The future of food shopping might be plastic-free

Two years ago, efforts to kick the country’s plastic addiction were on fire. Municipalities around the country were implementing plastic bag taxes, while mainstream shoppers embraced reusable grocery bags and flocked to the bulk aisles for foods like beans and nuts.

However, all that came to a halt when stopping the spread of COVID-19 became the country’s top priority. Almost overnight, grocery stores closed their bulk-shopping sections, coffee shops stopped filling reusable coffee mugs, and individually wrapped everything took center stage.

Now, signs are emerging that the fight against plastic is getting back on track. One of the most notable of those signs came from Kroger last month, when the nation’s largest grocery chain announced it was expanding an online trial with Loop, an online platform for refillable packaging, to 25 Fred Meyer store locations in Portland, Oregon.

While consumer reuse models “got punched in the face” by the pandemic, Loop’s Tom Szaky said the demand is still there, and mainstream grocery stores are going to need to find a way to meet it.

Kroger plans to offer a separate Loop aisle in these stores. The products, which will include a mix of items in food and other categories, can be bought in glass containers or aluminum boxes. When they’re empty, customers return the containers to the store to be cleaned and used again. Originally scheduled for this fall, the launch has been postponed to early 2022 because of supply chain challenges, but a spokesperson said they will continue to work with their brand partners to consider items that can be added to expand the program over time.

The partnership is a heartening sign after a tough year, said Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle, the company behind the Loop initiative. “Overall, I was very worried that the pandemic would shift the conversation away from waste,” Szaky told Civil Eats. “It didn’t slow down. In fact, the environmental movement’s only gotten stronger.” While consumer reuse models—reusable grocery bags, refillable coffee mugs—“got punched in the face,” he said, it was mainly because retailers stopped allowing them for safety reasons.

And while Loop’s growth was slowed by the pandemic, it was for the same factors that upended many companies’ plans—not because interest was drying out, said Szaky. The demand is still there, he adds, and he’s bullish on the idea that mainstream grocery stores are going to need to find a way to meet it.

The Kroger–Loop partnership could be the first true test of this theory. It’s the latest in a steady string of new partnerships for Loop, but until now all of the company’s U.S. packaging partners have been in other categories, such as cosmetics and cleaning products. Loop does work with a number of food companies outside the country, including Woolworths in New Zealand, Tesco in the U.K., Aeon in Japan, and Carrefour in France. Szaky says they’re also working with a grocery store in France to bring reusable packaging to fish and meat. Loop, which also works with Walgreens in the U.S. and fast food chains McDonald’s, Burger King, and Canada-based Tim Hortons, expects nearly 200 stores and restaurants worldwide to be selling products in reusable packages by the first quarter of 2022, according to the Associated Press, up from a dozen stores in Paris at the end of last year. Some experts in the space are convinced that more will follow.

“It’s just a matter of time before other companies come on board,” says Colleen Henn, founder of All Good Goods, a plastic-free pantry subscription business based in San Clemente, California that sells food in reusable glass jars and paper bags. “Once somebody does it, people start to see, ‘Oh, avoiding single-use plastic is] not that complicated.’ Because it’s really not.”

She would know. Henn didn’t spend the last year adapting her business; she first launched her seemingly improbable business model during—and really because of—the pandemic. She had grown frustrated that the country’s waste-reduction initiatives were falling by the wayside. “I went online and tried to find a store that shipped food to your door without plastic, and I couldn’t find it. So I created it,” said Henn.

All Good Goods specializes in pantry goods like beans and pasta, nuts and dried fruit, and growth has been strong and steady since the launch. She increasingly fields phone calls from other stores looking for advice on how to avoid plastic in their operations, and as she engages with more companies, she’s optimistic that she will have a trickle-up effect within the industry. “I reach out to brands [we’re considering carrying] and see what their wholesale options are; if they’re not paper-based, if they’re not backyard-biodegradable, we move on,” said Henn.

26,000 tons of plastic waste, PPE from COVID pandemic pollute ocean

Some 8 million metric tons of pandemic-related plastic waste have been created by 193 countries, about 26,000 tons of which are now in the world’s oceans, where they threaten to disrupt marine life and further pollute beaches, a recent study found.

The findings, by a group of researchers based in China and the United States, were published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Concerns had been raised since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that there would be a boom in plastic pollution amid heightened use of personal protective equipment and rapid growth in online commerce. The study is among the first to quantify the scale of plastic waste linked to the health crisis.

The cost of the increase in plastic waste has been keenly felt by wildlife. As of July, there were 61 recorded instances of animals being killed or disrupted by pandemic-linked plastic waste, according to a Dutch scientist-founded tracking project. Among the widely publicized examples are an American robin that was found wrapped up in a face mask in Canada and the body of a perch wrapped in the thumb of a disposable medical glove that was found by Dutch volunteers; National Geographic called the latter the first documented instance of a fish being killed by a glove.

Although only about 30 percent of all covid cases were detected in Asia as of late August, the region was responsible for 72 percent of global plastic discharge, the study found. The researchers said this was due to higher use of disposable protective equipment, as well as lower levels of waste treatment in countries such as China and India. By contrast, developed economies in North America and Europe that were badly hit by the coronavirus produced relatively little pandemic plastic waste.

