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Maui Ocean Center to provide beach cleanup materials

June 8, 2021, 8:46 AM HST

The MOC Marine Institute Honu Hero Beach Cleanup Program kicks off June 8. Photo Courtesy: Maui Ocean Center

In honor of World Ocean Day, the Maui Ocean Center Marine Institute announced a beach cleanup program that allows residents and visitors to Maui to take a hands-on approach to help protect marine environments and collect data.

“Plastic pollution is one of the most significant threats impacting our ocean today,” according to a Maui Ocean Center announcement.

To participate in the Honu Hero Beach Cleanup Program, pick up a beach cleanup kit from the Maui Ocean Center, choose a beach to clean and return the kit and datasheet once complete. Participants can post a picture on Instagram of their cleanup using #HonuHero to receive a free Honu Hero sticker.

The beach cleanup kit includes a bucket for debris, datasheet, clipboard, pencils and gloves. Kits are available for pickup and drop-off between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day of the week at MOC Marine Institute’s table near the front exit of Maui Ocean Center.

To pick up the cleanup kit beyond scheduled times, make arrangements at [email protected]

Data on Plastic Pollution

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The following data comes from the MOC Marine Institute:

10 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean annually
1 million marine animals are killed by plastic pollution every year.
Half of all plastic produced is for single-use purposes
Less than 9% of all plastic gets recycled
Humans eat an estimated 40 pounds of plastic in a lifetime

Europe’s drive to slash plastic waste moves into high gear

In Europe, beachgoers have grown accustomed to the dispiriting sight of plastic garbage strewn along shorelines. Indeed, 85 percent of the continent’s saltwater beaches and seas exceed pollution standards on marine litter. The Mediterranean Sea is the most defiled of all, with researchers collecting an average of 274 pieces of plastic refuse per 100 meters of shoreline. And beneath the waves, microplastics have turned coastal waters into toxic “plastic soups.”

In an all-out push to clean up Europe’s beaches — one plank in the European Union’s trailblazing efforts to address the almost 28 million U.S. tons of plastic waste it generates annually — a ban comes into effect July 3 that halts the sale in EU markets of the 10 plastic products that most commonly wash up on the continent’s shores. These include, among other items, plastic bottle caps, cutlery, straws and plates, as well as Styrofoam food and beverage containers.

The ban is the most visible sign of Europe’s efforts to curtail plastics pollution by creating the world’s first-ever circular plastics regime. By the end of this decade, this will lead to a ban on throwaway plastics, the creation of a comprehensive reuse system for all other plastics, and the establishment of an expansive and potentially lucrative European market for recycled plastics.

A raft of EU measures is now driving investments and innovation toward circular solutions that, according to experts and EU officials, will come to define Europe’s low-carbon economy and enhance its global competitiveness. A circular economy is one in which products and materials are kept in use along their entire life cycle, from design and manufacturing to reuse or recycling. In contrast to the current, linear system, products don’t end up in the rubbish bin, but rather are reintroduced into the production process.

“The EU is taking the creation of a circular economy very seriously, and plastics are at the center of it.”

Under the EU Plastics Strategy, put forward in 2018, waste guidelines will overhaul the way plastic products are designed, used and recycled. All plastic packaging on the EU market must be recyclable by 2030, and the use of microplastics circumscribed.

The measures are the toughest in the world and have already pushed plastic packaging recycling rates in the EU to an all-time high of 41.5 percent — three times that of the United States. The EU has set a target for recycling 50 percent of plastic packaging by 2025, a goal that now looks within reach. And in 2025, a separate collection target of 77 percent will be in place for plastic bottles, increasing to 90 percent by 2029.

This overarching regime will rely on the widespread adoption of extended producer responsibility schemes, which means that if a company introduces packaging or packaged goods into a country’s market, that firm remains responsible for the full cost of the collection, transportation, recycling or incineration of its products. In effect, the polluter pays.

And as of this year, EU companies may no longer unload plastic waste on countries in the developing world such as Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Indonesia. By exporting plastic waste, the EU had essentially been fobbing off the scourge — about 1.7 million U.S. tons of it a year — a sizeable quantity of which was burned in the open air, dumped in landfills, or simply tossed into the sea. Now, Europe is forced to tackle the entirety of the waste burden itself.

A waste-processing facility in Jenjarom, Malaysia. Starting this year, European companies are no longer allowed to ship plastic waste to developing countries.
Nandakumar S. Haridas / Greenpeace

“The EU is taking the creation of a circular economy very seriously, and plastics are at the center of it,” said Henning Wilts, director of circular economy at Germany’s Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.

Elsewhere in the world, governments and the private sector are responding to public ire about plastic pollution, though with much less effect than in Europe. Worldwide, only 14 to 18 percent of plastics are recycled (less than half the European average), and less than 10 percent are recycled in the U.S. According to Greenpeace, although many governments and multinational companies boast high-profile pledges to make their products more circular, much of it is greenwashing.

“Many types of commonly used plastic packaging are not recyclable, and are being landfilled, incinerated, or exported without verification of recycling,” according to a Greenpeace report.

The U.S., which generates the largest amount of plastic waste in the world, is awash in waste now that China — the largest manufacturer of plastic — no longer accepts imported waste; many U.S. cities end up pitching plastic waste into landfills or burning it. Congress has commissioned the National Academies of Sciences to conduct a sweeping review of the U.S. contribution to plastic waste, due out at the end of this year.

Only 5 percent of plastic packaging’s value now remains in the European economy after first use

Europe’s battle against plastic waste will help the EU reach its ambitious climate target of slashing greenhouse emissions by 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The EU estimates that the drop in oil-based plastics production could shave 3.4 million tons of CO₂-equivalent off Europe’s carbon footprint and pre-empt environmental damages that would run to 22 billion euros by 2030.

“The 10-items ban is big. It’s not greenwashing,” said Clara Löw, an analyst at the Öko-Institute, a German think tank. “There are many more measures afoot within the European Green Deal to rein in plastics and establish circularity as the cornerstone principle of Europe’s plastics economy. Even most Europeans aren’t aware of how much is happening right now.”

Critics note, however, that the EU’s showy 10-item ban covers just one percent of Europe’s plastic production. They also point out that the total quantity of plastic waste generation in Europe has not fallen — something the new measures aim to reverse.

