On Plugged In…
Plastic waste ...
in our landfills …
in our oceans ...
and even in …
the air we breathe.
Tiny plastic fibers …
from everyday products …
are making their way …
into our food …
water and air supply.
(Janice Brahney, biogeochemist, Utah State University)
“Even if we stopped using plastics today, there would still be enough plastics in the environment to circle around the earth.”
We examine …
How microplastics migrate …
Environmental politics …
And how one teenager’s discovery …
Led to a multi-million-dollar effort …
To clean the world’s oceans ...
On Plugged In …
Plastics and the Environment.
(Greta)
Hello and welcome to Plugged In.
I’m Greta Van Susteren, reporting from my home in Washington DC.
It is difficult if not nearly impossible to imagine the modern world without plastic.
From bottles and bags to artificial limbs and life-saving medical devices plastics are a built-in part of daily life.
It is cheap, versatile lightweight and because it is not bio-degradable ...
plastic is almost indestructible.
And that may be its biggest drawback.
(Plastics in the Environment)
The first patent was in 1907 to a Belgian immigrant to the U.S. - Bakelite was the world’s first synthetic plastic.
Initially a novelty mass production did not take off until the 1950’s.
Today, each year the world produces nearly 400 million metric tons.
Most of it is used in packaging; everything from the food we eat to the toys we buy.
Plastic is used to build our homes and offices. It is in the clothes we wear and a key component for our favorite electronic devices.
Plastic is not biodegradable. Depending on the type of plastic - researchers say it takes between 10 and 500 years for plastic to decompose.
Some studies say it takes longer.
But what happens to all that plastic when we no longer need it?
According to the global Change Data Lab - since 1950, 55 percent of all the plastic ever produced ended up in landfills.
25 percent was incinerated. Only 20 percent of it was recycled.
The United Nations estimates each year, 8-million metric tons of plastic waste ends up in our oceans.
((Greta))
The coronavirus pandemic is a new driver of single-use plastic waste.
But innovative people are finding ways to mass produce personal protective equipment that is bio-degradable.
Here is VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
(Plastic Free PPE)
((NARRATOR))
Discarded plastic gloves tossed by the roadside and filling bins are a reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over. As countries try to protect their citizens, demand for PPE has gone up exponentially.
((Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet))
"I think all of us are very aware of this massive ramp up in plastic production that really is in the name of COVID-19. And one of the major uses of that has been to create plastic PPE.”
((NARRATOR))
Sian Sutherland is the co-founder of the group A Plastic Planet. According to them, nearly 750 million items of PPE were distributed to UK front-line staff from late February until mid-April.
((Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet))
“Single use, ripped off, put in the bin, exist forever unless they're burnt. We need to replace those with something that's much more nature friendly.”
((NARRATOR))
As shown here - using materials other than plastic - Reelbrands, a sustainable packaging firm has recently started producing more than a million visor units a week since the beginning of June. Ian Bates, company co-founder explains.
((Ian Bates, co-founder of Reelbrands))
"It's made entirely of compostable and sustainable material. So, the visor, the clear part, is made of wood pulp, made from trees. It's incredible that it's clear, but that's the case. And this, of course, is made of cardboard. And we've designed so that it will be as simple as possible. So, you literally, you take it out of the pack, arrives flat like that, you don't need assembly instructions, you just pop it in like that, and then straight on your head."
((NARRATOR))
They also plan to produce gowns and gloves. Like Reelbrands, other companies are also trying to do their part by offering more sustainable PPE options including UK-based OceanView masks with its "VP195" reusable face mask. The company claims the three-layer mask can be washed up to 30 times. Nicole Macdermott, Chief Operating Officer.
((Nicole Macdermott, Chief Operating Officer of OceanView Masks))
"The idea that so many of these masks are disposable, you can wear them for one day and have to be put in the bin, just seems madness. For a key part of our wardrobes to be disposable, it's not sustainable."