The situation was worsened by the suspension or relaxation of restrictions on single-use plastic products globally. New York state’s ban on single-use plastic bags, which took effect in spring 2020, was only enforced that fall.

“Better management of medical waste in epicenters, especially in developing countries, is necessary,” the researchers wrote, while also calling for the development of more environmentally friendly materials.

“Governments should also mount public information campaigns not only regarding the proper collection and management of pandemic-related plastic waste , but also their judicial use,” said Von Hernandez, global coordinator of Break Free From Plastic, an advocacy group. “This includes advocating the use of reusable masks and PPEs for the general public … especially if one is not working in the front lines.”

Much plastic waste enters the world’s oceans via major rivers, according to the researchers, who found that the three waterways most polluted by pandemic-associated plastic were all in Asia: The Shatt al-Arab feeds into the Persian Gulf; the Indus River empties into the Arabian Sea; and the Yangtze River flows to the East China Sea.

“Given that the world is still grappling with COVID 19, we expect that the environmental and public health threats associated with pandemic related plastic waste would likely increase,

The study said that the leading contributor of plastic discharged into oceans was medical waste generated by hospitals, which accounted for over 70 percent of such pollution. Scraps of online shopping packaging were particularly high in Asia, though it had a relatively small impact on global discharge.

Modeling by the scientists indicates that the vast majority of plastic waste produced as a result of the pandemic will end up either on sea beds or beaches by the end of the century. In addition to becoming possible death traps for coastal animals, plastic buildup on beaches can increase the surrounding temperature, making the environment less hospitable to wildlife. And as plastic degrades over time, toxic chemicals may be released and moved up the food chain.

Most of us think supermarkets are responsible for plastic pollution

Garbage pile in trash dump or landfill. Pollution concept.

A pile of household waste at a landfill.

Most people believe supermarkets and manufacturers are to blame for plastic pollution, a survey has found. 

In 2019, UK supermarkets produced 896,853 tonnes of plastic packaging – a slight decrease of less than 2% from 2018, according to Greenpeace.

Supermarkets such as Waitrose have reduced plastic use and committed to increasing reusable packaging and unpacked ranges.

But a survey by retail app Ubamarket found that most British shoppers think not enough is being done.

Researchers found that 82% of shoppers believe the level of plastic packaging on food and drink products needs to be changed drastically.

Read more: A 1988 warning about climate change was mostly right

Meanwhile, 77% believe that it is supermarkets and manufacturers that are causing the most plastic pollution, while 57% think that plastic pollution is the greatest threat to the environment.

Will Broome, CEO and founder of Ubamarket, said: “While supermarkets have a long way to go, it is encouraging to see the use of single-use plastics beginning to be reduced in the UK.

“This is helping us as a society take major steps towards creating a more sustainable future for the food retail sector, and retail across the board.

“It is imperative that other retailers take heed of this and work quickly to establish their own sustainability goals and action plan.

“Implementing mobile technology is one effective way for retailers to get ahead of the curve – not only can it improve in-store efficiency and provide access to useful data for the retailer.”

Read more
Why economists worry that reversing climate change is hopeless
Melting snow in Himalayas drives growth of green sea slime visible from space

Broome said Ubamarket’s Plastic Alerts feature allows users to shop “according to the recyclability and environmental footprint of different products, and enables the customer to scan packaging for information on whether it can be widely recycled or not”.

Research published earlier this year found that thousands of rivers, including smaller ones, are responsible for 80% of plastic pollution worldwide.

Previously, researchers believed that 10 large rivers – such as the Yangtze in China – were responsible for the bulk of plastic pollution. 

In fact, 1,000 rivers, or 1% of all rivers worldwide, carry most plastic to the sea.

Therefore, areas such tropical islands are likely to be among the worst polluters, the researchers said.

Watch: Philippine recyclers turn plastic into sheds

About 26,000 tonnes of plastic Covid waste pollutes world’s oceans – study

Pollution

About 26,000 tonnes of plastic Covid waste pollutes world’s oceans – study

plastic gloves float in water

Increased demand for PPE has put pressure on an already out-of-control global problem, report finds

Mon 8 Nov 2021 15.00 EST

Plastic waste from the Covid-19 pandemic weighing 25,900 tonnes, equivalent to more than 2,000 double decker buses, has leaked into the ocean, research has revealed.

The mismanaged plastic waste, consisting of personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves, vastly exceeded the capability of countries to process it properly, researchers said.

Covid has made us use even more plastic – but we can reset | Christian Dunn
Read more

Since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 8.4m tonnes of plastic waste has been generated from 193 countries, according to the report, published on Monday.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics that intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem,” said Yiming Peng and Peipei Wu from Nanjing University, the authors of Magnitude and impact of pandemic-associated plastic waste published in the online journal PNAS.

“The released plastics can be transported over long distances in the ocean, encounter marine wildlife, and potentially lead to injury or even death,” they added.

