Climate change: Five good-news stories for the planet in 2023

With several major climate-change related disasters hitting the headlines in recent months, the future of the planet can seem bleak – but new breakthroughs are providing scientists with a glimmer of hope. According to MIT Technology Review, early estimates suggest that climate-change causing emissions “reached a new peak” in 2022. Meanwhile, climate disasters “seem to be hitting at a breakneck pace” as China and Europe experienced record heatwaves and devastating floods hit Pakistan, displacing millions.But there are reasons to be hopeful too as scientists and researchers look for new ways to combat climate change in order to safeguard the future of the planet.Save the whales to save the planetScientists have found that whales absorb a large amount of the CO2 being released into our atmosphere, much more than trees. Although nature-based solutions for climate change often focus on forests and wetlands, the oceans absorb an estimated 31% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere. In a new paper, scientists have argued that whales play an important, and overlooked, role as natural carbon sinks. The mammals accumulate carbon in their bodies during their lifetimes. Their longevity (they can live for up to 100 years) makes them “one of the largest stable living carbon pools” in the ocean, according to the study. When they die, they sink to the ocean floor, locking up carbon for centuries. Even their excrement helps, being rich in the nutrients required by phytoplankton – organisms that also absorb carbon.It has been estimated that the average great whale sequesters 30 tonnes of CO2 a year; by contrast, a tree absorbs 22kg. This, said the paper, suggests that restoring whale populations should be just as much a priority as planting forests. “You can think of protecting whales as a low-risk and low-regret strategy, because there’s really no downside,” study author Dr Heidi Pearson, of the University of Alaska Southeast, told CNN.Wheat for a warmer worldA “climate-proof” wheat that flourishes in high temperatures has been developed by a British research team. Wheat provides 20% of the calories consumed globally, more than any other crop, but it has limited variation and there are fears that as temperatures rise existing crops will start to fail. With this in mind, researchers from the Earlham Institute in Norwich, working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, set up a two-year trial in the Sonoran Desert, in Mexico. They studied 149 wheat lines, including some that had been selectively bred to include DNA from wild relatives, and locally adapted varieties from Mexico and India. To put the crops under the kind of heat stress that is likely in the future, these were planted late in the season, when temperatures are higher. The teams found that plants with “exotic” DNA fared no worse than standard “elite” lines under normal conditions, but achieved 50% higher yields in the hotter temperatures. They were also able to identify markers that would allow beneficial aspects of the exotic DNA to be introduced into elite lines, offering a quick way to boost their resilience. “This is science we can now use to make an impact almost immediately,” Professor Anthony Hall told Science Daily.A climate ‘Moonshot’Researchers have proposed an outlandish new method of combating climate change: firing plumes of moon dust into space in order to deflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth. In an study published in science journal PLOS Climate, a group of astrophysicists argued that dust fired from the Moon could act as an adjustable solar shield. It would, they suggested, take much less energy to fire dust from the Moon than from Earth, and one strategically directed burst could significantly reduce warming for six days or more. This could act as a “fine-tuned dimmer switch”, said Professor Ben Bromley, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Utah. And unlike many geo-engineering solutions to climate change, it would leave our planet “untouched”. But he added that getting the mining equipment and a ballistic device to the Moon would be a “significant project”.The bacteria-eating ocean plasticAround 12m tonnes of plastic ends up in the world’s oceans each year, but in sampling surveys, only 1% of this plastic has shown up. Now researchers think they have found out where some of the missing plastic is going: it seems that bacteria are eating it. When plastic is in the water, sunlight degrades it into tiny “bite-sized chunks”, said Maaike Goudriaan, a doctoral student at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, which are then devoured by the bacteria Rhodococcus ruber, which digests it and excretes carbon dioxide. She stressed, however, that the bacteria do not provide a total solution to the plastic waste problem: lab tests suggest they eat around 1% of the plastic that enters the ocean and though it would be possible to grow more bacteria to eat more plastic, it would require “stupendous amounts” of the bacteria, which would then produce alarming amounts of CO2. As for the rest of the missing plastic, previous studies have suggested that much of it may have simply sunk to the bottom of the ocean. In 2019, a plastic bag was found in the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest place on Earth.England says no to single-use plasticPolluting single-use plastics are to be banned in England, the government has confirmed.Research shows that each year England uses billions of items made of single-use plastic and only recycles about 10% of it. Most of these items used for takeaway food and beverages. In order to combat these numbers the government has placed a ban on single-use plastics, set to go into effect this October. Those living in the UK “won’t be able to buy these products from any business – this includes retailers, takeaways, food vendors and the hospitality industry”, according to government guidance. Plastic cutlery was in the top 15 most littered items in 2020, according to the government, adding that plastic pollution “takes hundreds of years to break down and inflicts serious damage to our oceans”.This new ban is projected to have a significant effect on waste reduction in England. “Plastic is a scourge which blights our streets and beautiful countryside and I am determined that we shift away from a single-use culture,” said Environment Minister Rebecca Pow. Edinburgh’s Plant Based TreatyEdinburgh has become the first capital in Europe to endorse a plant-based diet in order to tackle the climate crisis. The city council has signed up to to the Plant Based Treaty, an initiative which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture.The city hopes to see a reduction in the city’s consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions with “a shift to plant-based diets”, according to an impact assessment report published by City of Edinburgh council in January. The report found food and diet account for 23% of Edinburgh’s consumption-based footprint, with 12% of these emissions from the consumption of meat.Over 240 councillors from all over the UK have signed this treaty, spurring hope that Edinburgh will light the path for other cities around the world.