Zero Waste Europe says that plastic waste generation in Europe will drop only when sanctions like the 10-items ban and other measures take full effect.

Carmine Trecroci, an economist and recycling expert at the University of Brescia in Italy, said that external factors like the price of oil have a major impact; as long as oil is cheap, which it has been in recent years, so too is plastics production, making it all the harder to rein in. The plastics sector in the EU is big business, employing 1.5 million people and generating 350 billion euros in 2019. Trecroci said the powerful Italian plastics lobby fought fiercely to block the 10-item ban, and then to slow and dilute it. In the end, however, the EU approved the ban.

Protestors outside the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France ahead of a vote to ban single-use plastic items in October 23, 2018.
Federick Florin/AFP via Getty Images

While EU countries still produce large quantities of plastic, the amount of post-consumer plastic waste sent to recycling has soared by 92 percent since 2006, according to PlasticsEurope, a European association of plastics manufacturers. Meanwhile, landfilling — by far the dirtiest waste treatment option — has fallen by 54 percent.

Since January 1 plastic producers in the EU have had to pay a levy of 800 euros per metric ton of non-recycled plastic packaging waste. Pressure from Brussels has also resulted in voluntary measures in the private sector: Coca-Cola Europe, for example, is well on its way to manufacturing 50 percent of its plastic bottles and cans from recycled content.

According to EU, only 5 percent of plastic packaging’s value currently remains in the economy after first use. This, it estimates, costs the European economy between 70 and 105 billion euros a year.

“A closed loop,” Löw said, “is when every material, every product and its components will be used as long as possible, repaired or refurbished if broken, [and] recycled into secondary raw material several times without losing material quality.”

Wilts of the Wuppertal Institute added, “Europe is a continent with few raw materials, like oil and metals, so a recycling industry that circumvents the need for virgin raw materials is an industrial strategy as much as an environmental program.” He and others say that recycling and recovery facilities will propel recycling in Europe as plastic waste becomes more valuable, waste-to-energy incineration is properly taxed, and more products are standardized for recyclability. “There’s going to be a doubling of sorting and recycling facilities in the next five years,” Wilts said.

A mandatory minimum on the amount of recycled plastic in bottles adds value to waste, as producers need plastic and will pay for it.

Europe’s new plastics economy dates back to the mid-1990s, when the principle of extended producer responsibility was enshrined in EU law. Extended producer responsibility (EPR), argues a Zero Waste Europe paper, is “crucial to incentivize the redesign of products with circularity in mind … Ensuring producers bear 100 percent of the cleanup costs will encourage the manufacturer to work with municipalities to ensure high collection of their products.”

Trecroci notes that EPR on a significant scale is already a reality in Northern and Central Europe. In Germany, companies pay fees totaling 1.5 billion euros a year that finance the transport, sorting and recycling of their waste end-materials. “In southern Europe, we’re at an earlier stage, but EPR will apply here, too, in full, in a few years’ time,” Trecroci said.

Also, in 2019 the EU adopted a directive that by 2025 all EU countries integrate 25 percent recycled plastic in clear plastic bottles and 30 percent in all plastic beverage bottles by 2030. This mandatory minimum — already in force in Germany, Denmark and Norway — adds value to plastic waste, since plastic producers need it and will pay for it.

“This creates a demand for high-quality recycling material,” Wilts said. Soon, the same principle — minimum amounts of recycling content — will apply to the automotive and building sectors, he said.

The extensive private sector network needed to create this new circular economy is only now gaining momentum, according to Wilts. “Eventually, the recycling industry is going to produce the basic materials for industrial manufacturing,” he said. “But we’re not quite there yet.”

Coca-Cola sued for false advertising over sustainability claims

In a complaint filed against the company on Friday, Earth Island Institute, which publishes the Journal, alleges that Coca-Cola’s sustainability-focused statements amounts to greenwashing, or in legal terms, false and deceptive advertising. It points out that despite heavy marketing of its so-called green image, the company is the number one plastic waste generator in the world. Coca-Cola has also been named the number one corporate polluter for three years in a row by the nonprofit Break Free from Plastic’s Global Cleanup and Brand Audit report, which assesses plastic waste collected across dozens of countries.

The lawsuit, which was filed in District of Columbia Superior Court under DC’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act, does not seek damages, but rather aims to put a stop to the beverage giant’s deceptive practices. “With this lawsuit we are simply asking that Coca-Cola be honest with consumers about its plastic use so that consumers can make informed purchasing decisions,” says Sumona Majumdar, general counsel for Earth Island Institute.

In addition to its general sustainability-minded statements, Coca-Cola advertises its recycling initiatives online and is one of hundreds of companies that have signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment, pledging to help with the plastic pollution crisis and aiming for 100 percent reusable, recyclable, or compostable plastic by 2025. But this pledge, too, falls flat. According to Break Free from Plastic, the company has made little headway towards addressing plastic waste since signing the pledge in 2018. And in fact, the lawsuit alleges, Coca-Cola has actively opposed legislation that would bolster recycling in the US.

As the complaint puts it: “Contrary to Coca-Cola’s representations, the company remains a major plastic polluter, has made no significant effort to transition to a ‘circular economy’ or otherwise operate as a ‘sustainable’ enterprise, and has a long history of consistently breaking its public promises on sustainability goals.”

Ideally, advocates say, Coca-Cola and other beverage companies would green their operations by increasing use of reusable and refillable packaging. They would rely less heavily on producing recyclable packaging and promoting consumer recycling, tactics which have so far proven fairly ineffective at addressing the plastic pollution crisis and which justify continued plastic production.

“We want the Coca-Cola company to stop the greenwashing and false claims, be transparent about the plastic they use, and be a leader in investing in deposit and refill programs for the health of humans, animals, waterways, the ocean, and our environment,” Julia Cohen, co-founder and managing director at Plastic Pollution Coalition, an Earth Island project, says in a statement.

Greenwashing is nothing new. And it isn’t limited to Big Plastic. As consumer attention increasingly pivots to environmental issues, companies are trying more than ever to portray responsible environmental ethics. This tactic is particularly visible in the fossil fuel industry, which has begun increasingly using climate-friendly buzzwords like “net zero” and “carbon neutral” to describe itself while doing little to actually address its enormous climate impact.