A study in March presented the first case of a fish entrapped in a medical glove, encountered during a canal cleanup in Leiden, the Netherlands. In Brazil a PFF-2 protective mask was found in the stomach of a dead Magellanic penguin.

The scientists predicted that by the end of the century almost all pandemic-associated plastics will end up on either the seabed or on beaches.

The Chinese study found that 46% of the mismanaged plastic waste came from Asia, due to the high level of mask-wearing by individuals there, followed by Europe, 24%, and North and South America, 22%.

Graphic

Peng and Wu said their research suggested 87.4% of the excess waste was from hospitals, rather than from individual use. PPE usage by individuals contributed only 7.6% of the total, while packaging and test kits accounted for 4.7% and 0.3% respectively.

“Most of the plastic is from medical waste generated by hospitals that dwarfs the contribution from personal protection equipment and online-shopping package material,” they wrote.

“This poses a long-lasting problem for the ocean environment and is mainly accumulated on beaches and coastal sediments.”

The thousands of tonnes of masks, gloves, testing kits and face visors which leached into the oceans from the start of the pandemic up to August this year, were transported in 369 major rivers.

Graphic

Chief among these were Shatt al-Arab in south-eastern Iraq, which carried 5,200 tonnes of PPE waste to the ocean; the Indus river, which arises in western Tibet, carried 4,000 tonnes and the Yangtze river in China 3,700 tonnes. In Europe, the Danube carried the most plastic pandemic waste into the ocean: 1,700 tonnes.

The top 10 rivers accounted for 79% of pandemic plastic discharge, the top 20 for 91%, and the top 100 for 99%. About 73% of the discharge was from Asian rivers followed by European watercourses (11%), with minor contributions from other continents, the report said.

“These findings highlight the hotspot rivers and watersheds that require special attention in plastic waste management,” the authors said.

“We find a long-lasting impact of the pandemic-associated waste release in the global ocean. At the end of this century, the model suggests that almost all the pandemic-associated plastics end up in either the seabed (28.8%) or beaches (70.5%).”

The authors said the findings showed better medical waste management was needed in pandemic epicenters, especially in developing countries.

Topics

Reuse this content

Provocative eco-art exhibition in S.F. forces confrontations with climate change

Sea levels may be rising, but Ana Teresa Fernández and her bucket brigade are doing what they can to combat it.

Forming a 200-yard human chain on Ocean Beach, they drew 170 gallons out of the surf, hauled the sloshing saltwater off the beach and up to the old Cliff House restaurant, where it was carried into the dining room and muscled up a ladder to be poured into seven clear cylinders, all six-feet tall.

“It was a lot of fricking work. For the next three days I couldn’t lift my arms,” said Fernández, at the opening of “Lands End,” a provocative environmental art installation curated by the For-Site Foundation. Fernández’s contribution to the group show is called “On the Horizon. ” The seawater cylinders are intended to show exactly what a sea-level rise of six feet will look like.

“Kids on my crew were complaining about their arms being tired,” said Fernández, who had gathered 30 volunteers to wade into the cold water ahead of the free exhibition’s opening Saturday. “I told them sometimes art is painful.”

Not as painful as heat waves and hurricanes, however — and that is the point of “Lands End,” which involves 27 artists from around the world.

“We want to bring visitors’ attention to the very complex conversation around climate change,” said For-Site founder Cheryl Haines, noting that the show opened during COP26, the international climate conference in Glasgow. “We shouldn’t just leave this to government and industry to solve. There is also an individual responsibility to affect change in our own lives.”

“Lands End” is the first For-Site exhibition in four years and came about on offer from the National Park Service to activate public space that is available to lease to a long-term restaurant tenant. The agency offered up the entire building at Lands End, formerly called the Cliff House — 75,000 square feet on two levels including the kitchen, walk-in store rooms and the dining rooms with their spectacular view of Seal Rock and the crashing waves.

The space is free and open-ended until a lease is signed. For-Site jumped on it, greatly reducing its own prep time. Its installations are complex and usually take a year minimum to mount.

“We pulled this off in five months. Unprecedented,” announced Haines while standing atop a bench at the ribbon cutting for “Lands End.” A brass quartet from the Golden Gate Park Band provided atmospheric accompaniment.

The budget was $1 million, all raised from For-Site’s benefactors, with only a small fraction dedicated to travel for the artists. To have them flying in from all over with the attendant use of jet fuel would be hypocritical, the organizers thought, so many artists either shipped existing work already constructed, or with directions for construction.

Andy Goldsworthy, perhaps the most famous artist in For-Site’s stable of contributors, sent instructions for his piece, “Geophagia”, from his studio in Penfont, Scotland. Staff was delegated to assemble white clay tabletops for the empty vinyl booths and unused dining tables in the upper dining room. Already the slabs are cracking and separating, with pieces falling onto the floor, a metaphor for the ongoing California drought.

In the adjacent kitchen, Point Reyes artists Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang collected plastic debris on Kehoe Beach near Inverness and turned it into an assembly line of meals on plates awaiting delivery to Goldsworthy’s clay tables. The piece is titled “for here or to go” and it is so realistic, that some visitors to the opening mistook it for the lunch being served.