((NARRATOR))
Discarded PPE items could add to the estimated 13 million tons of plastic that flows into our oceans every year, according to a 2018 United Nations' report. MARIAMA DIALLO VOANEWS.
(Greta)
There is one person who thinks 50-percent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be cleaned up in five years.
We will hear about his ambitious plans ahead in the show.
But first we want to look at the plastic that you do not see.
Janice Brahney is a biogeochemist and assistant professor at Utah State University.
In an opinion article published in June by The New York Times, Brahney wrote that her team discovered tons of microplastics no bigger than five millimeters are floating in the air.
(Greta Interview - Janice Brahney, Researcher)
JB: so we’re just starting to understand how microplastics are moving through the atmosphere and what their atmospheric concentrations are. We looked at really remote locations which helps us understand background deposition rates. And we found that over a year period in the areas that we looked at, more than a thousand tons of microplastic are being deposited.
GVS: Right now in the wilderness, is it unsafe?
JB: No I wouldn't say that it's unsafe for humans. We're more likely to breathe in more microplastics in urban areas or even inside. But we do have concerns about what this might mean for ecological health.
GVS: Is there one product that seems to be the worst offender? I mean are we seeing way too many straws or clothes? And that may not be fair to any particular manufacturers but is there a product that seems to be the one that keeps showing up as one of the big problems?
JB: Well, we can't really identify our microplastics to any type of product
GVS: So there's no sort of fingerprint with the microplastics, they don't. Okay.
JB: No, about 70% of the microplastics were fibers that were, we identified as probable clothing fibers, so polyester and nylon. Also some polypropylene and PTFV and since they're secondary plastics, we don't know where they came from. We did have --about 30% of our particles were microbeads. So these are primary plastics, although we don't know what their use was. So these seem to be a lot smaller than the microbeads that were used in cosmetics. These are between five and 30 microns in diameter, so a little bit smaller than than what's been used for personal care products. But they do seem to be potentially related to paints, or coatings, which might use microplastic beads to create texture or different types of visual effects in the paint. Although we're not sure that that's the that's the main source.
GVS: What are micro plastic beads in cosmetics, what are they?
JB: So they've been used as, for abrasives basically, so to exfoliate your face or clean your teeth. So they add a bit of rough roughness to the cosmetic to help exfoliate. The beads that we saw were in all colors of the rainbow, and also silver, black, gold. We saw just about every color you can imagine, and they were mostly smaller than what we were able to identify using the instrument we were using. But the ones we did identify were acrylic, and this is one of the reasons we started to think that this might be paint. And a little bit of internet sleuthing, the manufacturers of these kinds of microbeads cite paints and coatings as as one of the uses of these of these beads.
GVS: Isn't it inevitable unless we stop using plastics that we're going to have this?
JB: Yes, so I think for some time, because what we're likely looking at is, is decades of plastic, mismanaged plastic waste is what we're seeing in the atmosphere, even if we stopped using plastics today, there would still be enough plastics in the environment to circle around the earth and through the atmosphere. I think that, you know that we need plastics for, you know, some really key reasons, for medical applications for example. But I think that we could all do a little bit better in how we make choices, make consumer choices and also how we manage our waste, not just at the personal level but at the government level.
GVS: You know it's interesting that, you know as I as I talk to you, I realize you know what a potentially big problem this is, one that's, you know, when you can't see because it's microplastics. And, you know, I'm deeply involved in following legislation here in Washington DC and see what's going on, but I have never seen any attention to this particular problem which now makes a lot of sense to me as a real problem just as plastics in the ocean does.
JB: I think that microplastics are very tangible in the sense that, even if we can't see them. There's a lot of very poignant imagery of microplastics in organisms and in unnatural environments, or looking unnatural in natural environments. And I think that that can really speak to people, and they can relate it to their daily choices. so I think this is why some activities or some campaigns for example to reduce straw usage, or the microbeads in cosmetics, I think some of these movements have been very effective for that reason. But what we're seeing in the atmosphere is most, mostly clothing fibers and it's likely that a lot of emissions come from roads. And so I think different kinds of consumer choices and management strategies are needed to sort of limit these kinds of emissions into the atmosphere and maybe some new technologies that can help limit shedding from clothing or different types of clothing material.
