The Quest for Clean Water
Tackling the Plastic Pollution that Plagues Our Oceans
by Dawn Emery Ballantine
At the age of 16 while scuba-diving in Greece, Boyan Slat was appalled to discover that he could count more plastic bags than fish in the ocean. So with the fervor and impetuosity of youth, he decided to do something about it.
Slat went back to his high school in The Netherlands and put together a research project to develop a methodology for removing plastics from the ocean without harming the sea life. He became world-famous in a TEDx video in 2012, and in 2013, he founded The Ocean Cleanup, whose mission was “to develop technologies to remove plastics from our oceans.” Though many said that his dream was and still is impossible, 38,000 donors in 160 countries thought otherwise, providing Slat with 2.2 million crowd-funded dollars so he could begin to develop his ideas into reality.
The problem was huge, and the R&D process was time-consuming. In 2020, The Ocean Cleanup calculated that there were 7.25 million tons of plastics in the ocean which needed to be removed. And all of that debris refuses to stay in one place since the five rotating ocean currents, known as the gyres, move the plastic pollution around, poisoning sea life and, ultimately, the food chain.
Slat chose to place his initial focus in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, found roughly mid-way between Hawaii and California. The ocean currents themselves were viewed by many as a major obstacle to the cleanup. Predicting where the extrudable trash could be found and sending ships after it required constant re-calculations, not to mention fuel and person-power. But Slat eventually chose to use the currents as part of his solution. Initially employing a roving model of trash nets pulled by ships, he then decided to fix the ships, redesigned as platforms, to the seabed, letting the ocean currents bring the garbage to them. With their manta-ray shaped platforms, they hoped to capture more than 55 shipping containers of plastic per day. They planned to sell the captured plastics for recycling in order to recoup their operating expenses. Their lofty aim was to put themselves out of business by 2040 by removing at least 90% of the ocean’s floating plastic pollution.
Their early attempts were full of failures that Slat refers to as “unscheduled learning opportunities.” Only 60 bags of garbage were captured in 2019 before the fledgling system broke apart. They went back to the drafting board, and their next model collected more than 10 tons of garbage in 2021. An updated operating system was launched in 2022, liberating more than 153 tons of garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It may be just a fraction of the estimated 14 million metric tons of plastic waste that enters our aquatic ecosystems each year, but it’s a start.
The majority of the plastic pollution consists of single-use packaging, plastic bags, and cutlery, all of which eventually break down to microplastics. These tiny specks of plastic cause harm to wildlife and ecosystems, posing risks to vulnerable communities, the climate, the world economy, and to human health. Recent research posits that people could be ingesting 5 grams of microplastics per week— equivalent to the weight of a credit card! These microplastics and their components are not readily eliminated from the body. They have been shown to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and even the maternal/fetal placenta. Measurable levels of microplastics have been found in the bloodstreams of 80% of people tested, and recent autopsies show that human brain samples contained approximately 0.5% plastics. Plastics have been linked with a plethora of health concerns, impacting hormones, metabolism, and fertility, and contributing to neurodegenerative diseases, ADHD, anxiety, and depression, as well as cancers and heart disease.
In 2020, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) spearheaded a report which motivated nations around the world to tackle the plastics problem. WWF secured more than 2.2 million signatures on a plastics petition in order to present it to the United Nations and spur the world to act. According to WWF, “The unique potential of a global, United Nations-led treaty is to hold all countries to a high common standard on plastic consumption and create a clear path toward a future free from plastic pollution. This will create a level playing field that incentivizes and supports national actions.”
This petition, among others, was presented in March of 2022 to the United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, which had convened to discuss the crisis of plastics. Their staff had spent five years exploring possible global actions to address plastic pollution and the elimination of marine garbage, and the result was the United Nations Environment Programme Resolution called “End plastic pollution: Towards an international legally binding instrument.” The resolution was adopted by 175 nations, who all agreed upon an accelerated timeline of implementation as early as 2025. The United Nations Development Programme described it as “the most important multilateral environmental pact since the Paris Agreement on climate change,” and that “the decisions made during these negotiations could radically transform the way we produce, consume and dispose of plastics.”
If you know anything about how these committees function, you know that it will likely take a miracle to see the implementation of this treaty to fruition. There have been many bumps and setbacks along the way, but the final negotiation will take place in late November 2024 in Busan, South Korea. While the resolution remakes the system to change the overall system around plastic production and waste management, organizations like The Ocean Cleanup are reckoning with the mess that our current systems have generated. In 2022, the same year as the Nairobi plastics summit, Boyan Slat and his team realized that cleaning up the ocean plastic would remain Sisyphean unless they could find a way to target plastics pollution before it made it to the oceans. So they set about identifying the rivers of the world which released the majority of plastics pollution into the sea, with the plan of launching a fleet of Interceptors to sequester that plastic before it reached the oceans.