It was intentional: Fish eat the plastic and humans eat the fish, so we will end up eating the plastic one way or the other.

On the Horizon artist Fernández lives along the Great Highway and has previously mounted her water-filled pillars at Ocean Beach for one-day exhibits. Her piece at the Cliff House earned prime real estate in the lower dining room, where it seems suspended over the surf. A visitor can look through a glass cylinder and through the plate glass window behind it and see Seal Rock refracted in the water at eye-level. It’s the right place for contemplating the rising seas.

There will be plenty of space for doing it because only 49 visitors will be allowed at a time into the show, inside a facility that can hold hundreds. Timed-entry ticket reservations are recommended.

Fernández has not decided what to do with the sea water after the exhibition closes on March 27, 2022. She may call on her 30 volunteers to form a reverse bucket brigade.

“It is the people that make the piece,” she said. “They put the life into these pillars.”

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Twitter:@samwhitingsf

Living on Earth: Beyond the Headlines

Air Date: Week of November 5, 2021


stream/download this segment as an MP3 file

Some cement factories are collecting plastic waste from consumer goods businesses and landfills to use as fuel to fire their kilns, posing the risk of polluting air with toxic chemicals. (Photo: Xopolino on Wikimedia Commons)

This week, Host Bobby Bascomb talks with Peter Dykstra, an editor at Environmental Health News, about the public health hazards of cement kilns burning plastic waste as a source of fuel. And in California, Scripps Institution of Oceanography is building a 32,000-gallon simulated ocean to study the effects of climate change. Also, a trip back in time to November 1492 when native peoples introduced Christopher Columbus and his expedition to maize, which became a major food staple across the globe.

Transcript

BASCOMB: It’s time for a trip now Beyond the Headlines with Peter Dykstra. Peter’s an editor with Environmental Health News, that’s ehn.org, and DailyClimate.org. Hey there, Peter, what do you have for us this week?

DYKSTRA: Hi, Bobby. There’s an investigative story from Reuters. They’ve looked into cement kilns, cement kilns are everywhere, especially in booming cities in the developing world. They’re responsible for 7% of all the greenhouse gases emitted. So that’s a huge chunk. And right now, those cement kilns are looking for a new source of fuel to fire up the kilns and they’ve hit upon plastic waste. And that can be a bigger problem than any problem they may be solving.

BASCOMB: Hmm. Well, that makes sense. I mean, plastic is made with fossil fuels. So it’s, you know, pretty energy rich and there’s so much plastic waste out there. It’s free, or maybe even in some places might pay to have it, you know, burned like that. But of course, you know, it’s not too good for air quality now, is it?

DYKSTRA: Right, and there are consumer firms that are funding projects to send their plastic trash to cement plants. It’s a dangerous idea, given the amount of carcinogenic fumes that exists in those plastics, now burning straight, from, in many cases, the developed world to the developing world, to all of our lungs.

Cement factories are burning plastic to fire up massive cement kilns like the one pictured here. (Photo: LinguisticDemographer on Wikimedia Commons)

BASCOMB: Yeah, I mean, looking at things like dioxins, heavy metals, carcinogens. I mean, it’s pretty, pretty toxic stuff.

DYKSTRA: And it’s been said that burning plastics in cement kilns doesn’t help lessen the landfill problem. It simply transfers the landfills from being on the ground to in the skies.

BASCOMB: Well, that certainly is a big problem. Well, what else do you have for us this week Peter?

DYKSTRA: It’s kind of a weird sci-fi sort of project. The Scripps Institute out in San Diego is building a 32,000 gallon tank that has a wind tunnel on top of it. And with all that, they hope to synthesize what happens in the ocean, and how the oceans can affect climate change.

BASCOMB: How will they do that?

DYKSTRA: There are wind currents brought in, water currents introduced mechanically into this tank, and we’ll see what happens as climate change begins to alter both wind and wave and current patterns. It’ll give a little bit more of an insight as to what lies ahead in our future, as climate change really takes hold in our oceans.

The surface layer of the ocean can tell scientists a lot when looking at climate change. That is one aspect researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography will study in their simulated ocean. (Photo: NOAA on Wikimedia Commons)

BASCOMB: So they can simulate climate change in this pool and sort of speculate what we’re going to be looking at then.

DYKSTRA: Right, and thanks for using the word pool because 32,000 gallons sounds like a lot, but it’s actually about 5% of what it takes to fill in a competition sized Olympic swimming pool.

BASCOMB: So it’s really not all that big then. It’s amazing what they can do in such a small space.

DYKSTRA: It is. Scientists can have fun with it and can give us some information that’ll help guide us through a particularly dangerous time in our environmental future.

BASCOMB: Indeed, well, what do you have for us from the history books this week?

DYKSTRA: November 5, 1492. And we all know what happened in 1492. Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And on his subsequent stop to the Bahamas, Columbus went to Cuba in early November, and he was introduced to maize. That corn was brought back to Europe and has since become a global staple for both humans and livestock.

BASCOMB: Well, yeah, there’s so much to that. I mean, that the Columbian Exchange brought tomatoes and potatoes to Europe. I mean, imagine Italian food without tomatoes, but before that, they made do I guess.