Biden Administration’s global plastics plan dubbed ‘low ambition’ and ‘underwhelming’

Critics are describing the Biden administration’s opening position in a United Nations effort to reach a global treaty or agreement to end plastic waste as vague and weak, despite its recognition of a need to end plastic pollution by 2040.

The proposal, for example, calls for individual national action plans as opposed to strong global mandates. 

It does not seek enforceable cuts in plastics manufacturing, even though reducing plastic production was a key recommendation of the landmark 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report on the devastating impacts of plastic pollution.

The U.S. proposal touts the benefits of plastics and calls for improved management of plastic waste such as re-use, recycling and redesigning plastics, which are positions similar to recommendations from the chemical and plastics industries.

Made public earlier this month, the U.S. position contrasts sharply with submissions representing dozens of other countries that are part of a “high ambition” coalition including members of the European Union. Those differences reveal deep divisions among some of the 160 nations working to solve a problem the United Nations describes as a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution. 

And with the second negotiation session scheduled for late spring in Paris, scientists, along with environmental organizations, are making a case that too much is at stake for a weak agreement to come out of U.N. negotiations launched last year amid a global recognition that the world is choking on so much plastic that it threatens its very habitability.

“The U.S. (proposal) is underwhelming, to say the least,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, and member of the interim steering committee of a new group, Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, which formed last year. She studies chemicals and particles in the environment, including the microplastics that have become ubiquitous throughout the world, and even in human feces and blood.

Among Almroth’s concerns, the U.S. proposal would rely on national action plans, much as the 2015 Paris agreement does for greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing climate change.

Some critics argue that the Paris agreement relies too much on collective action without enough incentives or penalties to make sure countries meet their commitments. A U.N. report last year found that individual country pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on a path to heat between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius, well beyond the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees, ensuring further climate chaos.

“If that’s where we are going (with plastics), that’s not going to solve any problems,” Almroth said of the plastics challenge. “This is a very international problem … from fossil fuels all the way through the production lines, all the way through our consumerism, all the way through waste, exports and transportation. If we don’t make a global tool to address that, we’re going to fail. And when I say fail, I mean, destroy the planet and make it unlivable for humans.”