Like Big Plastic, Big Oil has been called out for these claims. In 2019, the nonprofit environmental law group ClientEarth sued BP, alleging that the company’s advertising touted low-carbon technologies while nearly all of its spending went towards oil and gas. BP withdrew its ads.

More recently, several environmental nonprofits, including Earthworks, Global Witness, and Greenpeace USA, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over similar practices by another oil and gas company, Chevron. The complaint, filed in March, alleges that Chevron engaged in deceptive advertising by overstating its commitment to reducing fossil fuel pollution and its investments in renewable energy. In April, the city of New York sued Exxon, Shell, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute, similarly alleging greenwashing. Also in April, ClientEarth released a large investigation comparing the advertisements released by ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and several other oil and gas companies, with their overall climate impact and their progress towards reducing that impact. The group found, unsurprisingly, that the two did not align.

“We’re currently witnessing a great deception, where the companies most responsible for catastrophically heating the planet are spending millions on advertising campaigns about how their business plans are focused on sustainability,” Johnny White, one of ClientEarth’s lawyers, told The Guardian.

Perhaps lawsuits like those against BP and now Coca-Cola will help end these great deceptions. At the very least, they will hopefully inform consumers about the true nature of the products they are purchasing.

Global treaty to regulate plastic pollution gains momentum

The simple plastic bag has come to symbolize the world’s growing problem with plastic waste. Yet globally, there are seven definitions of what is considered a plastic bag—and that complicates efforts to reduce their proliferation.

Banning bags, along with other plastic packaging, is the most commonly used remedy to rein in plastic waste. So far, 115 nations have taken that approach, but in different ways. In France, bags less than 50 microns thick are banned. In Tunisia, bags are banned if they are less than 40 microns thick.

Those kinds of differences create loopholes that enable illegal bags to find their way to street vendors and market stalls. Kenya, which passed the world’s toughest bag ban in 2017, has had to contend with illegal bags smuggled in from Uganda and Somalia. So has Rwanda.

Likewise, millions of mosquito nets that Rwanda imported from the United States arrived in plastic packaging for which the chemical content was not disclosed—even after a Rwandan recycler inquired. That rendered them unrecyclable.

For global companies like Nestlé, which sells food products in 187 countries, that means complying with 187 different sets of national regulations on plastic packaging.

These are but three examples of hundreds of contradictory policies, inconsistencies, and lack of transparency that are embedded in the global plastics trade in ways that make it hard to gain control of the growing accumulation of plastic waste. Not only do definitions differ from country to country, there also are no global rules for such practices as determining which plastic materials can be mixed together in one product; that creates a potential nightmare for recycling. Internationally accepted methods for how to measure plastic waste spilling into the environment don’t exist. Without uniform standards or specific data, the job of fixing it all becomes essentially impossible.

Now, help may be on the way. Support is growing for a global treaty to address plastic waste. At least 100 nations have already expressed support for a plastic treaty, and those involved in preliminary talks are optimistic that one could be approved on a pace that could make a difference, much as the 1987 landmark Montreal protocol prevented depletion of the stratospheric ozone.

“Fundamentally, governments will not be able to do what they are supposed to do if they can’t count on an international partnership and international framework. It is not going to work,” says Hugo-Maria Schally, head of the multilateral environmental cooperation unit at the European Commission. “It is a concrete problem that asks for a concrete solution and a global agreement will provide that.”

Schally’s message to industry is direct: “You can work with public policy (to make) plastic sustainable and that means you can be part of the solution, or you can become defensive and then you’re part of the problem.”

A surge in waste

The primary argument against trying to push a treaty through the United Nations and its 193 member states is that negotiations can drag on for a decade or more, and on the issue of plastics, there is little time to spare.

New plastics waste is created yearly at a rate of 303 million tons (275 million metric tons). To date, 75 percent of all plastic ever produced has become waste, and production is expected to triple by 2050. New research this year suggests that the accumulation of plastic waste in the oceans is also expected to triple by 2040 to an average of 32 million tons (29 million metric tons) a year.

With numbers like those, it’s no surprise that none of the nations that are the most significant contributors of plastic waste to the environment have been able to gain control of their mismanaged waste. And though global treaties take time, no environmental issue of this magnitude has been significantly addressed without one.

Plastic pollution has been on the agenda at the United Nations since 2012. In 2019, when the UN Environmental Assembly last gathered face-to-face in Nairobi, talks about plastic waste were stymied primarily by the United States, which opposed a binding treaty. The only agreement that emerged was an agreement to keep talking.

Over the last decade, the ground has shifted dramatically. “In 2015, no country had expressed an interest in pursuing a global treaty,” says Erik Lindebjerg, who is spearheading the World Wildlife Fund’s plastic waste campaign from Oslo. He helped oversee publication of The Business Case for a UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, a report prepared in partnership with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which details how a treaty could solve an assortment of business problems. “In one sense, we’ve reached a saturation point, so you suddenly see impacts everywhere.”

Industry also has reversed its opposition.

“We have evolved our position as the situation has evolved,” says Stewart Harris, an American Chemistry Council executive speaking on behalf of the International Council of Chemical Associations, a global chemistry association of which the ACC is a member.

“We were concerned with the binding element of a global [treaty]. We felt we weren’t ready for that yet,” he says. “And now that’s changed. Now we do believe a global instrument is needed to help us achieve the elimination of waste in the environment and help companies achieve voluntary commitments.”

What’s on the negotiating table

Preliminary talks are already underway, all aimed at the next in-person meeting in Nairobi, where hopes are high that agreement can be reached to move ahead with treaty discussions.

Scandanavian nations traditionally have run talks about plastic waste, with Norway, as current president of the UN Environmental Assembly, taking the lead. But other groups of nations have been meeting and pushed the conversation forward. Ecuador, Germany, Ghana, and Vietnam have held several sessions, with another planned for September. Small island nations, inundated by drifting plastic waste and with much to lose in climate change, have conducted preliminary talks of their own.