Maize has become a food staple around the world after it was introduced from the New World to the Old World in 1492. (Photo: Balaram Mahalder on Wikimedia Commons)

DYKSTRA: And even though Columbus was a tip of the spear, coming from Europe, in the genocide of native peoples in the West, one other thing that was a gift so to speak, from North America to Europe was of course, tobacco. So it’s feed ya and kill ya, Mr. Columbus.

BASCOMB: All right. Well, thanks Peter. Peter Dykstra is an editor with Environmental Health News. That’s ehn.org and DailyClimate.org. We’ll talk to you again real soon.

DYKSTRA: Okay, Bobby. Thanks a lot. Talk to you soon.

BASCOMB: And there’s more on these stories on the Living on Earth website. That’s loe dot org.

 

Links

Reuters | “Trash and Burn: Big Brands Stoke Cement Kilns with Plastic Waste as Recycling Falters”

WIRED | “This Groundbreaking Simulator Generates A Huge Indoor Ocean”

Read more about the Columbian Exchange

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NJ legislation partially banning plastic straws now in effect

As of Nov. 4, all New Jersey restaurants and food service establishments are banned from providing single-use plastic straws unless specifically requested by customers, according to legislation passed by Gov. Phil Murphy and other lawmakers last year.

The ban is part of a statewide move to reduce plastic pollution originating from food and retail businesses.

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The next phase of the plan to cut reliance on single-use plastics is scheduled to come into effect on May 4, 2022, when businesses will no longer be allowed to give customers carryout plastic bags or polystyrene food packaging. Convenience and grocery stores larger than 2,500 square feet will also be fined if found distributing paper bags.

Stores, food service businesses, and grocery stores will receive a warning for the first offense, monetary fines up to $1,000 per day of violation for a repeat offense, and fines ranging up to $5,000 per day for the third offense. Gov. Murphy’s office described this legislation as “the strongest such ban in the country,” according to NBC News.

New Jersey uses 4.4 billion plastic bags annually, contributing to the severity of the plastic problem.

“Single-use plastic straws are one of the most publicly recognized ocean pollutants, causing massive numbers of sea turtle deaths. Even though straws don’t account for the largest proportion of plastic pollution, they represent a proportion that can easily be mitigated,” Marissa Bornn ’25, a member of the Princeton Conservation Society, told The Daily Princetonian.

The legislation initially proposed banning plastic straws entirely. However, disability rights advocates prompted a transformation of the ban into a partial restriction, allowing for straws to be provided on request.

The law was thus modified so that stores will be “required to keep an adequate supply of single-use plastic straws,” and further noted that stores can continue to sell packages of single-use plastic straws and beverages that are “pre-packaged by the manufacturer with a single-use plastic straw.”

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“[T]aking steps to limit the amount of waste produced on campus has been an important part of Campus Dining’s sustainability efforts for years,” Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ He explained that in 2018, Campus Dining eliminated self-service plastic straws and plastic takeaway bags, and replaced plastic utensils with plant-based utensils.

“At that time, sales of water in plastic bottles was eliminated, and single-serve water is sold today in easily recycled aluminum cans,” Hotchkiss added. “Styrofoam products have not been used in Campus Dining for more than 20 years.”

He noted, however, that “nationwide supply-chain problems have temporarily limited availability of some of these more sustainable products.”

COVID-19 pandemic-associated disruptions have curbed other states’ moves towards sustainability as well. In April 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom temporarily suspended the 2016 ban on plastic bags for a two-month period.

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New Jersey is not the first state to take such measures. Legislation to dissuade the use of single-use plastics was first introduced in California, where stores were prohibited from distributing plastic bags and instructed to charge customers at least 10 cents for paper bags. New York, Vermont, and Connecticut followed suit with various levels of restrictions, and New Jersey was the ninth state to prohibit throw-away plastics.

Other states have taken contrasting approaches: Florida has preemption laws that prevent local counties or cities from banning particular plastics and foam.

As of Nov. 7, Wawa has updated its store policy in accordance with the legislation. Signs near coffee counters now read: “Please ask a register associate if you need a straw.”

Tara Agarwal / The Daily Princetonian

However, establishments on Nassau Street appear to be still implementing these changes. Junbi, a bubble tea store in town, was recently seen distributing plastic straws alongside customers’ tea without special request.

“We’re going to need a lot of help reaching out to our merchants, especially our small merchants for whom English is not necessarily their first language, to make sure that they understand the rules,” said Councilmember and Environmental Commission liaison Eve Niedergang GS ’85 in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

According to the legislature, exceptions on certain plastics like long-handled polystyrene foam spoons, small cups of two ounces or less, trays for raw meat and food pre-packaged in polystyrene by the manufacturer will remain in place until May 4, 2024. The law will be enforced by the Department of Environmental Protection along with other entities and will overwrite individual county or city policies.

Tara Agarwal is a news contributor for The Daily Princetonian. She can be reached at ta3150@princeton.edu.

News contributor Charlie Roth contributed reporting.