State Department officials declined to comment, instead referring to a written statement made in December by Monica Medina, assistant secretary of state, following the first round of negotiations in Uruguay.

“The world is drowning in plastics,” Medina conceded. “This is a crisis for people and nature, and one that is only getting worse.”

But, she said, a “country-driven approach should strengthen ambition. And it should foster innovation over time. Let’s avoid the temptation to impose one-size-fits-all measures that drive down our ambition.”

‘High Ambition’ Coalition Raises the Bar

In all, the United Nations has collected more than 60 opening submissions from participating countries, and another 200 written comments from non-governmental organizations, including environmental and business groups, in advance of a second negotiation meeting to be held in Paris May 29 through June 2. Last March, at a United Nations Environmental Assembly meeting in Kenya, countries agreed to work toward achieving a global plastics agreement within two years.

Some of the countries’ opening proposals are strong and expansive. The European Union, for example, calls for global targets to reduce the production of plastics. The E.U. and other countries articulate their vision for phasing out risky chemical additives, such as endocrine disruptors like phthalates, which are used to make plastics pliable and are a threat to human health.

The 40-member High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, led by Norway and Rwanda, offered a proposal that notes plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years and that plastic production would likely double over the next 20. Measures and targets for limiting plastic production will be needed to “reduce pressure on the environment globally,” they wrote.

“Each (country) should be required to take effective measures to reduce the production of primary plastics polymers to an agreed level to reach a common target,” the coalition recommended.

The coalition also wrote that curbing the manufacturing of plastics “will complement efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission.”

That Norway, a fossil fuel-producing nation, endorses the concept of limiting plastic production is significant, said Vito Buonsante, an environmental lawyer and technical and policy advisor at the International Pollutants Elimination Network, or IPEN, whose submission argues that chemical production and plastic pollution threaten the stability of the global ecosystem.

“We shouldn’t forget that the main problem here is that there’s way too much plastic,” Buonsante said. “And if we don’t slow down the amount of plastic that is produced, that is going to be problematic.”

Because it has a lot of diplomatic weight to throw around, whatever the United States proposes gets a lot of attention.

“The U.S. has quite a footprint on this process,” said Jane Patton, campaign manager for plastics and petrochemicals for the Center for International Environmental Law, a group advocating for “globally mandatory provisions establishing control measures” and a treaty structure “covering all stages of the full lifecycle of plastics” from fossil fuel extraction to waste management, “with obligations and control measures” in each of the stages.

The U.S. is also a major global plastics producer and leads the world in the generation of plastic waste.

“Many of the most powerful corporate plastic producers are based in the United States and they have quite a significant sway over the U.S. government,” she said.

‘Circularity’ Sounds Good, But May Just Be Spin

The U.S. submission contains lofty language. For example, it says the Biden administration supports an objective “focused on the protection of human health and the environment from plastic pollution” and an agreement that includes “legally binding obligations,” such as creating and updating national action plans and national reporting, as well as other “commitments and voluntary approaches.”

The agreement, according to the U.S. delegation, should be designed to prevent and reduce the amount of plastic pollution entering the global environment and promote the sustainable production and consumption of plastic.

Countries would be obligated to show progress and submit new plans on a time schedule, say every five years, according to the U.S. proposal.

Fossil fuel or plastic-producing countries like the United States, China and Saudi Arabia, tended in their submissions to emphasize waste management and national planning.

“The control measures of the (agreement) should focus on managing the leakage of plastic waste to the environment,” China’s submission said.  “National action plans are essential for countries to develop national strategies based on their national circumstances to address plastic pollution domestically and contribute to the global efforts.”

The Saudi submission, echoing Medina’s December statement, said “there is no one size and no common standards that fit all as individual countries.”

The U.S. named extended producer responsibility programs as a potential solution. These programs can make producers responsible for offsetting the environmental impacts of their products and packaging. But the environmental group Beyond Plastics warns that unless they are designed correctly, they lack teeth and will fail.