The overarching goal of early talks has been to set a specific date to eliminate plastic from spilling into the oceans. The rest of the agenda is centered around four topics: a harmonized set of definitions and standards that would eliminate inconsistencies such as the definition of a plastic bag; coordination of national targets and plans; agreement on reporting standards and methodologies; and creation of a fund to build waste management facilities where they are most needed in less developed countries.

Christina Dixon, an oceans specialist at the Environmental Investigation Agency, an environmental nonprofit based in London and Washington, says that the existing methods for managing the plastic marketplace are not sustainable. “We need to find a way to look at plastic with a global lens. We have a material that is polluting throughout its lifecycle and across borders. No one country is able to address the challenge by itself.”

The power of the public—and of dialogue

Public opinion is also prompting change. Plastic pollution ranks as one of the three most-pressing environmental concerns, along with climate change and water pollution, according to a 2019 survey included in the Business Case for a UN Treaty report. Young activists who took to the streets in 2019 to protest lack of action on climate have been paying attention to plastic waste. Multiple industry studies show that Gen Z and Millennials are pushing makers of consumer products towards sustainability practices.

Then, there’s a simple matter that the opposing sides are now talking to each other.

In 2019, Dave Ford, a former advertising executive whose company had been hosting corporate leaders on expensive trips to Antarctica, Africa and the like, decided to host a four-day cruise and talkathon from Bermuda to the Sargasso Sea for 165 people working on plastic waste. The passenger roster ranged from executives at Dow Chemical to Greenpeace. In a move designed to get maximum publicity, a Greenpeace activist roomed with a Nestlé executive in what became known on board as the Sleeping With The Enemy moment.

The ploy worked. Many members from the cruise are still talking to each other and tensions that had been building eased. Ford has since founded the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network and recruited additional activists and industry executives to join the conversation.

“What we’re trying to do is get all the parties historically fighting each other to understand where everybody sits,” Ford says. “In a lot of cases, they might be closer than they think.”

Global treaty to regulate plastic pollution gains momentum

For global companies like Nestlé, which sells food products in 187 countries, that means complying with 187 different sets of national regulations on plastic packaging.

A surge in waste

Industry also has reversed its opposition.

What’s on the negotiating table

Preliminary talks are already underway, all aimed at the next in-person meeting in Nairobi, where hopes are high that agreement can be reached to move ahead with treaty discussions.

The power of the public—and of dialogue

Then, there’s a simple matter that the opposing sides are now talking to each other.

“What we’re trying to do is get all the parties historically fighting each other to understand where everybody sits,” Ford says. “In a lot of cases, they might be closer than they think.”

Debunking the biggest myths about our ocean plastic problem

To clean up our oceans, we first need to understand what they’re actually filled with. And it’s different from what you might have heard.

[Source Photo: Silas Baisch/Unsplash]

By Kristin Toussaint4 minute Read

When you think of plastic pollution in the ocean, you might picture bottles and bags floating on the surface of the sea, a “seventh continent” made up entirely of plastic waste, or all of that pollution flowing into the ocean from just a few intensely polluted rivers. And so the solution, it would seem, is to clean up that floating trash and prevent plastic from those rivers. But in reality it’s not that simple, because those images of the ocean’s plastic pollution aren’t quite accurate.

A new report from Plastic Odyssey, a France-based project to reduce plastic pollution, busts common myths about the ocean’s plastic problem. Take that iconic image in your mind of plastic floating on top of the waves. One myth is that the ocean can be cleaned up by collecting that floating trash; but that would make just a small dent. In reality, less than 1% of ocean plastic floats on the surface.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t plastic floating on the sea that needs to be cleaned up. According to a 2019 study, there are 1.13 million tons of plastic floating on the ocean’s surface. But that represents less than 0.6% of total plastic pollution—a small fraction of the 198 million tons of plastic that have been dumped into the ocean since the 1950s. Where’s the rest? Scientists aren’t sure, but it could have been pushed back to the coasts, sunk to the bottom, or dissolved into microparticles.

Another myth has to do with where all that plastic originates from. If you watched Seaspiracy, for example, you might think the fishing industry is the main culprit. But most plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from trash originating on land, specifically the coasts. Marine sources of plastic pollution (of which fishing is just one) contribute 1.75 million tons of plastic per year, a small amount compared to the 9 million tons of land-based coastal pollution that enters the ocean annually.

The myth-busting in the Plastic Odyssey report isn’t a result of any new studies, but a closer examination of the research that already exists. Simon Bernard, Plastic Odyssey CEO and a former merchant navy officer, says he spent four years getting to the source of those misconceptions and trying to better understand ocean pollution. Some of the misconceptions happened because scientific studies had been misreported, like the stat that 90% of marine plastic pollution comes from just 10 rivers. The study actually found that 10 especially polluted rivers are responsible for 90% of all the plastic that enters the ocean from rivers. Those 10 rivers contribute just 1% of the total ocean plastic pollution.

Other myths come from prevailing images of plastic pollution, like the pictures of trash floating on the surface of the sea, which is where the idea of a “seventh continent” of floating plastic waste comes from. Most of that plastic is actually “a soup of plastic microparticles—many of which are invisible to the human eye,” Bernard says.

Though microplastics make up 94% of the estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of floating plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, they account for just 8% of the total mass: Most of the volume of the garbage patch is made up of tiny particles that you can’t see and are hard to clean up from the surface. “If you try to collect microplastic, you will obviously collect life, because the ocean is not [all] water,” Bernard says. “We would say first it’s life, with a bit of water. It’s not water with a bit of life. . . . Once the microplastics are at sea, it’s almost impossible to take them back without harming the environment.

“It’s really important to explain what we know today on this pollution and where we should all act,” Bernard continues. “There is no magical wand [to] just collect pollution and everything is going to be okay.” He says people have questioned why Plastic Odyssey doesn’t focus on stopping fishing, or closing those 10 rivers that spill plastic into the oceans—but those are simplified solutions, the report argues, that don’t tackle the full, complex problem.

Plastic Odyssey is working on a solution, though, with a three-year-long boat expedition expected to launch in November. Plastic Odyssey will become a floating lab and recycling center, traveling 40,000 nautical miles and to 30 countries in the global South to help locals develop waste management solutions and learn about plastic alternatives.