Meet the siblings fighting plastic pollution

image003-2.jpeg

Can you both tell us about your organization, Hidden Plastic, and what inspired you to start an environmental initiative?

Zara: Hidden Plastic educates people through a series of dark comedy videos on some of the problems, but also solutions, to the global micro-plastics issue. We started our journey in the summer of 2020 when we first joined Ocean Heroes Virtual Bootcamp (OHvBC). Part of the challenge for OHvBC was to start your own campaign, so we thought about what problems we should focus on. We realised that micro-plastics are very important but not as well addressed. We also thought we could focus on plastic that is ‘hidden’ from view, such as ‘recycling’ that is actually just sent overseas to countries that then can’t handle the waste, or microscopic plastics seeping into Nature and our food supply. 

Ashton: Microplastics are a big problem. They are everywhere: we inhale them, they’re in our food, and they’re in our water supplies. But small amounts add up, which means in one week, we ingest approximately one credit card worth of plastic. We started Hidden Plastic to raise more awareness about this problem by spreading information through our videos, which are funny & slightly surreal so people watch them again & again. 

None

Zara: Quite a bit of my inspiration came from travel when we were fortunate enough to see marine life in the wild like snorkeling with a manta ray, which I feature in my art. I have always wanted to become a marine biologist, and at school, when I was 7 years old, I wrote a fact file about algae instead of fish like everyone else. The research about algae led to my concern about the symbiotic relationship between algae and the coral reefs.

Ashton: We’ve always been passionate as a family about the ocean and wanted to help it. When I was 8 years old, Zara and I got involved with the local Strike for Climate march. If we hadn’t taken part in that, we might have just worried about the world’s problems and felt like we could do nothing. But the climate strikes turned us from being people just worrying about the problems in the world into climate activists. Then we came across the Ocean Heroes Network in 2020. We thought it would be amazing to join other young ocean heroes around the world. 

You create such a fun variety of educational videos on your YouTube channel! How do you come up with the different ideas for these?

Zara: I think what we do is to first think of a problem that we would like to address and research it. Then (with some help from our mum) we sit down and write the ideas and a script to make it entertaining and educational. For example, our unofficial mascot the ‘sea chicken’ came about from our first video where I had to dress up as a seabird. All we had at home was a chicken hat and hoped no one would notice (they did!). Sea chicken was born… and he/she returns regularly in our videos.

Ashton: First, we start off with a problem like micro-plastics everywhere, and then we get facts about it. Instead of making a distressing video, we try to make it funny. People remember things better when they are funny, so it seems to work for us. If they weren’t funny, it would just be a dry, educational site. If adults dress up in sea chicken costumes, then people just think they’re weird. But, when kids do it, that’s OK! 

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The “sea chicken .” Courtesy Hidden Plastics

How would you encourage other young kids to get involved with big issues like climate change and pollution?

Ashton: The problems may look big, but just take it one small step at a time. You don’t have to cover all environmental issues, but just one small subject like sea turtles eating plastic bags, for example.

Zara: Such big problems may appear far too big and challenging for kids to be able to solve alone, but if we work together, we can solve them. Youth are very important and can touch adults in a more emotional way. Probably because we’ve not done anything to create the problems, but will inherit this world that is not in great shape at the moment. Kids could take a first step with a litter pick or join a protest or local environmental group. If they really feel up for it, I would recommend Ocean Heroes Bootcamp, because it is great at motivating you and preparing you to make a difference – no matter how big or small a campaign. Also, Ocean Heroes just launched their magazine called OH-WAKE, edited by a group of youth Ocean Heroes from around the world. OH-WAKE gives some great insights into topics like food waste reduction, tree planting, and soil restoration for those who are new to conservation. Ashton & I were fortunate enough to have been included in Issue #2 to share our journey so far. We hope this magazine encourages other kids to get involved and help solve the many problems around climate change, plastic pollution and other important issues.

I think many adults (myself included) believe your generation will finally be the one that truly makes the most significant positive impact on the climate crisis. What do you think about that? Is that too much pressure, or are you excited for the challenge?

Zara: I personally am quite excited about my generation, as I think we’re up for the challenge as long as together we apply ourselves to it. I think that really we have no other choice because our planet is changing whether we like it or not. And it’s our decision whether that change is for the better or worse. 

Ashton: I’m excited about the challenge and think that our generation will bring the most positive changes to the planet. There are already some great solutions out there, and our generation will just bring more. Everyone has a role to play to make our planet what is should be.

hidden plastics logo of the earth with a magnifying glass

Learn more about Hidden Plastic and watch Zara and Ashton’s creative videos over at HiddenPlastic.org.

The Ocean Cleanup crew just proved that System 002 works

The Inertia

Every year, we throw millions of tons of plastic into the ocean. Most of it is thrown into rivers, which lead to the sea. A huge amount of this plastic ends up in gyres – vortexes of circular currents – and eventually it all clumps together in vast floating ocean dumps. This, of course, is bad. But Boyan Slat and his project, fittingly named The Ocean Cleanup, have a plan, and on October 20, the second version of the ocean cleanup devices reached proof of technology.