Buonsante said he appreciated U.S. language around the need to protect public health in any global plastics agreement.

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Australia news live: Woodside profit triples as Ukraine war drives up energy prices; failed recycling scheme to be liquidated over stockpiled plastics

The government will set up a new cybersecurity office inside the Department of Home Affairs and investigate whether to ban the payment of ransoms to hackers, in the wake of major online attacks affecting millions of Australians. Prime minister Anthony Albanese and home affairs minister Clare O’Neil will announce later today that it will establish …

Water mining near Queensland’s Gondwana rainforest ‘unacceptably risky’, opponents say

Water mining near Queensland’s Gondwana rainforest ‘unacceptably risky’, opponents sayCourt will hear appeal over plan to extract 16m litres of water from a site less than a kilometre from Springbrook national park

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A proposed water mining operation – capable of filling more than 32m plastic bottles a year – on the cusp of world-heritage-listed Gondwana rainforest is “unacceptably risky” to the health of the ecosystem, say environmental groups fighting a court battle to block the drilling.On Monday, the Queensland planning and environment court will begin hearings into the plan to extract 16m litres of water from a site 400m from the Springbrook national park. The proposed drilling would take water from an aquifer upstream of Natural Arch and the Twin Falls waterfall.The applicant, Hoffman Drilling, argues the proposal would operate alongside two legacy water mines and have “an insignificant impact” on the environment.
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In 2019 the plan was rejected by the Gold Coast council. Hoffman Drilling is appealing the refusal in court; the case is being jointly defended by the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society.Locals and environment groups say that climate and drought impacts have already been observed at places like Twin Falls and that the rainforest relies on groundwater during periods of low rainfall.Relief as Santos dumps plan to release untreated CSG water near Queensland bum-breathing turtle habitatRead moreThe Gold Coast council’s rejection of the project came amid a severe drought and a heightened period of concern about the impact of water mining – at the time, places like nearby Tamborine Mountain were facing the bizarre situation where the state government was carting emergency water supplies into town, while trucks heading in the opposite direction were taking local water to bottling plants.The state government has placed a moratorium on new water mining applications in the Springbrook and Tamborine Mountain. The Hoffman Drilling application was lodged prior and is not subject to the temporary ban.Aila Keto, the president of the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society, said mining “any volume of water is unacceptably risky”, given the significance of the forest and the threat posed by climate change.“The ecosystems of Springbrook National Park and its surrounds are priceless refuges for a whole host of plants and animals, many of which have ancient lineages and exist nowhere else on Earth,” Keto said.“Australia and the world are in the midst of an extreme biodiversity crisis, which means we have a duty to protect all these refugia as best we can.”Revel Pointon, the managing lawyer at the Environmental Defenders Office, said the high-altitude rainforests of the area have survived largely unchanged because of the wet climate, but they rely on groundwater during dry periods.“The water-mining proposal is particularly concerning to our clients because this world heritage area is already vulnerable to climate change impacts such as droughts, heatwaves, and bushfires of increasing frequency and intensity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Very little is understood about the impacts of groundwater mining on the ecosystems in rainforest like those in Springbrook national park.”The council’s refusal of the project cited the “potential to impact upon the Springbrook Plateau as a major ecotourism destination due to potential impacts upon the significance environmental features of this area and additional regular truck movements”.In documents filed with the court, Hoffman Drilling claimed the development was an appropriate use of the land and that the area is “rich in available groundwater”.New water mines in Gold Coast hinterland barred for a year amid concerns over bottling industryRead more“The recorded rainfall near the land was greater than 3000mm a year, and groundwater recharge from such rainfall would allow the proposed development to operate with an insignificant impact on the groundwater system,” the company said in its application to the court.“There is significant aquifer recharge from incident rainfall in this high rainfall area.“Resource investigations that have been carried out on the land reveal, among other things the land is contained within an area that is rich in available groundwater; and the water quality is suitable to be provided to spring water suppliers.”TopicsQueenslandWaterReuse this content

