Collecting plastic waste in rivers and the ocean is a fantastic thing to do, but it‘s
only a small part of the problem.
TeamSeas is a fundraising project organised by YouTubers which aims to remove 30 million
pounds of plastic and trash from rivers and the ocean.
But the crazy thing is, globally we release twice that amount every single day.
Now I’m not saying TeamSeas is a bad idea at all, that'll be 30 million pounds, or 13.6
thousand tonnes of plastic and garbage that would otherwise be polluting the environment
and removing it is fantastic.
But we have to put this in perspective with the estimated 10 million tonnes of plastic
released each year.
And the fact that removing 30 million pounds of plastic and garbage is going to cost $30
million dollars gives us an idea of the scale of the problem.
By this count we’d need to spend $60 million dollars per day just to deal with plastic
waste in rivers and oceans.
Who should pay for this?
It shouldn’t be you.
It should be the plastic companies who produce the plastic in the first place.
And they have the money: they’re a $580 billion dollar industry.
But they don’t have to worry about any of the environmental consequences.
They are happy for the environment to be destroyed as long as they make lots of money.
Now one worry I have about teamseas is, if we’re paying for the plastic cleanup, it
lets these plastic companies carry on business as usual.
And collecting trash is really just moving trash.
Where does it go?
Either to landfill where over time it breaks down into microplastics, and unfortunately
can end up leaching out back into the water system anyway, or it gets burned which is
obviously bad for the environment.
So the real problem here is all the trash we create in the first place.
So what should we do about it?
Here are 5 practical things we can do to reduce plastic pollution.
Number 1 : regulate.
Plastic pollution is a big social-political problem that is too big for any single individual
to solve.
Governments need to regulate plastic production, and make companies pay for the environmental
damage they cause.
Plastic companies will carry on their harmful business practices as long as governments
stand by.
The best thing you can do is to vote for people who are strong on the environment.
And let your local representative know that your vote depends on their actions on the
environment, and then hold them to account.
We need increased fees and taxes on the production of plastics to make the plastic producing
companies pay for the environmental costs, and implement a total ban on single use plastics.
Also we can stop subsidising the oil plastics are made from which is $20 billion per year
of your money in the US or $500 billion a year globally.
Number 2 : reduce our plastic dependency.
Today the average person in the world uses 95lb or 43kg of plastic per year, but people
in the US average at 231lb and people in the UK 218lb.
So if say, you donate $10 to team seas, this corresponds to 10lb of plastic removed which
is only about 4% of your yearly plastic usage if you are the average person.
So a great thing to do is to try and reduce our own plastic use.
But we can’t blame ourselves too much - plastic is everywhere and it’s hard to avoid.
But wherever possible we should avoid and refuse single use plastics.
The less plastic we use, the less plastic is wasted and the less plastic will need to
be produced in the first place.
You can re-use a lot of plastic yourself.
Next time you get a plastic fork from the takeout, wash it and keep it in your bag and
you can reuse it over and over again.
You can bring your own bags to do shopping.
And bring a stainless steel water bottle rather than buying drinks in disposable bottles.
And, as an added bonus, you’ll also avoid the bad health impacts from drinking microplastics
which are known to leech off plastic bottles.
Also, there are more and more plastic free grocery stores and refill shops popping up,
where you can bring your empty plastic containers and get them refilled.
So why not see if there is one in your area.
Re-using plastic is much better than recycling which brings us to number 3: Don’t think
recycling is the answer.
These aren’t recycling symbols, these are symbols made by plastic companies to make
us think they’re recycling symbols.
They’re actually symbols to say what kind of plastic this is, and most of these numbers
are not actually recyclable.
Recycling was a crafty way for the big plastic producers to make us feel guilty about plastic
use, and distract us from the fact that they are actually the people actually causing the
problem.
Only 10% of plastic has ever been recycled, and then mostly it can only be recycled once.
What’s the solution?
Well keep on recycling, because it is still better than nothing, but again, the best thing
is to not use single-use plastics in the first place.
Number 4 : Educate ourselves.
The best thing we can do is educate ourselves as much as possible.
I’ve recently learned that a great way for the world to stop plastics from ending up
in the ocean is to improve waste management where the problem is the greatest.
90% of ocean plastic comes from just 10 rivers.
These are places that don’t have the infrastructure to deal with the plastic waste.
So globally we need to invest in waste management in these areas to collect plastic before it
even reaches the rivers and oceans.
And, we just need a plan: international agreements with firm targets and time frames for reducing
plastics and cleanup, just like we do for carbon emissions.
Really this is the only way the problem will properly be solved.
Clean up plastic.
5: Cleanup.
Finally we can actively help solve the problem ourselves.
A lot of the plastic in the ocean ends up getting washed up on the shorelines.
So the next time you go to a beach, bring a bag to collect any rubbish you find.
Joining a local shoreline cleanup is another great way to feel good about actively making
things better.
But like I’ve said, the problem is way bigger than anything we can solve on our own.
Globally there needs to be increased funds for cleanup operations where the problem is
greatest.
Again, this relies on governments to work together to establish a global ocean fund
with waste management and clean-up of marine areas high on the agenda.
This is where teamseas will help.
Half of the money will go to The Ocean Conservancy and their International Coastal Cleanup which
both have excellent track records of work.
And the other half of the money will go to The Ocean Cleanup which, I think it’s fair
to say, has a pretty poor track record to date.
But apparently things will be different this time?
I dunno, it’s a bit of a question mark still for me to be honest but I’d recommend you
doing your own research to see what you think.
So if you’d like to donate you can donate to team seas.
Or if you’d like to choose exactly where your money is going, you can also donate directly
to The Ocean Conservancy, another great option is River Cleanup.
Or if you want to focus on the protection of marine life, Oceana is a fantastic choice
as well as the world wildlife fund.
Links to all these are in the description below.
I love the oceans and all the amazing creatures that live there, so much so that me and a
friend made a whole book about them, and I think it’s great this movement is raising
awareness of plastic pollution.
And although as we’ve seen there are many significant problems to solve, ocean plastics
is a solvable problem.
According to research we have the solutions today that could reduce the flow of plastics
into the oceans by 80% by 2040, and a lot more cost effectively than the $60 million
dollars per day figure I mentioned earlier, we just need governments, corporations and
investors to back these plans.
But on a personal level the best things you can do are to stay educated, put pressure
on your local government officials, and do whatever it takes to make sure the plastic
producing companies make as little money from you as possible by refusing to use single
use plastics.