testing technology for removing trash from the gyre, to collect and freeze 105 pieces of garbage. Linsey Haram, then a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, remembers traveling to a California port in late 2018 to pick up trash bags full of nets, bottles, buoys, flower pots, clothes hangers, and buckets. She and her colleagues found coastal species on 70.5 percent of the debris. “We expected to find some; we just didn’t expect to find them at such frequency and diversity,” Haram told me. These migrants were not a minor part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ecosystem.On two-thirds of the objects—essentially tiny floating islands—animals native to coasts were living side by side with animals native to the open ocean. They were smashed together into a single ecosystem and even a single food chain; for example, Haram told me, the coastal sea anemones were eating sea snails. The team also found evidence of the animals reproducing: The anemones were budding off tiny baby anemones, and some of the female crustaceans carried little broods of eggs. This suggests that they have taken up permanent residence and aren’t just eking it out temporarily. Coastal aggregating anemones found on a black floating plastic fragment (Courtesy of Linsey Haram / Smithsonian Institution)Scientists call the ocean surface where water meets sky the “neustonic” or “neustic” habitat. Long before the advent of plastics, this habitat was dominated by natural objects such as kelp, wood, and pumice, on which life could gain a floating toehold. But these were relatively ephemeral. The influx of man-made plastics into the ocean might be “dramatically expanding a long-existing but previously minor habitat,” David Barnes, a marine ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told me in an email. It could also change the neustonic habitat in unpredictable ways: Some of the species that once drifted on organic matter, for example, might make the switch to living on plastics better than others. Scientists previously found that a marine insect named Halobates sericeus might actually be benefiting from the abundance of material in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It once had to lay its eggs on the rare floating feather or pumice stone; now it can just use plastic.The waters around the plastic in the Garbage Patch are teeming with floating life too: Portuguese man o’ wars, blue sea dragons, tiny blue hydrozoans evocatively named by-the-wind sailors. Unlike coastal species that need to hitch a ride on something else, these floating animals likely bobbed here on their own via ocean currents. Little is known about many of them or how the proliferation of tiny plastic islands is affecting them. “We’re trying to learn really basic stuff,” says Rebecca Helm, an ecologist at Georgetown University who has cataloged these creatures in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Cleaning up the plastic around them is not straightforward: Attempts to collect floating debris, she has written, might entrap and threaten these species.Many of the Garbage Patch objects that Haram and her collaborators found covered with coastal animals come from the fishing industry: nets, buoys, ropes, crates, eeltrap cones. These items last so long in the ocean, she pointed out, precisely because they are engineered to last a long time in seawater. They are part of an industry that has destroyed ocean ecosystems by removing billions of fish and shellfish from their home. Its plastic remnants are now also disrupting old ways of life in the ocean, creating new ways that we never intended and cannot yet imagine.

Climate change, pollution and overfishing are just a few problems that need addressing to maintain a healthy blue planet. Everyone must get involved – but it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

Of course we can start with the obvious – making sure we reduce, reuse and recycle. Yet, given the scale of the challenge, these small, relatively simple steps are not enough. So, how can we encourage people to do more?

There is controversy about the best approach. Some argue focusing on easy actions is distracting and can lead people to overestimate their positive impact, reducing the chance they will do more.

However, our new research found promoting small and relatively easy actions, such as reducing plastic use, can be a useful entry point for engaging in other, potentially more effective actions around climate change.

Read more:
6 reasons 2023 could be a very good year for climate action

The plastic distraction debate

Marine plastic pollution is set to quadruple by 2050 and efforts to reduce this have received a lot of attention. In this arena, Australia is making significant progress.

For example, last year scientists discovered the amount of plastic litter found on Australian coasts had reduced by 30% since 2012-13. Seven out of eight Australian states and territories have also committed to ban single-use plastics.