(Greta)
So, who is producing all that plastic waste?
There is no question that the United States creates more plastic waste than most other countries.
Most of America’s plastic waste either stays in landfills, is incinerated or is recycled.
But much of the plastic in our oceans is the result of what is called “mismanaged waste.”
It flows out of landfills and into regional waterways that flow out to sea.
A 2015 study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that China was responsible for nearly nine million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste.
About three-and-a-half million tons wound up in the ocean.
Indonesia …
The Philippines …
Vietnam and Sri Lanka …
round out the top five.
(Greta)
In the United States the Environmental Protection Agency is tasked with implementing policies to protect human health and the environment.
Christine Todd Whitman led the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.
She is also a former governor of the state of New Jersey.
I asked Governor Whitman what motivated her interest in the environment.
(Greta interview – Governor Christine Todd Whitman)
CTW: I live on a farm. I grew up on the farm. And when you grow up on a farm, you see the very direct relationship between human activity and what happens in the environment. And I have parents who were very, very committed to the outdoors and always said, “always leave a place better than you find it.” We spent a lot of time outdoors, spent a lot of time on the river, fishing and doing all sorts of things so the outdoors is part of my life and my upbringing. And then as governor particularly, this is the most densely populated state in the nation, New Jersey, and yet it's done some extraordinary things. We have actually on a percentage basis, we have preserved more farmland than any other state in the nation. But as you drove around, certainly when I first became governor, it was very obvious where you saw that development happening, it was on farmland. because that tends to be flat and easily drained so we did a lot to protect farmland and open space and as part of our quality of life. and mother nature does a much better job of cleaning the water and clean air than than any plant that we can construct, and does it much less expensively.
GVS: you're a member of the Republican party, you have been. We have a Republican administration, but I know that you're at odds with the republican administration now. So I'm curious if, from your personal position how you think the Trump administration is doing worldwide on the issue of climate change or on pollution or all these issues having to do with the food supply in interacting with these other nations. Is it, is it going in a positive direction or negative direction?
CTW: No, it's a very negative direction because we're just not engaging at all. I mean getting out of the Paris accord, instead of trying to work with it to make sure it was what we wanted, where we could live with it and change it if we needed to change it.
You’ve got to be engaged and this administration is not and the problem with that is, Greta, China is. I mean we're cutting back on our science, we're cutting back on the research and development, they're starving EPA, NOAA, all the scientists throughout the administration they're starving them for money. and yet China's, they've got a road and belt project which is their big development project that's taking them, it's the old Silk Road but it's getting them into countries from going west, all the way across the continent there. But they have the same thing digitally. they're working on science they have put an enormous amount of money in that where we're now, way, way behind. And that's a dangerous place to be.
GVS: I think if the Trump administration were responding to you, it would say look, you know we have to take that these regulations, these rules are putting a foot on the throat of America's economy, and that you know we've got to take care of the Americana, in addition to the coronavirus we've got other issues. And so that's why I think that they want to relieve some of the regulations to make the economy more robust. Is that not a fair assessment?
CTW: Sure, no I think you're right. That's what they're saying. But as I mentioned before, we have, we have the facts of how that's just not the case. That is really overlooking the ingenuity of American business and our ability to compete. Let's just take their rollback of the Safe Drinking Water Act, basically to enable the coal companies to keep going. Coal is dying not because of environmental regulations. Coal is dying because of fracking and cheaper ways of producing power. that's an economic decision being made by the utilities. And yet what they what this administration has done is now said that the coal companies can dump their tailings, which are highly pollutant, they're full of arsenic and lead all sorts of things from the coal mines right at the edge of water sources. That's not going to bring back coal mining in those areas in West Virginia and Kentucky, but it can poison the water of the people who depend on that water. because they have wells.