Opinion: The East Palestine disaster was a direct result of US reliance on fossil fuels and plastic

Last December, I testified in the US Senate at its first-ever public hearing about plastics. I called for a 50 percent reduction in the nation’s production of plastics over the next decade. That was immediately met with criticism by the plastics and chemical lobbyists. These lobbyists are not the ones living in East Palestine, Ohio, where a train derailment spewed dangerous chemicals into the air, soil, and water. They’re not the ones living in neighborhoods next to railroad tracks. They’re not the ones facing health risks from plastic production plants in their backyards every single day.The East Palestine disaster was a direct result of the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and plastic. The hazardous chemicals being transported by the derailed train — including vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen — are used to make PVC, the world’s third most used type of plastic, typically used in pipes to deliver drinking water, packaging, gift cards, and toys that kids chew on.So let’s be clear about what happened this month in Ohio: Thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate — all to make PVC plastics. People reported rashes, headaches, and other symptoms associated with chemical exposure — all to make PVC pipes used to deliver drinking water, when alternatives to PVC piping exist. Thousands of fish in nearby streams were killed — all to make plastic toys our children play with and chew on. Ohioans’ drinking water may have been threatened — all to make cheap vinyl shower curtains.When I talk to restaurant owners about the need to eliminate plastic packaging, they often say they use plastic because it’s cheap. Don’t tell residents of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania that plastics are cheap — or the people of Louisiana and Texas, living in the shadow of where PVC is manufactured.Plastic’s risks to human health shouldn’t be understated. Long-term exposure to vinyl chloride is associated with lymphoma, leukemia, and cancers of the brain and lungs. It can increase the risk of miscarriage and birth defects in pregnant women. Experts have advised East Palestine farmers and other residents to test their wells over the next few months in order to protect the health of both people and livestock. A Cornell University scientist stated that nearby soil should be tested to make sure crops aren’t contaminated.Plastic is not cheap. Just ask the Americans living this nightmare. No parent should have to worry about their little ones digging in the dirt or splashing around in the local creek. Residents will be dealing with this toxic train derailment for years to come.They deserve better. We all do. Plastic threatens human health at every stage of its life cycle, from the toxic substances released into the air during fossil fuel extraction, to the dangerous transport of these chemicals, to the plastic particles and toxins we consume from our food and drinking water, to the hazardous emissions from facilities burning or burying the waste after consumer use.East Palestine made headlines because most people don’t expect these strikingly obvious displays of chemical contamination from plastic. However, in areas like Louisiana’s Cancer Alley — an 85-mile stretch of petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River — the danger is a daily reality. It consists primarily of Black and low-income neighborhoods, which suffer from an unusually high number of cancer cases on top of the constant threat of chemical accidents.Plastic is not cheap. And Americans will continue to pay the price as plastic production grows. In East Palestine, residents should be provided with long-term medical monitoring and Norfolk Southern Railway should be held fully accountable for all costs, including damages to natural resources.On a national level, labor unions must be taken more seriously when they express safety concerns — and guaranteed more time off. Congress needs to stop caving to railroad industry lobbyists and require braking improvements and tighter regulation of rail cars.Finally, our national leaders must pass federal policies reducing the production and use of unnecessary plastic. PVC is a great place to start — Taiwan, Korea, and New Zealand have already banned it in food packaging. In Massachusetts, state Representative Michael Day introduced a bill to reduce packaging and some of its toxic substances. The bill bans PVC and PFAS (also known as “forever chemicals”) in all consumer packaging.Big Plastic has spent decades distracting the public from the industry’s responsibility in the plastic pollution crisis — which is also a climate and health crisis — and their lobbyists continue to shape legislation that prioritizes profits over people. It’s time our elected officials put their collective foot down, hold companies accountable, protect people from plastic, and pass policies curbing plastic production. Americans deserve better.Judith Enck is a former EPA regional administrator, the president of Beyond Plastics, and a professor at Bennington College.