Slat and his team spent years developing the first vessel, called System 001. After nearly seven years of fundraising, Slat’s idea had raised some $31 million and stolen the hearts of millions around the world who wanted to see our oceans finally rid of the plastic scourge. Financial supporters included Peter Thiel, the guy who co-founded PayPal then became the first outside investor in Facebook, and Marc and Lynne Benioff, who basically brought cloud computing to the public.

On September 8, 2018, the enormous ocean cleaner weighed anchor from San Francisco Bay. It was a test run of sorts, as all good science requires, and it was heading about 300 miles off shore for a two-week trial. If all went well, it would head to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and begin collecting the plastic that has accumulated there.

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The plan was relatively simple — complicated in terms of the sheer size of the operation, but simple in its design. System 001 was massive. Measuring in at nearly 2,000 feet long, it works as a sort of funnel to collect the enormous amounts of floating trash we’ve thrown into the ocean. Boats would tug the systems out to the centers of the five major ocean gyres and let them drift with the same currents that caused all that plastic to end up there in the first place.

After about a month, System 001 completed the 1,300-mile journey, and the contraption began attempting to do what it was created for. Soon, however, it became clear that there was a problem: the enormous boom wasn’t holding the plastic it collected. “It has been four weeks since we deployed System 001 in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP),” Slat wrote in an update on The Ocean Cleanup’s website. “In this time, we have observed that plastic is exiting the system once it is collected.”

Slat and his team, however, weren’t deterred by the setback. They’d been planning for any and all manner of issues. “We are currently working on causes and solutions to remedy this,” Slat explained just after he announced the issue. “Because this is our beta system, and this is the first deployment of any ocean cleanup system, we have been preparing ourselves for surprises.”

In July 2021, after a few years of tinkering, System 002 — or Jenny, if you know her well enough — hit the water for a 12-week test to see how the second version would fare. And as it turns out, it fared well. “The 12-week test campaign has now been concluded successfully – we have now reached proof of technology,” the team said. “System 002 will continue harvesting plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and in tandem, we will start working on System 003, a larger, upgraded ocean system, which is expected to be the blueprint design for scaling to a fleet of systems.”

With a lofty goal of reducing floating plastic in the ocean by 90 percent by 2040, The Ocean Cleanup crew has a difficult task ahead. They’re not worried, though. With the success of System 002, they’re already planning to scale up. “Having taken the learnings from System 002 and applying them to subsequent iterations of the technology, we will scale up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” they said. “With this blueprint for scale-up, we will look to deploy a fleet of systems into all the other four ocean gyres.”

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The trash divers protecting America’s best-loved lakes

“My girlfriend tells me I smell like trash,” says Colin West. And he takes that as a compliment.

West spends 40 to 60 hours a week scuba diving Lake Tahoe to locate and remove submerged trash. On the day I spoke with him, he and a group of divers had collected 576 pounds of underwater garbage, including a massive monster truck–style tire. And since launching the nonprofit Clean Up the Lake in 2018, West and his team of ten full-time employees and contractors, plus an army of trained volunteers, have picked up more than 18,000 pounds of refuse. 

Their latest mission? To complete the first circumnavigation of Lake Tahoe via scuba diving, with each dive focused on removing waste. As the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, West dives for trash three days per week, ten to 12 hours each dive, alongside a crew of Clean Up the Lake employees and volunteers.  

The group’s Tahoe initiative launched in 2020; it’s supported by local sponsors like Tahoe Blue Vodka and the Tahoe Fund and will cover the waterway’s 72-mile circumference. It’s among the largest litter-removal efforts ever for the lake, and it couldn’t come at a better time. While lauded for its bright-blue beauty, Lake Tahoe’s deep-water clarity has plummeted by 30 percent from 1968 to 1997, according to the EPA. In 2019, scientists also found microplastics in Lake Tahoe’s water for the first time—a fact that’s particularly troubling given that the lake is a major drinking water source for Nevada communities.

Even with forces out of their control—the 221,000-acre Caldor Fire in fall 2021 and severe droughts impairing water access—West anticipates his crew will complete the circumnavigation this December. Along the way, Clean Up the Lake has done much more than rid Tahoe of litter. West is giving legs to a budding “give back while getting outside” movement: trash diving. (Think plogging but fully underwater.)

Trash collection isn’t new to the world of scuba. Since 2011, divers have removed more than 2 million pieces of marine debris through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors’ (PADI) Dive Against Debris program, a global scuba initiative to remove and log submerged litter, says Kristin Valette Wirth, PADI chief brand and membership officer.

In recent years, though, diving for waste has expanded inland to the country’s best-loved yet increasingly polluted lakes. West alone has received approximately 600 applications from interested scuba volunteers around Lake Tahoe. The Great Lakes also have trash divers tackling the region’s growing water-contamination concerns. These lakes, which make up more than 20 percent of the planet’s surface freshwater, are polluted with 22 million pounds of plastics each year, largely from local watersheds and shorelines.

(Photo: Professional Association of Diving Instructors)

Lake Tahoe and the Great Lakes may lack the colorful corals and enchanting marine life of the oceans, but these under-the-radar dive locales offer two main allures: mind-blowing geology and rarely seen shipwrecks. The Great Lakes alone boast more than 6,000 sunken ships.