GVS: It seems to me that what would be a huge boost to the whole world, especially you know nations in Africa where they have so much sunshine is if we could figure out a way to store solar energy, the storage thing would be would be leaps and bounds, helping us.
CTW: Absolutely. I mean, these renewables are great but they're still peak shaving, meaning they're only on when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and they need to be base power, always on. And there are lots of things we can do and people are working on it. But again, the government has to say “this is an important thing we should be doing,” and help, letting the scientists actually start to look at this stuff for those reasons. And we're just not taking it as seriously at the federal level as we should be, and sending that message that we can be, we can be a leader economically doing this. Because this is the way the world is going,
GVS: Is it too late? We've talked about the air we've talked about going all you know, going all around the world with this pollutants but is it too late?
CTW: I hope not. I would say no, it's never too late. Look-- the climate has been changing since the earth was formed, and we weren't around the mess that up always. But it's very clear that our activities is exacerbating making much worse that natural trend. So, we need to take responsibility where we can for that because it's in our best interest to do it. And we can do that and continue to grow the economy. we can start investing in some of the new --there's so many exciting new technologies, new ways of doing things that are coming along that I think we can, we can do this but we have to take it seriously and unfortunately, that means it has to come from the top. It sends the message: this is important. It's a little bit like I would argue with the pandemic we've needed from the very beginning, someone saying, “This is what we know, this is what we don't know these are the minimum things you have to do.” but take a consistent message out there so that people have some confidence that what they're hearing or being asked to do will actually make a positive difference.
(Greta)
It is not just plastic waste that is endangering our planet.
Other pollutants and rising ocean temperatures threaten our fish and seafood.
In the blue waters near Hawaii, warming waters are fueling the growth of an invasive type of seaweed that is choking off marine life.
Here is VOA’s Arash Arabasadi.
(Fragile Waters)
((NARRATOR))
Beneath the surface of Hawaii’s blue waters lurks a menace swaying in the currents and choking life.
((Alison Sherwood, University of Hawaii))
“I think what makes this really concerning is that it’s very rare. It’s very alarming to find that there’s something that’s behaving like an invasive species.”
((NARRATOR))
Alison Sherwood is Chief Scientist of Seaweed Study at the University of Hawaii. She says in 2016 researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, discovered small clumps of a new alga they’d never seen before.
((Alison Sherwood, University of Hawaii))
“This is a nuisance seaweed, and we don’t have a name for this alga. That’s rare. You don’t typically find something coming into an environment and causing this level of alarm and simply not knowing what it is and where it might have come from.”
((NARRATOR))
Sherwood says the discovered seaweed overtook parts of the reef by 2019, and NOAA’s Randall Kosaki warns invasion could suffocate other waters as well as local industry.
((Randall Kosaki, Seaweed Expedition, NOAA))
“If something like this got back to Waikiki or anywhere in the main Hawaiian Islands it would be an ecological disaster but also an economic disaster. You can imagine what that would do to tourism to have an algae like this overgrowing the reefs.”
((NARRATOR))
Without controlling its spread, the new seaweed could deliver a major blow to America’s 50th state, where tourism drives nearly a quarter of the economy. Meanwhile, rising water temperatures around the East African Seychelles Archipelago contribute to low oxygen levels that threaten fish when they’re most at risk: as embryos or newborn spawn.
((Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research))
“The reason for them being sensitive to temperature has to do with the provision of oxygen to these organisms.”
((NARRATOR))
Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research says the concern is rising temperatures forcing fish in oceans spanning the globe to find cooler waters to spawn.
((Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research))
“The species would have to move out of this area and look for different sites that may be more suitable based on other reasons like food availability and so forth.”
((NARRATOR))
Among those hardest hit will be the Alaskan pollock, the United States’ biggest fishery. Arash Arabasadi, VOA News, Washington.