More deadly than hard plastic: California city bans balloons to protect birds and the ocean

More deadly than hard plastic: California city bans balloons to protect birds and the ocean Experts say more cities should join the growing legislative trend as balloons wreak havoc on marine environments Laguna Beach – the California city known for surfers, waves, rolling hills – grabbed headlines this week for enacting a strict ban on …

Less plastic or more recycling – nations split ahead of treaty talks

Ahead of talks on a new plastics treaty, nations are split over whether to target reductions in the amount of plastic that is produced or just to try and stop it from polluting land and sea.In their submissions to talks taking place in Paris in May, the majority of European and African countries push for cuts to the supply of plastic while the US and Saudi Arabia focus instead on tackling plastic pollution.
The European Union’s submission says: “While measures on the demand side are expected to indirectly impact the reduction of production levels, efforts and measures addressing supply are equally needed, to cope with increasing plastic waste generation.”
It suggested several options to cut plastic production, including global targets to cut a certain percentage by a given year or nations putting forward their own targets.
The UK calls for governments to adopt legally binding targets to “restrain” plastic production and consumption while the African group lists restraining plastic production and use as an objective.
A group of countries calling themselves the “high-ambition coalition” echo the EU’s suggestion of a global target to reduce production.
The US is not one of the members (light blue) of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution (Photo credit: High Ambition Coalition/Screenshot)
Production taboo
But major oil and gas producers like the USA and Saudi Arabia did not call for cuts in plastic production.
They focus on tackling plastic pollution through recycling and waste disposal.
The US says the treaty should be “country-driven”, “flexible” and that its preamble could include “the beneficial role of plastic, including for human health and food safety”.
In its submission, China – the world’s largest plastic producer – said “a variety of economic and market tools could be adopted in an integrated manner to reduce production and use of plastic products”.
The coalition of small islands (Aosis), many of whom are particularly vulnerable to climate change, did not call for production cuts in their submission either.
UAE minister calls for “phase out” of oil and gas
Their legal adviser Bryce Rudyk told Climate Home that small islands’ focus was reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the sea.
He said islands were concerned that reductions in plastic production “may actually increase the cost of the plastic that small islands would utilise”.
“We have to think of it as an environmental, economic, social, political trend,” he added. “Kind of like climate change, this is not just a wholly environmental problem”.
Campaigners enthused
Environmental campaigners praised the EU’s proposals. Andres Del Castillo from the Center for International Environmental Law told Climate Home it was a “strong step”. He added that “if the plastics treaty is to meaningfully address plastic pollution, it will be critical for more countries to adopt similar positions that address the early stages of the plastics life cycle”.
Christina Dixon, who follows plastics treaty talks for the Environmental Investigation Agency, said it sent “a clear signal that the EU member states are leaders who are not willing to play with a Paris-style agreement like some of the lower ambition countries have indicated in their submissions”.
But she warned that, as in climate talks, the question of who finances action on plastics is key.
“First step”: Reformers react to World Bank plan to free up climate spending
The EU must support a dedicated multilateral fund to finance action in developing countries, she said.
“It’s great to have targets but if there’s no money for implementation you’re setting up to fail”, she added.
Fossil fuel lifeline
As well as polluting land and sea, plastics are responsible for an estimated 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions through their lifecycle.
If plastics were a country, they would be the fourth biggest polluter after just China, the USA and India.
They are made from oil and gas, potentially offering a lifeline to the sector as climate action cuts demand for fossil fuels as a source of energy.
Dividing lines
At the last set of talks in Uruguay last year, nations were divided along similar lines.
A group calling itself the “high-ambition coalition” argued for a top-down treaty that binds all to certain measures while the US, Saudi Arabia and most of Asia wanted a bottom-up treaty like the Paris Agreement.
The European Union is facing attempts to weaken its power to vote on behalf of its member states in treaty negotiations.
Governments aim to set up a treaty by 2024 and begin holding annual Cop-style talks between treaty members after that.

