A sea of plastic

Can we stop drowning the ocean in plastic?

Like many kids born in the early ’80s, I was pretty obsessed with mermaids for a (long) while. This is mostly thanks to Disney’s The Little Mermaid, though now I identify with Sebastian the crab instead of Ariel. I was caught up in the romance of it all, but I didn’t see the appeal of her forsaking an underwater kingdom for boring land. (Splash was the ’80s mermaid film that got it right: go back to the ocean and your landlubber boyfriend can follow along or else find another fish in the sea.)

These days, Ariel’s cavern of wonders would have no shortage of stuff: her underwater paradise would look more like an underwater dump. A 2020 study in Science found that between 19 and 23 million metric tonnes of plastic ended up in the ocean in 2016. That’s 11% of that year’s trash total. And based on current trends, that number is expected to climb to 29 million by 2040. Closer to home, the Great Lakes take in a cool 20 million tons annually.

The plastic we see on the surface is probably only 0.5% of the plastic that’s there, the tip of the trashberg. The ocean floor is lined with an estimated 14 million tonnes of trash, suggesting it’s no longer better down where it’s wetter (take it from me).

And litter is unsightly, yes, but also has much bigger repercussions. The plastic is disrupting a vital ecosystem that provides food, regulates our climate, and generates half our oxygen. Wildlife gets strangled by six-pack rings and disposable masks, starves with bellies full of plastic instead of food. Plastic bits enter the food chain, and we don’t know what the long-term health consequences of that will be. Research on nanoplastics (the smallest plastic bits) has found that they accumulate within the bloodstreams and cells of certain organisms. And it isn’t just the plastic itself that is the problem: researchers have found the chemicals in those bits have interfered with the health of vital oxygen-producing bacteria. Adding an ingredient to a soup doesn’t just add texture — it changes the flavour of the whole thing.

You may be thinking, Can’t we just . . . collect it? Skim up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch like a smiling pool boy? Unfortunately, it’s not so easy. For one thing, the word “patch” is misleading: it sounds like a little island that could hold Tom Hanks and Wilson in Castaway 2: Throwaway World, but it’s less a “patch” and more a 617,000-square-mile swirling gyre. Further, trash isn’t just floating on the surface — it goes through the water column all the way down to the bottom. Scientists are also still figuring out how to effectively capture microplastics (less than 5 mm long) — aka the glitter of the sea. Ocean-cleaning setups also have to contend with strong currents and storms. And then there’s the scale: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program estimates that if 67 ships worked for one year they could capture . . . 1% of that infernal trash vortex. And it’s growing all the time.

But all is not lost and progress is being made. Dutch non-profit the Ocean Cleanup’s current-driven 600-metre-long floating boom successfully captured some of the patch in 2019, and while it’s early days, they have their sights set on capturing 50% of the patch every five years. They’ve also introduced the solar-powered Interceptor that can sit in a river and harvest 50,000 kg of trash per day! They have two Interceptors running right now and have a goal of placing Interceptors in 1,000 rivers in the next five years. (Can you tell it’s an ambitious org? But with the scope of the problem, moonshots are necessary.) They’ve also turned some of that trash into pretty slick recycled sunglasses, with all profits funding more cleanup.

There are also some smaller-scale interventions for lakes and local waterways, like, for example, the adorable Mr. Trash Wheel, which cleans Baltimore’s inner harbour, and in Ontario we’ve just installed Littatraps (containers that sit under storm drains to catch trash that goes through) and 23 Seabins (floating vessels that suck in garbage). In 2019, University of Toronto installed three trial Seabins that pull in about 3.59 kg of trash per day.

Mr. Trash Wheel: proof that anything you put googly eyes on can look cute. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Maybe one day we’ll have bacteria that can guzzle up plastic, or maybe the Ocean Cleanup will meet their moonshot goals, but we can’t count on technology alone to turn the tides on plastic pollution. If your tub is overflowing, you don’t just have to pull the plug, you also have to turn off the tap. Because the plastic isn’t just a problem when it’s time to get rid of it — it begins as fossil fuels that are mined and transformed at an environmental cost we can’t afford.

We need massive systems change in how we make and process our trash. This is in no way on us as individuals, and no individual can fix it. But it is one area where it’s easy to make a small difference and see tangible results, which I’ll take any day.