The boat, once an oceanographic research vessel, is currently being turned into “a full-scale demonstrator of all solutions to any plastic pollution,” Bernard says. It won’t collect the plastic already at sea (though on board it will have a system to turn plastic into fuel, and one goal is to stop at Henderson Island, a deserted island in the South Pacific that is full of trash, and collect plastic from there to power the vessel). Instead, the team will work to prevent plastic from entering the ocean from these spots on land, helping people find solutions for the plastic waste they do have and can’t recycle. Plastic Odyssey’s partners include Greentech Innovation and the Global Partnership on Marine Litter, among other institutions, as well as businesses like L’Occitane and French bank Crédit Agricole.

Plastic Odyssey’s goal, Bernard says, is to “clean up the past and build the future. . . . We don’t want to keep on going with this business as usual. We want to showcase and promote solutions that can end the consumption of plastic, or at least reduce it.”

Pivet's plastic phone case could biodegrade within 2 years

Most plastics take hundreds of years to decompose. This one, from case maker Pivet, harnesses the power of hungry microbes.

Michael Pratt doesn’t want to change the way you take out the trash. Instead, he wants to change what happens to trash when it ends up in a landfill or the middle of the ocean.

Pratt is the founder of Pivet, a new company that makes smartphone cases. You might think it’s a crowded field, however, not only is Pivet a Black-owned business in an industry that has shown little progress with diversity, but its plastic cases are also unusual. Unlike most plastics that take hundreds of years to decompose, Pivet’s cases can biodegrade in around two years, according to the company.

The plastic in Pivet’s cases is embedded with a proprietary material called Toto-Toa. This material is comprised of natural and non-toxic ingredients, but Pivet wouldn’t specify those ingredients as it’s currently seeking intellectual property protection. This mixture purportedly speeds up the natural biodegradation process by attracting micro-organisms when the case enters microbe-rich environments, like landfills or oceans. (No, it won’t start to biodegrade when you’re still using the case.) These microbes colonize on the surface of the case and then break the plastic down into its raw components.

“We don’t think that plastic is bad in general,” says Pratt. “We think what happens to plastic in its end of life is where the problem is. When we’re done with it, we have no idea how to properly dispose of it without harming the planet.”

New Materials

In the US, more than 90 percent of plastic is never recycled. So instead of simply making a recyclable phone case or one made with recycled materials, Pratt and his team developed the Toto-Toa material to avoid placing the burden of recycling on the consumer. Buyers can throw out the case as normal when it’s no longer needed without worrying about harming the environment to the same degree.

Pivet biodegradable phone case — Pivet’s case, which the company claims should biodegrade in as little as two years.

Photograph: Pivet

“We went after what we call the 90 percent problem instead of the 10 percent problem,” Pratt says. “Everyone has a phone or two and everyone’s protecting that extremely expensive device. We’re trying to create a solution here that allows consumers to continue the behavior they already have, but now make what they’re doing an eco-friendly solution instead of changing consumer behavior.” If you prefer to go the more responsible route and drop it into a recycling bin instead of the garbage, Pratt says the cases are still recyclable.

Wilhelm Marschall, Pivet’s chief technology officer who has been researching the Toto-Toa material for the past four years, says it has been validated by Intertek, an international product testing and certification company, and has been tested to the ASTM D5511 and ISO 15985 standard test methods. These laboratory tests reproduced landfill conditions and found that after six months, a little more than 25 percent of the Toto-Toa-embedded thermoplastic polyurethane and polycarbonate, respectively, biodegraded.

“The test data shows a consistent trend in biodegradation and if we take that trend and extrapolate it, we are able to predict that in a landfill environment, the material should fully biodegrade in under two years,” Marschall says.

Better yet, Marschall says that unlike some compostable plastics like polylactic acid (PLA) or polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), the Toto-Toa material doesn’t require a controlled environment to start biodegrading. And as Toto-Toa is bonded with the plastic, he claims the material doesn’t leave microplastics behind after the biodegradation process. Microplastics are everywhere, from the ocean and rainfall to humans and even babies, though it’s unclear exactly how harmful the pollutants are to our health.

Ocean Spotlight

To highlight the Toto-Toa material and its eco-friendly benefits, Pivet is partnering with The Ocean Agency, a non-profit organization that promotes ocean conservancy, and whose work is highlighted in the Netflix documentary, Chasing Coral. Starting today with World Ocean Day, a portion of every Ocean Blue Pivet Aspect case sold will go to the agency to support ocean conservation.

It’s a part of a broader outreach initiative from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development that kicked off this year, of which The Ocean Agency is a partner. The initiative, better known as the Ocean Decade, aims to foster and strengthen ocean research, conservation, collaboration, and management to encourage sustainable use of its resources and reverse the ocean’s declining health.

“The idea is to put a spotlight on the ocean—it’s the biggest global issue with the least support—at a governmental level in terms of sustainable development goals,” says Richard Vevers, founder and CEO of The Ocean Agency. “It’s really about raising awareness and support for action, especially at the government level.”

The Ocean Agency isn’t your typical charity. It partners with businesses to raise awareness for ocean conservation, like its 2014 Street View project with Google, which brought specialized 360-degree cameras underwater to capture coral reefs in stunning detail for anyone to view. By partnering with brands, Vevers says the agency is able to fund its various programs, such as raising ocean literacy, campaigning for ocean protection, and developing new camera technology for surveilling water environments.

“Companies have the power, they have the audience,” he says. “It’s really when you get brands on board that governments take notice. That’s why it’s so important that conservation organizations work with business. Often it’s seen that you can’t work with business because business is a problem and I absolutely believe that is totally incorrect. Business is where innovation happens; business is where the influence happens. If we’re going to have mainstream support, we’re going to need to work with business.”

Pivet’s iPhone 12 Aspect case uses the Toto-Toa material and its new Ocean Blue color is inspired by corals that glow blue, yellow, or purple to survive underwater heatwaves due to climate change. Later this year and in the years following, Pivet plans to release more Ocean Blue cases and products while continuing to donate a portion of the proceeds to The Ocean Agency.

Some Skepticism

Biodegradable plastics and microbes that consume plastics are a hot research area, and Pivet is far from the only company working on solutions. Most recently, a startup called Polymateria created a plastic cling film, intended for uses like packaging, that can break down within a year and also be recycled. In 2020, researchers discovered super-enzymes that can degrade plastic bottles six times more quickly than before.