“We have the best shipwreck diving in the whole world, hands down,” says Chris Roxburgh, one of the Great Lakes’ best-known divers. Roxburgh, a master electrician in Traverse City, Michigan, reached local diving fame through his jaw-dropping photos of Great Lakes wrecks. This fall, he appeared on the History Channel’s Cities of the Underworld to share this wreck beauty with the world.

Social media helps Roxburgh and dozens of area divers showcase the hidden wonders of Great Lakes scuba while illustrating the severe plastic plight lurking below the surface. Roxburgh’s home waterway, Lake Michigan, receives roughly half of all of the Great Lakes plastic pollution. With everything the Great Lakes have given him, both recreationally and professionally, Roxburgh now feels responsible for protecting and future-proofing these waterways. He shares footage of submerged Mylar balloons, wrappers, toys, and soda cans to inspire followers to get involved.

“Since I was a kid, my parents taught me to leave no trace and clean up trash along the beaches and underwater, so it’s something I’ve been doing my whole life,” he says, noting that local wreck-diving fame has given him a platform to fight for the lakes he loves. “I felt like I needed to put [content] out there to show people they can make a difference. Especially scuba diving. We get the trash people can’t get to.”

(Photo: Chris Roxburgh)

Some area divers, like “Diver Don” Fassbender of Great Lakes Scuba Divers and Lake Preservation Club, host trash-diving meetups in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Roxburgh typically goes with a small, hand-selected group, due largely to the liability and dangers, which are increased by the often-required clunky drysuits.

“If you don’t do it properly, your trash bag can get snagged, and it can become entangled in your equipment,” Roxburgh says. “The main thing is to not collect too much to the point it makes the dive unsafe. Always have a plan on how much you’re willing to collect safely, and don’t have ropes or strings floating about.”

Diving Lake Tahoe comes with its own unique risks. It’s the second-deepest lake in the world (1,600 feet) and sits at an altitude of around 6,200 feet above sea level. These elements make for tricky dive safety, and that’s before adding the variable of collecting garbage. West says Clean Up the Lake requires volunteers to have “at least advanced open-water certification with five recent dives.” Each new volunteer goes through rigorous preparation. So far, his team has selected and trained just under 100 volunteers. 

“They need to be comfortable when working in a team underwater, because we’re down there working,” he says. Each team of divers—two scuba, one freediving near the surface—follows GPS coordinates. The scuba divers take mesh bags to pick up small trash along the way and use custom hand signals with the freedivers if they stumble upon something heavy that requires a weighted rope system.

Then there’s the fact that they’re diving well beyond summer to meet that December 2021 goal. “The winters get f-ing cold, and the lake gets really cold, even in a drysuit,” West says.

(Photo: Chris Roxburgh)

Divers alone aren’t going to clean up 22 million pounds of Great Lakes plastic. And a 72-mile circumnavigation may rid Lake Tahoe of debris—they’ve already removed 8,000 pounds of trash through this circumnavigation initiative—but it’s not going to fix the main Tahoe pollutants: fertilizers and urban stormwater runoff.

Is the risk of trash diving worth the reward? Yes, says Meagen Schwartz, who studied environmental science at Indiana University and founded Great Lakes Great Responsibility (GLGR), a volunteer movement to de-litter the region’s coasts and waterways. GLGR’s newest push, the #GreatLakes1Million challenge, calls on area residents to gather and record litter, then share their work on social media to catalyze local communities. The goal is to pick up 1 million pieces of waste; they’ve collected 90,000 since November 2020. 

Schwartz lives in Alpena, Michigan, home to one of the region’s most vibrant dive spots: Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which boasts nearly 100 historic shipwrecks. While she doesn’t dive herself, Schwartz says trash divers have been instrumental not just to her movement, but to the plastic problem plaguing waterways around the world.

“They’re on the front lines. They’re seeing what’s in the more benthic region [the bottom] of the lake,” Schwartz says. “It’s also about raising awareness about the plastic problem. People can make individual changes, but it really needs to come from putting different legislation in place.”

Schwartz plans to use those 1 million pieces of inventoried trash to fight for change upstream, including data-driven petitions for new, more sustainable legislation. West hopes to do the same; Clean Up the Lake already has hard data from more than 80 categories of collected trash to showcase main pollutant sources and systemic problems.

Making real change is no pipe dream, and PADI’s Dive Against Debris program is proof of that. Take the small island nation of Vanuatu in the South Pacific as a case study. In 2018, Vanuatu decided to ban nonbiodegradable plastic bags, largely based on Dive Against Debris data. The trickle-down effect was monumental.

“Vanuatu no longer required bags to be shipped there, reducing the country’s overall carbon footprint,” says PADI’s Valette Wirth, noting the removal of plastic bags sparked the need for new, sustainably made sacks. Through this community-driven microeconomy, Vanuatuan people created bags using banana and palm leaves. “Due to the success of the policy decision, Vanuatu became a champion country promoting international cooperation to tackle marine debris. This is living proof of how local action can have a global impact.”