Translator: Larisa Esteche Reviewer: Elena Montrasio
"You're not a drop in the ocean.
You're the entire ocean, in a drop."
This is one of my absolute favorite quotes.
Ever since I can remember, I've adored the sea.
And this fascination is rather unexplainable.
My parents never actually learned how to swim themselves,
and having married so young, we didn't really have the opportunity
to travel very much while I was growing up.
I didn't actually set foot in the ocean until my early teenage years,
and I didn't learn how to scuba dive until I was 19 years old.
But nonetheless,
I was obsessed with the ocean and everything that it had to offer.
Growing up, I immersed myself in books and documentaries,
wanting to understand everything there was to know about the water.
I felt such a magnetizing pull towards them,
that it was as if the oceans had a secret
that they so desperately needed to tell only me.
And on this first scuba dive
off the Southern coast of the island of Oahu, Hawaii,
the ocean finally had the opportunity to tell me that secret.
Now, I had been anticipating this moment my entire life.
This was my first scuba dive.
I dreamed of seeing bright coral that stretched on for miles,
while a diversity of marine life danced around them.
Instead, this is what the ocean showed me.
It looked like the life had been sucked out of the corals
on the ocean floor.
And there was no diversity of marine life.
There was hardly any marine life at all.
I swear that while I was under on the ocean that day,
I heard it whisper, "Help me."
And that's why I'm here today.
Because despite their force,
vast depths and the appearance to stretch on forever,
our oceans are in trouble.
And one of their greatest threats -
well, actually, many of you probably have it in your pocket right now:
plastic.
The proliferation of plastic products in the last 70 years
has been extraordinary.
We now produce over 300 million tons of plastic annually,
and turn it into all kinds of products;
everything from food packaging to automotive parts,
from toothbrushes to fake Christmas trees.
Plastic is all around us.
It's become such an essential component of our material existence
that it's hard to imagine life without it.
But is it really that hard?
I mean, to imagine a world without plastics?
After all, the modern plastic products that we know and love today
didn't really exist until about the 1940s.
And the interesting part is that life before them
didn't really look all that different.
Before we had plastic, milk was sold in glass jars.
They were refilled when you went to the grocery store,
washed up when they were empty, and taken back the next week.
People brought whatever bags they had with them at home
to the store when they went shopping,
and there was no need for produce packaging
because fruits and vegetables were sold locally, and in season.
But as society has shifted to resemble our modern way of living,
centered around a non-stop workday,
filled by fast food and single-used items,
meant to be thrown away after only minutes,
the idea of plastics became more appealing.
Plastics actually gave some people this almost utopian vision
of this future that contained abundant material wealth,
thanks to a cheap, safe and sanitary substance
that could be molded by humans to our every whim.
And our appetite for this cheap, durable substance is such
that we have produced 9.1 billion tons of plastic to date.
9.1 billion tons!
That's absurd.
How can we even begin to try to understand how much plastic that is?
So, I'm going to try to put that number into context for us.
We've produced enough plastic today, by weight,
to equal 25,000 Empire State buildings,
80 million blue whales,
or a billion elephants.
Now, I'm sure that many of you are anticipating this discussion
to paint plastics as the villain of this story.
And while that has some truth, it's not the entire story.
I truly believe that plastics really only become the villain
in the way that we as humans use, or rather abuse them.
Because of the 300 million tons of plastic that we produce annually,
only 25% of it is properly recycled.
And here's where the rest goes.
Every single year, 8 million tons of plastic enters our oceans,
50% of which is single-use plastic
serving its purpose for only a few minutes before being carelessly discarded.
The plastic bags that we get at the grocery store,
they've been responsible for millions of casualties among sea turtles
all over the globe,
and have an average working life of only 15 minutes.
Think about that.
Something that you use for only 15 minutes of your day
has a lifelong lethal impact.
This photo of a seabird recently went viral,
and really brought the plastic pollution discussion into light.
It's estimated today that 99% of seabirds have ingested plastic in their lifetime.