California beach city weighs balloon ban to protect coast

Environmental advocates are celebrating in Laguna Beach — but it won’t be with balloons.The hilly seaside city known for stunning ocean views and rolling bluffs is weighing a plan to ban the sale and public use of balloons to curtail the risk of devastating wildfires and eliminate a major source of trash floating near the community’s scenic shores.The Laguna Beach City Council is expected to vote Tuesday on the proposal to ban in public the popular mainstay of birthday and graduation parties, whether inflated with helium or not. The move in the community of 23,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles comes as several California beach cities have limited balloons and the state enacted a law to regulate the types made of foil.“This is the beginning,” said Chad Nelsen, chief executive of the nonprofit environmental organization Surfrider Foundation, adding that he sees momentum to weed out balloons that tangle with turtles and sea lions much like he did with the effort to phase out single-use plastic bags. “We’re chipping away at all these things we find and trying to clean up the ocean one item at a time.”ADVERTISEMENTEnvironmental advocates are taking aim at balloons, arguing they’re a preventable cause of coastal pollution that threatens animals and seabirds. Balloon debris can tangle wildlife or be ingested by animals that mistake it for food, and more than 3,000 pieces of balloon litter were picked up on ocean beaches by volunteers in Virginia over a five-year period, according to the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration

Tracking microplastic ‘fingerprints’ in Monterey Bay

We don’t often think of plastics as having “fingerprints.” But they do. And, as we continue to find microparticles in unexpected places — from local anchovy and seabird guts to the deepest trenches of the ocean — identifying those fingerprints is increasingly important.Scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI recently published an open-access library — a collection anyone can use for free — of the chemical fingerprints of microplastics and other particles that are commonly found in and around the ocean. Researchers can use the library to figure out what kind of plastics are entering the ocean, where they are coming from and what we can do to keep them out in the future.
Scientists estimate that more than 11 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans every year — the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every minute.
Those plastics get weathered and eroded down into microparticles the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen or nearly-invisible fibers. They are ingested by marine mammals, permanently entering the food chain. Study after study has confirmed that microplastics are a global problem. But to address it, scientists need to know which plastics are moving from land into water.
Collecting chemical ‘fingerprints’
“Identifying microplastics is actually not as easy as it sounds,” said Emily Miller, lead author of the study. “The most accessible tools scientists have — a microscope and our eyes — can be deceiving.”