Pick up litter

Join a clean-up or start your own. You don’t need to go full David “Pig Pen” Sedaris and pick up litter for nine hours a day every day, but even once or twice a year can make a difference. For maximum impact, invite family, friends, people in your neighbourhood (though COVID guidelines mean you won’t be picking alongside people outside your household). Tie it to a recurring holiday like Thanksgiving weekend and make it a tradition. It doesn’t have to be near a waterway: in Toronto, trash on your street will get washed into storm drains and, usually, directly out into rivers and Lake Ontario. (If you think this is ridiculous, you are correct!)

You can also just pick up garbage as you see it. I made a habit of scooping up any recyclable I saw off the street and depositing it in the bin in the parkette as I walked to the subway. That might not feel safe right now under COVID (though transmission via surfaces is much less important than we once thought), but it’s something to consider. It allows you to put something good on autopilot.

As a cool bonus, studies have shown that if people see someone picking up trash they’re less likely to litter themselves. They’re also less likely to trash a clean environment. On my last mini-cleanup, multiple people said thank you — maybe they’ll even grab a bag of their own in the future.

Manage your microplastics

We’ve talked before about the microplastics that are released every time you wash your duds, so check out that newsletter for all the details. This is an area where legislation could make a huge difference if manufacturers were required to install a microplastics filter on every new machine.

Make less trash

Even if you’d never litter on purpose, lots of garbage gets scattered unintentionally — by the wind, as it goes into the truck, etc. Making less trash is the best way to ensure you make less litter (and, even more importantly, reduce emissions and other pollution that go into making that packaging).

Doing a litter cleanup really opens your eyes to what ends up on the streets and shorelines, and it’s a lot of single-use items and packaging, many of which we can live without! Support legislation, like the recently proposed single-use plastics ban, that will help other people cut back, even if they don’t want to. (By the way, since I wrote the single-use newsy, Tim Hortons — one of our leading litter generators — has announced a pilot project for next year where they’ll offer returnable food and drink containers for a deposit!)

Write to the litter makers

If there’s a company you love or use frequently that makes a lot of trash, send them a letter about it! Identify yourself as a devoted customer and ask what they can do to produce less trash.

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TL;DR

• There’s a mind-boggling (and ever-growing) amount of plastic trash in our oceans, from the surface all the way down to the ocean floor, with pieces ranging from huge fishing nets to nanoparticles small enough to penetrate cells.

• Many projects, from massively ambitious ocean- and river-cleanup technologies to local litter traps, are underway, but we still need to cut off that pollution at the source.

• Picking up litter does help! Anything that goes in your bag won’t go into a storm drain and out into waterways.

• Help stem microplastic pollution by using a laundry filter. (More here.)

• Reduce your single-use trash and support legislation and other systemic initiatives that do.

• Write to a manufacturer or retailer you love and ask them how they’re addressing plastic pollution in their products.

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Wins of the Week

“Our climate emergency requires big thinking of all kinds, but there is no single elegant solution, no perfect blueprint for a liveable future. We underestimate the power of contribution — of acting within our own sphere of influence to tackle the piece of the problem that is right in front of us.

“In a few decades, if we look back from a place of relative comfort and safety, I think we will remember millions of people who saw unprecedented danger and didn’t look away, who connected with their power and used it to lead change from the ground up.”

— Abigail Dillen “Litigating in a Time of Crisis,” in All We Can Save

This week, three cheers for these folks who are tackling little pieces of the problem in their everyday lives:

• Lyn has switched to almond milk for cereal, pancakes, and baking (but is holding on to cow’s milk for her tea. And so am I: if you use a plant milk in your tea, would you tell us which one?)

• Sarah has been using menstrual reusable pads from Aisle and loves them! (More on greener periods here.)

• Sarah Joy and her partner walk their daughter to school every day, and their neighbours (who have only ever done the school runs by car) have started joining them. Their little ones started saying, “How come Holly gets to walk? We want to walk!” (This is joyful positive modelling at work, and I love it!)

Yesterday was my birthday, so if you’d like to give me a gift, send me a win or share this newsletter. All I want for my birthday is to avoid climate collapse, and is that really too much to ask?

xo

Jen

P.S. If you want to watch a hopeful, solutions-oriented climate change doc, right now thanks to EcoFair Toronto you can stream 2040 for free until November 8. It’s a quick tour through some of the best Drawdown interventions and doesn’t just talk about a greener future, it shows what it could look like. (EcoFair Toronto also has other workshops and programming over the next couple weeks — check it out!)

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Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by the incredible Crissy Calhoun. Opening photo by Sarah Lee on Unsplash.