Straws.
These guys seem harmless, right?
How much damage can one tiny straw really do?
Most of us don't even bat an eye
when our drink at the restaurant comes with a straw in it.
In fact, the David Suzuki Foundation estimates that straws are so overlooked
that in Canada alone we use 57 million straws every single day.
And to this sea turtle, that straw wasn't so harmless.
This is another video that recently went viral,
and I won't show it here today because it's quite difficult to watch,
but it essentially shows a boat crew trying to remove a straw
from the nostril of this sea turtle.
Coral reefs are also affected by plastic pollution in the oceans.
Many people forget that reefs are living creatures,
and they're incredibly sensitive to changes in the oceans' environment.
Plastic has played a key role in several reefs die-offs
in well-known areas,
including the Great Barrier Reef.
Larger animals, such as whales, sharks and dolphins
are also at risk due to plastic pollution.
As these larger animals consume smaller fish species
that have already ingested plastic,
the toxins from plastic begin to bioaccumulate.
This can lead to liver failure and other toxicology related problems
among animals at the top of the food chain.
Speaking of the top of the food chain,
you and I are also directly at risk due to plastic pollution in the oceans.
Because when plastic enters our oceans, it never actually degrades, or goes away.
Instead, it's broken down into smaller and smaller pieces,
known as microplastics.
As you can imagine,
these microscopic pieces of plastic are easily confused for food
and end up being consumed by small fish species and even plankton,
until ultimately, they make their way back up the food chain.
And humans are eating the very plastic that we threw away.
It's estimated today
that 67% of the seafood that humans consume contains plastic.
If you're a regular seafood eater,
that could mean that you're eating up to 11,000 pieces of plastic
every single year.
We've taken from the ocean all that we want
and fed it back all that we don't.
And now, it's literally feeding it right back to us.
I've been actively doing ocean conservation work
for about three years now.
My main objective in my work is digital storytelling.
I aim to translate environmental issues
into media projects that are consumed by the average person;
things like photographs, YouTube videos, and short blog posts.
In my years in academia, I recognized that a twenty-page peer-reviewed journal
isn't the best way to reach the masses about an environmental issue.
And in my years in environmental activism,
I've realized that we need to be reaching the masses.
So, recognizing this disconnect, I set out to bridge the knowledge gap.
And I wanted to do so
in a way that not only raised awareness and educated people about the problem,
but inspired them to take action.
When I started doing this, I thought that I was a genius.
I thought I had created my dream job.
I imagined traveling all over the world, swimming with wild dolphins,
and, maybe running into a plastic water bottle here and there.
I truly didn't understand the scope of this problem,
until I was dead in the center of it.
Today,
I regularly find myself in the water with the ocean's apex predators,
which is both the most humbling and heartbreaking experience of my life.
Because every time I get into the water with these sharks,
I witness firsthand how plastic pollution and human impact
is threatening the very survival of their species.
I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Maldives,
somewhere I'd never dreamed of being able to visit.
I had always perceived these islands as the ultimate honeymoon destination.
And when I arrived, I was hit with this heartbreaking reality,
that every single beach was littered with plastic bottles.
Even my hometown of Toronto is not immune from plastic pollution.
This is truly a global issue.
And the careless decision to irresponsibly dispose of a plastic product
is made in an instant,
but it has consequences that last a lifetime.
One of the greatest advantages of plastics is that they're made to last,
for a very long time.
And in fact,
almost every plastic product ever created still exists on Earth today.
Whether it was recycled into a different plastic product
or lies discarded at the bottom of the ocean floor,
it's still here, and it's not going away.
This is humanity's mark on the fossil record.
This is actually a photo of what a fossilized plastic product looks like.
Scientists refer to these as techno fossils,
and thousands of years from now,
this is how people will know that we were here,
by our remanence of plastic trash discarded around the globe.
The UN is actually calling plastic pollution in the oceans
a planetary crisis.
And rightfully so.
Our oceans are far too critical to be treated as a plastic dump.