“The technology has been around for a long time, but through testing, I’ve managed to find the right balance of ingredients and the right balance of plastics,” Marschall says. “You can’t just make any plastic biodegrade, you have to tailor the ingredients or the technology to a specific plastic type. It’s like baking a cake. Everyone’s got the same ingredients, but because of your ratios and know-how, you can have a cake that tastes better than somebody else’s cake.”

The Intertek lab results may have successfully shown degradation in landfill-like environments, but Marschall says the company is still in the process of finding testing companies that run saltwater tests. He theorizes the material will still biodegrade, though the process will take longer—especially if the case moves around a lot in the ocean.

However, Kartik Chandran, an environmental microbiology researcher at Columbia University, says to take Pivet’s lab results with a grain of salt. His reason? Real-life landfill conditions are far less conducive than an idealized lab environment.

“It doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s possible these materials are biodegradable,” Chandran says. ”But to use those numbers from ideal lab testing conditions, I don’t think that’s appropriate.” Still, Chandran says Pivet’s lab-test biodegradation numbers are a good sign. “At the very least I’d say testing would have to be done under somewhat more representative conditions.”

What confounds Chandran a little more is Marschall’s claim that the case’s biodegradation would leave no microplastics at the end of the process, particularly in the ocean.

“Let’s say the case’s surfaces are colonized by microorganisms,” Chandran says. “They are going to start consuming the material, and the breakdown would cause a reduction in the particle size. That involves breakdown into smaller particles, during which it could very well be feasible that micro and nanoscale materials would be released. I just don’t get the jump of biodegradation to the non-release of microplastics.”

Wolfgang Zimmermann, a researcher of enzyme-related technologies at the University of Leipzig, Germany, says polycarbonate and TPU are very hard to biodegrade, but even if Pivet has discovered a material that can do it, he’s confused as to why it’s being utilized in phone cases first.

“Everybody’s looking for such a material,” Zimmermann says. “If they really came up with an interesting material, why restrict it to phone cases? You would go for the packaging industry and everybody would welcome it.” He quipped that making a bamboo cellphone case would be more environmentally friendly than a plastic case that still requires a microbe-filled environment to biodegrade.

Biodegradable plastics aren’t new—Chandran highlighted how Discover unveiled a biodegradable material for its credit cards in 2009. And Zimmermann says plastics such as the aforementioned PLA can do the job, though they have many downsides. For example, PLA can only biodegrade in industrial composting plants under the right conditions. The quality is also inferior to petroleum-based plastics—the material is brittle—and it’s more expensive to produce.

Both Zimmermann and Chandran acknowledge that if Pivet’s claims are accurate, the company is moving in the right direction. Researching and developing new kinds of biodegradable plastics is one of two steps to reduce the world’s ballooning plastic pollution problem, according to Zimmermann. The other? Increasing the amount of plastic we recycle.

Pratt says that Pivet eventually plans to use plastic collected from the ocean and other sources to create a “negative waste” phone case. Zimmermann casts doubt on this approach as ocean plastics usually contain polyethylene and polypropylene, which are reusable but very difficult to biodegrade. More alarming, at least to Chandran, is the generalized approach Pivet is taking in trying not to change consumer behavior.

“If you were to be told there’s this magic plastic-based product now that is entirely biodegradable in the environment, you know what that’s going to do right? Everybody’s going to throw plastic into their trashcan,” Chandran says. “The unintended consequences need to be considered.”

Regardless, Pivet’s approach could inspire other accessory makers to explore other materials or to pour money into research for biodegradable plastics. As Zimmermann put it, at least it’s “better than plastic.”

“You can be both eco-friendly and concerned about the environment and still capitalist and still profitable,” Pratt says. “You just actually have to care and really want to do it. We started Pivet with the whole intention of doing stuff like this, and be able to make solutions that actually change the world around us.”

Your clothes spew microfibers before they’re even clothes

The clothing supply chain releases some 265 million pounds of microfibers that wash into the environment each year.

You probably know by now that when you wash a load of synthetic clothes, like yoga pants or moisture-wicking sweatshirts, tiny bits of them tear loose and flush out to a wastewater treatment facility, which then pumps them out to sea. A single load of laundry releases perhaps millions of these microfibers (technically a subspecies of microplastics, defined as bits smaller than 5 millimeters). So it’s no wonder that scientists are finding the particles everywhere they look, from the deepest seas to what’s no longer a pristine Arctic.

And now it turns out that your clothes are polluting the planet with microplastic before they’re even clothes. A new report from the Nature Conservancy picks apart the textile supply chain—from the manufacturer who makes synthetic yarn from little pellets of plastic, to the factory that stitches together the clothes—to estimate that this pre-consumer process releases 265 million pounds of microfibers each year. That’s the equivalent of one full T-shirt escaping into the environment for every 500 that come off the production line.

These microfiber emissions could grow by over 50 percent in the next decade, as the business of synthetic textiles continues to boom. “Almost all of us, every single day, wake up, reach into a drawer or into our closet, and put on something that at least in part is made from synthetic textiles,” says Tom Dempsey, director of the Oceans Program at the Nature Conservancy of California and a coauthor of the new report. “We have a real problem, not just in capturing these microfibers pre-consumer, as well as in our homes and wastewater facilities, but also in how to dispose of the microfibers we do capture.”

Treatment facilities actually catch between 83 and 99.9 percent of microfibers flowing out of our washing machines and the factories that make synthetic clothing. But humanity is producing such astounding quantities of the stuff that even catching 99.9 percent isn’t good enough. Oodles of them are able to escape filtering and end up in the environment. In the case of clothing factories, “wet processes” like the dyeing of fabrics and the prewashing of finished clothes in enormous machines create microfiber-rich wastewater, which is then sent to a treatment facility. Some of the microfibers get stuck in the solid human waste that these facilities turn into “sludge,” which is then slathered on agricultural fields as fertilizer. One 2016 paper calculated that by doing so, North Americans could be loading their fields with up to 330,000 tons of microplastics each year. “I think of that as just a big catch-and-release program for microfibers,” Dempsey says.