The chemical fingerprinting technique, called “Raman spectroscopy,” is much more accurate.
It’s fairly straightforward — scientists isolate a piece of suspected microplastic from an animal gut or ocean water or sediment. They shoot a laser at it. The sample scatters the laser light in a characteristic way depending on how its molecules are arranged.
The microscope collects that scattered light and graphs it as a “spectrum.” It looks something like an ECG, with wavy lines and peaks at some points. And it’s unique to the material.
Chris French, the laboratory director at Eurofins S&N Labs and a study coauthor, said getting the spectrum, or the fingerprint, is the easy part. Figuring out what material the fingerprint belongs to is the challenge.
“You can take a spectrum but it’s practically meaningless unless you have a database to go back and do the fingerprint matching,” he said.
Researchers take a spectrum, compare it to libraries of the spectra of known materials and look for a match — just like a detective might compare a fingerprint from a crime scene to a database of human fingerprints.
The fingerprint tells you what the material is, which can point to a source.
“For example, polyethylene is commonly used in disposable water bottles, nylon is a common plastic used to make fishing line, and polyvinyl chloride is frequently used in agricultural irrigation,” said Miller. In some cases, a material could even be traced back to the company that made it.
But the libraries aren’t accessible to everyone.
“Nearly all spectra reference libraries are locked behind expensive paywalls,” said Miller.
Eurofins S&N Labs, a lab that specializes in identifying mystery particles, did the spectroscopy work for the study. S&N Labs has the equipment and the know-how, but even they have to pay for access to a paywalled spectral library. They pay almost $10,000 a year — a cost that gets passed down to their users.
S&N Labs has thousands of users across many industries. But they rarely see academic or marine debris researchers — probably because of the high costs. A single identification request can cost anywhere from $550 to $3,000. So if a researcher opens up a stranded marine animal and wants to know what all those plastic particles are inside, they have to be very selective about which particles they send in.
“It can be prohibitively expensive for research labs,” said French. “And, right now at least, research labs and universities are the only people who seem to be interested in characterizing” marine debris.
“Ocean plastic pollution is a global crisis and we need to remove the barriers so that researchers all over the world can help find solutions,” said Miller.
So the team created a library specific to marine debris that anyone can use. It’s only the second open-access Raman spectroscopy library to date.
What’s in the library?
To build the new library, the researchers tested samples with known identities: pristine plastics in new condition — things like coffee cup lids, electrical tape, pill bottles and styrofoam boxes — plus old, weathered things picked up from fishery environments and beaches — balloons, straws, bike innertubes, dock lines and a Lego tire.
Including the weathered polymers was an important advance for marine debris researchers. “You won’t find anything (in a commercial library) that has been sitting on the beach for three years,” said French.
Miller said when you’re looking at little microparticles collected from the environment they aren’t necessarily all plastic, so they also added biological things to the library — clam, crab and shrimp shells, purple sea urchin spines, kelp, and bone fragments from various marine species.
They scanned 79 materials in all. For each one, the team scanned the sample 100 times to produce 100 spectra, then averaged those scans together to get a single fingerprint. Then they added that fingerprint to the library for anyone to use.
The full library was published in Nature’s Scientific Data journal in December.
“It’s not a huge database that we helped create, but on the other hand, you won’t probably find more than 100 different types of polymers out on the beach,” said French. “I think for what its intended use is it’s a very comprehensive database.”
A week of storms left trash and plastic debris at the Seal Beach jetty in Seal Beach in 2019. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG) 
Matthew Savoca, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove who was not involved in the study, commented: “If we’re going to mitigate this issue we need to figure out what the main sources are.”
Savoca studies how organisms interact with their environments and the human impact on those environments. He recently published a study showing that whales off the coast of California coast eat up to 10 million pieces of microplastics a day.
Savoca said including weathered materials was the study’s big, important advance. “What you’d find in the environment are materials that are degraded and fragmented and weathered,” he said. “The open-access part is nice, but I would argue that the libraries that exist are not super realistic to what you’d find in the real world, and this is bringing us closer to what you’d find in the real world,” said Savoca.
The Monterey-based researchers plan to use the library to identify particles pulled from the deepest parts of the Monterey Bay. The ultimate goal: keeping plastic out of the ocean in the first place.
“Once we have these plastic identities, we can trace the source of the pollution, and finally we can begin to manage the pollution pathway that enters the ocean,” said Miller.
Some interventions and management strategies have already begun to work.
States with “container deposit legislation,” or “bottle bills,” have much smaller percentages of beverage containers in their marine debris, based on data from NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. In other words, regulating specific plastics does help to keep them out of the ocean.
Miller hopes that more labs will continue to create and add to open-source libraries like this one. As libraries grow, scientists will have to standardize things like data collection and processing protocols so that the spectra are comparable and useful.
“The microplastics research community is in the beginning phase of making this type of research accessible to all,” she said. “We are putting this open-source library out into the world for others to use, but it is only one step. We need other community members to continue to contribute spectral libraries.”
The field of studying microplastics in the environment only emerged over the last decade, but it’s growing at a very rapid rate. “The community is growing so quickly that more and more people are going to find this useful over the coming months and years,” said Savoca. “I think it’s great that people in Monterey Bay are doing this work because it’s a really great system to study this problem in.”