I want everybody to do a little exercise with me.
Take a deep breath in.
And exhale.
That felt good for me too, I'm a little nervous.
(Laughter)
You were able to take that breath because of the oceans.
I'm sure that many of you were taught, growing up,
that trees produce the oxygen that we need to breathe.
We were all taught from a very young age that we need to protect the trees
because they provide the oxygen that we need to breathe,
and they sustain life on this planet.
Don't get me wrong,
the trees are very important and we do need to protect them.
But, as I've gotten deeper into my environmental studies
and conservation work,
I learned that trees are actually responsible
for 28% of the oxygen that we breathe,
and that 70% of it comes from the oceans.
The oceans are the lungs of this planet.
Earth is a blue planet.
I'm sure that many of you have seen that photograph from space,
where if you look down on Earth, we look like a giant blue marble,
because our surface is covered not mostly by land, but by water.
And not only do the oceans produce most of the oxygen we need to breathe,
but they act as our largest carbon sink
and are home to the most biodiversity this planet has.
And it's time that we start recognizing the importance of maintaining healthy seas
because our oceans are big, but they're not too big to fail.
And if they die, so will we.
It's currently estimated that by the year 2050,
there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Should this happen, our entire world is going to look very different.
Seafood will become a scarce luxury,
available only to the richest percentage of the population.
And the coastal communities who rely on fishing for income
will be displaced and forced to move elsewhere in search of new work,
which will cause a huge environmental refugee problem
for other countries all around the globe.
Your life is going to look different, too.
Your vacation memories will change.
Instead of snapping photos of your family
standing in front of a beautiful, crystal clear blue ocean,
they'll be standing in front of a plastic dump.
And you probably won't expose your children
to the toxins living in a plastic sea,
so they'll never know the joy of swimming in the ocean,
not to mention experiencing the bright coral and diverse marine life
that lives beneath the surface.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
And every single person here in this room today
already has what it takes to start making a difference.
The simple fact is that we can't turn back the clock
and revert to a world without plastics.
History and science have proven to us
that plastics are not the perfect product that we once believe them to be,
but they're a necessary and important part of our future.
So, if we can't live without them,
we're going to need to learn how to live with them
in a responsible and sustainable way,
that maximizes recycling and minimizes production.
There's already enough plastic on this planet.
We don't need to create any more of it.
All that we need to do is be smart about reusing what's already here.
That means stopping the single-use cycle.
The only way that a sustainable future can include plastic products
is if we eliminate single use plastics,
and instead, turn towards a circular economy,
in which old products become new products.
We did this before, and we can do it again.
When I first got up here, I gave you guys some examples
of what life looked like before plastics,
and it wasn't all that crazy.
We were incredibly resourceful,
and we reused and repurposed whatever we could.
I like to think that humanity has come a little ways since the 1940s,
and there's no reason why today
we can't find new ways to use old products.
Plastic was introduced to us through small changes in our everyday lives,
and its impacts can be reduced in the exact same way.
All that it takes is small changes every single day, on an individual scale.
Because your actions today have a huge impact on tomorrow.
So, ditch the plastic water bottles, and instead, invest in a reusable one.
And while you're at it, get one for your coffee cup too.
Always remember to bring your reusable bags
when you go grocery shopping,
and don't buy produce that is wrapped in plastic.
And when you go to a restaurant or bar, ask for your drink without a straw.
People often think
that environmental issues can only be solved with massive policy changes,
historic international agreements,
or groundbreaking innovation,
and that their actions as one person on this planet don't matter.
But that couldn't be further from the truth.
Think about it.
If every single one of us here today,
when we go out downtown to a restaurant or bar,
and you ask for your drink without a straw,
that's 400 straws saved from entering our oceans.
This is how change starts.
It starts with one person.
It starts with one straw.
And it starts with one drop.
And you, and this everyday changes that you're making in your own life,
are that one drop.
Not just a single drop in the ocean, but the entire ocean in a drop.
Thank you.
(Applause)