And sludgy microplastics aren’t staying on those fields. When soils dry out, winds scour the dirt and blow microfibers around the world. So much microplastic is swirling around the atmosphere that each year the equivalent of 120 million plastic bottles is falling just on 11 national parks and other protected areas in the western US. (Plastic rain is the new acid rain.) Additionally, the treated water from our washing machines and textile mills, complete with microfibers that eluded filtering, gets pumped out to sea, where currents transport the particles around the globe.

Recently, scientists have been doing controlled experiments to show how variables like detergent and temperature influence how many microfibers a household washing machine shakes loose. But the textile pre-consumer process hasn’t been studied until now. “The production phase is still this real black box,” says microplastics scientist Lisa Erdle, manager of research and innovation at the 5 Gyres Institute, which advocates for action on ocean plastic pollution. “We know that there are higher microfiber emissions for new garments compared to old. So it definitely is not a surprise that the pre-consumer textile manufacturing phase could be a major source of emissions.”

But why worry about invisible little bits of plastic escaping into the environment? Because microfibers (and microplastics in general) have thoroughly infiltrated Earth’s ecosystems. Just as a sea turtle might choke on a big piece of plastic like a shopping bag, so too might small animals, like the planktonic creatures that make up the base of the oceanic food web, have their digestive systems clogged with tiny plastics. And when microfibers soak in water, they leach their component chemicals. While it’s still too early to know the extent of the impact these chemicals have on marine species, scientists worry that they could be harmful for any number of them.

In fairness to synthetic microfibers, natural fibers aren’t faultless here either. “There’s a whole range of chemicals that are applied even to natural materials to give them different properties,” says Erdle. Clothing made from them is treated with dyes, of course, but also other substances to impart durability or waterproofing.

Scientists like Erdle are scrambling to better understand the effects of microplastics, especially when it comes to potential threats to human health. Researchers consistently find the particles in shellfish and other seafood that people consume. They’re in our water and in the air you’re breathing right now. One study earlier this year calculated that adults and children consume an average of 883 and 553 particles a day, respectively.

But the good news is that when it comes to pre-consumer microfiber pollution, there are actually business incentives for the clothing industry to clean up its act. Many factories actually treat their own wastewater in order to recycle it. If they can also sequester those microfibers and dispose of them properly (i.e., not spread them on fields), they can be socially and fiscally responsible. “What companies are finding is that by doing this, they actually save on water costs and utility bills that are associated with sewage,” says Sam Israelit, chief sustainability officer at the management consultancy Bain & Company and a coauthor of the new report. “And that reduction pays for the investments.”

“If we were able to scale these solutions across the sector,” adds Dempsey, “we think we could reduce the upstream microfiber loss by something approaching—or maybe even greater than—90 percent relative to the current loss rates.”

And not to shift the blame and responsibility to you, the consumer, but there are a few little things you can do too. You can wash your clothes in special bags or use a washing machine ball that grabs the fibers. There’s even a special filter called a Lint LUV-R that you can attach to your washing machine, which one study showed captures 87 percent of fibers.

But at the end of the day, we just need clothes that don’t shed so many damn fibers. Indeed, some clothing manufacturers are exploring potential innovations that would reduce shedding, such as using different kinds of materials or spinning synthetic yarn in different ways. “It’s a fine balance to reduce fiber loss without compromising on the performance that’s required out of that material,” says Sophie Mather, executive director of the Microfibre Consortium, a nonprofit founded by the outdoor gear industry to explore solutions to fiber fragmentation. (The consortium wasn’t involved in this new report, but it is collaborating with the Nature Conservancy on a road map for research into fiber release from textiles.)

A waterproof jacket needs to stay waterproof, for example, and stretchy yoga pants need to expand without tearing. “It’s not just about slapping a chemical finish on and saying, ‘We put this treatment on it. It’s going to stick the fibers in, and they’re not going to come out,’” says Mather. “I think that’s a very short-sighted view. It’s more about really understanding the intricacies of how that fabric has been put together in the first place.”

It’s not likely that all of Earth’s people will suddenly go back to wearing only all-natural fibers like wool and cotton—synthetic materials are too useful. But the microfiber pollution problem is also too big to not tackle immediately. “I think the great upside here is that, unlike so many other conservation challenges, solutions really do exist right now,” says Dempsey. “The power of some of these brands, and the potential for some of these brands to make change within their own supply chain, is massive.”

A 'Bubble Barrier' is trapping plastic waste before it can get into the sea

“The Bubble Barrier” was developed as a simple way to stop plastic pollution flowing from waterways into the ocean. An air compressor sends air through a perforated tube running diagonally across the bottom of the canal, creating a stream of bubbles that traps waste and guides it to a catchment system.

It traps 86% of the trash that would otherwise flow to the River IJ and further on to the North Sea, according to Philip Ehrhorn, co-founder and chief technology officer of The Great Bubble Barrier, the Dutch social enterprise behind the system.

Commissioned by the municipality of Amsterdam and the region’s water authority, the Bubble Barrier was installed in October 2019 in under five hours.

Ehrhorn says the idea is to catch plastic without having a physical barrier like a net or boom blocking the river, which could disrupt aquatic life or interfere with shipping.

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Trash is lifted to surface, and guided to a catchment system.

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To minimize noise, the compressor is located 50 meters away from the barrier, in a repurposed shipping container, and is powered by Amsterdam’s renewable energy.

Ehrhorn says that while the bubble curtain can trap plastics down to 1 millimeter in size, the catchment system only retains objects that are 10 millimeters and larger. Small drifting aquatic life can get caught in the bubble curtain’s current, but with time is able to pass through the catchment system, according to Ehrhorn. He adds that an independent third party is currently assessing the movement of fish around the Bubble Barrier.

‘Like a jacuzzi’

With a background in naval architecture and ocean engineering, Ehrhorn, who is from Germany, first conceived the Bubble Barrier when he spent a semester abroad in Australia, studying environmental engineering. At a wastewater treatment plant, he saw how oxygen bubbles were used to break down organic matter.

“It was like a jacuzzi,” says Ehrhorn. “And what I noticed is that some of the plastic that people had flushed down the toilet was collecting in one corner.” This observation sparked his thesis and later the technology behind the Bubble Barrier.