The idea of an interceptor was initially developed by an environmental scientist and shipbuilder, John Kellett, who was commissioned by the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore. Interceptors are stationary and semi-autonomous devices placed at the end of a river or stream to capture the waste that flows into and out of them. Kellett created and installed his prototype, Mr. Trash Wheel, in May of 2014. Mr. Trash Wheel is now joined by Professor Trash Wheel, Captain Trash Wheel, and Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West, and they can be found in the creeks, harbors, and coves of Baltimore. They have been fitted with googly eyes, which have humanized them enough to turn them into social media celebrities. Powered with solar and hydro, and built to withstand large storms, they are designed to pull hundreds of tons of trash out of the water each year. Given the difficulties with recycling sorting technologies, however, the plastics still cannot be separated from the other trash, so it is all incinerated to create electricity.
The Ocean Cleanup expanded on Kellet’s model, deploying their own interceptors in targeted rivers in Indonesia, Malaysia, The Dominican Republic, and Vietnam in the middle of 2022. Those interceptors collected 840 tons of plastic before it reached the sea. With the tailwind of that success, additional interceptors have been launched in Thailand, Los Angeles, California, and most recently in Guatemala, where they extracted 272 tons of plastic (within 816 tons of trash) in the first three weeks of operation.
As of August 2024, The Ocean Cleanup has retrieved more than 35.3 million pounds of garbage from waters around the world. At its current rate, without drastic and immediate action, plastic pollution is projected to triple globally by the year 2040. With hard work and a lot of luck, the UN accords and the work of companies, governments, and individuals can help to make a difference in the manufacture, use, and proper disposal of plastics.
Some leaders have taken measures—or said they aim to—in the fight against plastic pollution. In March of 2023, President Biden announced a goal of replacing over 90% of petroleum-based plastics with bio-plastics over the next 20 years. In September of 2024, Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, signed into law a ban on all single-use plastic carry-out bags at grocery stores beginning in 2026.
The problem is big, but some of the solutions are small enough to be easily implemented. One of the most effective solutions was dreamed up by a 16 year old boy from The Netherlands. Imagine if the entire world decides to focus on the problem. One can only imagine that solutions will abound. Check the sidebar for some plastics facts and some proposed solutions for staying safer and healthier in a world full of plastics and their by-products.
Some Practical Strategies for Reducing the Impact of Plastics
• Avoid exposure reduce drinking from plastic bottles and use of plastics whenever possible.
• Reduce the use of BPA/BPS-lined cans.
• Utilize reverse osmosis filtration in your home water sources. (R-O removes 99.9% of microplastics from the water.)
• Avoid plastic-wrapped food, or wash well if unavoidable.
• Avoid heating foods in plastic.
• Avoid cooking with non-stick pans. Use cast iron, titanium, or ceramic.
• Avoid disposable paper products that are lined with plastics, e.g., to-go coffee cups. (The heat causes the plastic lining to break down more quickly.)
• Utilize re-usable ceramic or stainless steel mugs for your to-go coffee.
• Be aware of your salt source. Sea salt has the highest level of microplastics contamination; rock salt has the lowest.
• Use a HEPA filter to trap airborne microplastic particles.
• Wear natural fiber clothing and use natural fabrics when possible. (Synthetic fibers shed microplastics in the laundry and the world at large.)
• Avoid taking thermal receipts, which are chock full of BPA.
Ways to Help Reduce Plastics Harm in Your Body
Keep your liver healthy. Your liver absorbs, processes, and converts the plastic by-product chemicals into water-soluble forms for excretion in urine. These microplastics and their by-products have varied excretion time frames. BPA can be excreted in 6 hours; phthalates in 12-24 hours; PFAs in 2-5 years; and for some nano-particles, perhaps never.
Eat your cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, etc., which are full of Sulforaphane (also available in supplements). This both helps to clear out toxins and to produce enzymes which bond to the chemicals, assisting with excretion.
Eat more dietary fiber, which binds to the chemicals in the GI tract and assists in excretion, thereby reducing absorption into the bloodstream.
Get sweaty. Exercise, sauna, and hot tubs all help to eliminate these chemicals and compounds from the body, reducing the toxic burden.
Learn more about The Ocean Cleanup at theoceancleanup.com. You can find the UN resolution at: wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/39812/OEWG_PP_1_INF_1_UNEA%20resolution.pdf
Dawn Emery Ballantine lives in Anderson Valley where she edits this magazine and is forever searching for her next favorite book.