Read more:
Why bioplastics won’t solve our plastic problems

Yet, some scientists are concerned all this fuss about plastic distracts us from addressing the more pressing issue of climate change, which is degrading marine ecosystems at an alarming rate and making oceans hotter than ever before.

For example, without an urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, coral reefs could lose more than 90% coral cover within the next decade. This includes our very own Great Barrier Reef.

Climate change is the major threat to the Great Barrier Reef.
Yolanda Waters

When it comes to climate action, Australia is behind. Many Australians are also unsure which actions to take. For example, a 2020 study asked more than 4,000 Australians what actions were needed to help the Great Barrier Reef. The most common response (25.6%) involved reducing plastic pollution. Only 4.1% of people mentioned a specific action to mitigate climate change.

‘Spillover’ behaviour

We ran an experiment to test whether we could shift this preference for action on plastic into action on climate change.

Our experiment was based on a theory known as “behavioural spillover”. This theory assumes the actions we take in the present influence the actions we take in future.

For example, deciding to go to the gym in the morning may influence what you decide to eat in the afternoon.

Some experts argue focusing on reducing plastic use – a relatively simple action – can help build momentum and open the door for other environmental actions in the future. This is known as positive spillover.

Conversely, those in the “plastic distraction” camp argue if people reduce their plastic use, they might feel they have done enough and become less likely to engage in additional actions. This is known as negative spillover.

Experimenting with spillover from plastic to climate

To test whether we could encourage spillover behaviour in the context of the Great Barrier Reef, we conducted an online experiment with representative sample of 581 Australians.

Participants were randomly allocated to one of three experimental groups or a control group. The first group received information about plastic pollution on the reef along with prompts to remind them of their efforts to tackle the problem in the past week (a “behaviour primer”). The second group received the reef plastic information only. The third group received information about the reef and climate change. The control group received general information about World Heritage sites, with no call to action or mention of the Great Barrier Reef.

Participants were then asked whether they would be likely to take a range of climate actions, such as reducing personal greenhouse gas emissions and talking to others about climate change. They also had the opportunity to “click” on a few actions embedded within the survey such as signing an online petition for climate action.

Participants were asked how likely they were to take a range of climate actions. (Note: this graphic was not used in the survey.)
Yolanda Waters

Compared to the control group, those provided with information about plastic pollution were more willing to engage with climate actions, particularly when they were reminded of positive past behaviours. Whereas those provided with information about climate change showed no significant difference.

Plastic messages also had a stronger positive effect on climate action for those who were politically conservative, compared to those more politically progressive.

But the approach didn’t work for everyone. We repeated the experiment with 572 self-identified ocean advocates, many of whom already engaged with marine conservation issues. For this audience, talking about plastic and their past efforts made them less likely to engage with climate action compared to the control group.

The ocean is warming at an alarming rate, bleaching coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Should we still be talking about plastic?
The Ocean Agency / Ocean Image Bank

So what does all this mean?

Our results suggest it’s possible to motivate climate action for the reef without slipping back into conversations about plastic. Here are four ways to help achieve this:

Remind people of the small actions they already take: reminding people of their positive contributions and making them feel like they are capable of doing more can open the gateway to further action.
Connect the dots between plastic and climate: plastics are primarily derived from fossil fuels and production alone accounts for billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. Making it clear that a fight against fossil fuels is a fight against both plastic and climate can help guide people towards those extra climate actions.
Provide clear calls to (climate) action: research shows most people are unable to identify climate actions on their own. As a result, they tend to get stuck on common behaviours such as recycling. Giving people clear advice on how they can contribute to mitigating climate change is crucial.
Know your audience: spillover from plastic to climate is more likely in a general audience. If your network is full of ocean advocates, it might be better to skip the plastic conversation and dive straight into conversations about climate change actions.

It’s important to remember that people’s first steps don’t have to be their only steps. Sometimes, they just need a little guidance for the journey ahead.

Read more:
Households find low-waste living challenging. Here’s what needs to change