'Polar Pod' floating laboratory will flip onto its side and drift around Antarctica to research the Southern Ocean

Unbeknownst to Ehrhorn, three Dutch women were working on the exact same idea in Amsterdam. Anne Marieke Eveleens, Saskia Studer and Francis Zoet were at a bar one evening discussing plastic pollution when they looked at the bubbles in their beer glasses and inspiration struck.

By chance, a friend of Ehrhorn’s saw their pitch video for a competition inviting solutions for removing plastic from the environment.

“We connected and found that we have the same vision and mission,” remembers Ehrhorn. “So I handed in my thesis and moved to the Netherlands the next day.” Together, the four turned a simple idea into a fully fledged Bubble Barrier pilot in the River IJssel.

Bubbles guide trash to the catchment system, bottom right.

The plastic problem

Up to 80% of ocean plastic is thought to come from rivers and coastlines. Ehrhorn says much of the plastic in Amsterdam’s Westerdok canal comes from trash bags that local residents leave outside their homes. If the bags tear, wind and rain can carry trash into the canal.

Read: Could mealworms help solve our plastic crisis?

Globally, 11 million metric tons of plastic waste flows into the oceans every year, where it can suffocate and entangle some aquatic species. Plastic debris less than five millimeters in length, known as microplastics, can also affect marine life. Often mistaken for food, microplastics are ingested and have been found in zooplankton, fish, invertebrates and mammalian digestive systems.

Seabird conservation ecologist Stephanie B. Borrelle is the Marine and Pacific Regional Coordinator for BirdLife International. Her research on plastic pollution has found that even with “ambitious commitments currently set by governments,” we could release 53 million metric tons of plastic waste into the world’s freshwater and marine ecosystems by 2030.

As a member of the Plastic Pollution Emissions Working Group, a team of self-described “scientists, policy wonks and conservation practitioners,” Borrelle has also researched the Bubble Barrier.

“It was a really interesting one for us to look at, mostly because other types of barriers placed into aquatic environments can be a bit problematic in the way they interact with ecological functioning and animals moving through that system,” she says.

Borrelle has some reservations about the technology; she questions how suitable the system would be for wide rivers and in developing economies, with a pump that needs continuous electricity and occasional maintenance, and she notes that heavy bits of plastic may not be lifted up by the bubbles.

Read: How NASA technology can help save whale sharks — the world’s largest fish

“Also, if you’ve got a large amount of traffic going through, that’s going to disrupt the plastic accumulation,” Borrelle says, adding that boats plowing through the barrier could potentially drag plastic along.

“There are certain limitations, but as I see it, it’s an important part of the toolbox we have to address plastic that’s already in the environment,” she says. “The thing about plastic pollution is that there is no one single solution to fixing it. Once it’s in the environment, it’s about trying to get it from every angle you possibly can.”

For the moment, the Great Bubble Barrier team works with Amsterdam’s water authority and the Plastic Soup Foundation NGO to analyze what kind of plastic has been caught and identify its sources, to help develop new policies around plastic waste.

Amsterdam’s water authority empties the catchment system’s 1.8-meter by 2-meter basket three times a week. The contents are sent to a waste processor for sorting, and suitable materials are recycled. Ehrhorn says that the pandemic means they haven’t been able to quantify how much plastic the Bubble Barrier has caught to date.

The startup, which is for-profit, plans to install more Bubble Barriers across the Netherlands, in Portugal and in Indonesia. It says the installation cost and energy use depends on the location and the flow of the river.

Beyond keeping plastic from our oceans, the system could help change attitudes. Because the waste inside the catchment system is easily visible to passersby, Ehrhorn believes it helps people realize how much waste is ending up in our waterways; in this way, the barrier also acts as an educational tool to discourage waste and littering.

“It concentrates on the trash that would otherwise flow off unseen and underwater even,” he says. “It literally brings to the surface, [that] which was otherwise never seen.”

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the River IJ and location of the IJsell.

Boris Johnson calls Cornish ocean cleaning couple 'an inspiration'

A Cornish couple who have collected hundreds of kilos of litter from the sea have been told by Prime Minister Boris Johnson that they inspire him.

The couple have been awarded a Points of Light award by the Prime Minister in recognition of their dedication to keeping Cornwall’s coastline pristine.

Through their organisation Clean Ocean Sailing, Steve Green and Monika Hertlová host eco-sailing expeditions around Cornwall and beyond, raising awareness of pollution in our oceans and helping to clean up our waters by collecting plastic waste from remote areas of coastline.

Along with their team of volunteers, they hold recycling plastic workshops and also provide sailing training, as well as opportunities to join their crew and accompany them on regular clean up expeditions to areas of coastline that are largely inaccessible by foot.

Over the last year, with the help of their 113-year old ship Annette that they restored 13 years ago, they have continued to run sailing trips where pandemic restrictions have allowed and have retrieved hundreds of kilos of litter from the sea.

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Clean Ocean Sailing is based in Gweek near Helston.

In his letter to Steve and Monika, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “I was inspired to learn of your sailing expeditions on your lovingly restored ship ‘The Annette’ to collect hundreds of kilos of litter.

A Clean Ocean Sailing expedition
(Image: Clean Ocean Sailing)

“I am proud that the UK has protected more than 4.3 million square kilometres of the world’s ocean and I am delighted that you are playing your part in preserving our marine life with your pirate ship patrols.

“As we mark World Oceans Day, and look forward to the G7 Summit, let me thank you for your fantastic work to preserve the natural beauty of Cornwall’s waters and coastline.”

The accolade was awarded on World Oceans Day, ahead of the G7 summit being hosted in Cornwall this week which will see the Prime Minister call on international leaders to step up action to tackle climate change and protect our oceans and natural environment.

The UK Government has also announced new plans to increase protections for England’s marine environments through a pilot scheme to designate sites as Highly Protected Marine Areas, alongside wider efforts to drive global action to protect our oceans. Under UK leadership, 80 countries have now signed up to an international target to protect at least 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

The Prime Minister’s UK daily Point of Light award was first launched in April 2014 to recognise outstanding individuals making a difference in their communities. To date, 1653 individuals have received awards, ranging from pilots flying oxygen cylinders to India to teachers who set up online lessons during lockdown.

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