(Greta)
Communities around the world are coming up with solutions to tackle climate challenges.
When he was 16 years old, Boyan Slat decided to clean the world’s oceans. This after a diving expedition where he found more plastic than fish.
Two years later at age 18 he started “The Ocean Cleanup” foundation whose goal is to remove 90 percent of floating ocean plastic.
We spoke earlier about the group’s latest efforts.
(Greta Interview – Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup)
BS: So what we see is that the rivers are really the main source of plastic leading to the oceans. We see that 1% of rivers are responsible for about 80% of all plastic leading to the oceans. So what we thought was ‘well, we want to stop more plastic from going into the ocean. Why don't we put systems in the mouths of those rivers to, using solar power, catch the plastic and really stop it from from reaching the oceans?’ so we've developed these interceptors which are autonomous solar power devices that stop the plastic before it reaches the ocean.
GVS: What do you do with the plastic once you have collected it?
BS: Yeah. So, once the system is full, which is like a vacuum cleaner for the river, we take out the barge with the plastic. We bring it to the side of the river where we can then process it; part of it can be recycled, part of it has to be disposed of in another way. But we do feel that we carry the responsibility to make sure that it's disposed of properly, rather than it having the risk of ending up back in some river ocean.
GVS: How small particle can the interceptor collect?
BS: Yes. So we, we can collect down to roughly a quarter of an inch, that order of magnitude. What I think is important to note, though, is that most of the microplastics that are currently in the oceans, actually used to be larger objects before they ended up in the ocean. So, when, the fragmentation process of these big objects to microplastics, usually happens over the course of decades really in the middle of the ocean. So in rivers, you don't really see that much microplastics. of course they are there but the vast bulk of the mass is still large objects when it enters the oceans. And by collecting those, we prevent the future creation of microplastics from the fragmentation of those big objects.
GVS: You know this obviously I think it's a great idea to protect the oceans from the plastic getting into the ocean, but we've got also a second problem a pre-existing problem, we already have plastic in the ocean like the Pacific Garbage Patch is about three times the size of our state of Texas. Do you have any sort of idea or solution registered to collect that plastic?
BS: Well, it's. Glad you asked because, actually, that's really the other side of the equation of what we're trying to do. Yes, we need to stop more plastic from going into the oceans, I think the interceptors will help. I think there's a lot of other great initiatives on that side as well. But that still leaves the legacy pollution of 60 years of plastic that is already accumulated in the oceans, of course, most famously, the largest accumulation is between Hawaii and California, Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So, really over the past few years, in parallel to what we're doing on rivers, we've developed what we call ocean cleanup system, which are systems that we actually put in these garbage patches to use the forces of the ocean to, to allow us to to really collect plastic that's already in the ocean. And last year we had the, the first success there. We had a system in the patch, collecting plastic. And now we're working towards to preparing to really scale this up in the coming years.
GVS: Are you finding that there's a lot of enthusiasm for this?
BS: Yeah, so I think, yes and no. I think on one hand, what we see is the company, the companies and the, the partners, the governments that we've worked with have been really receptive, have been really great partners in intercepting plastic in the rivers where we are already active. But I think still more can be done to really show what's possible to the other governments and organizations that aren't yet involved. And that's what we hope to really achieve in the coming year. And I think that's something that you right now actually are, are helping with as well is, the more people know about this, the better, and really demonstrating that say, the next 10-15 interceptors work really well and really solve the problem for that city or country. I think that's what's required to really make this scale around the world.
(Greta)
Before we go a few moments to remember the life of Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights champion. He died July 17th after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Here’s VOA’s Chris Simkins.
(Death of a Civil Rights Icon)
(John Lewis, US Congressman)
“We cannot give up now, we cannot give in.”
((NARRATOR))
A leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement, John Lewis worked closely with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was the last surviving keynote speaker from the 1963 March on Washington.
((John Lewis, Civil Rights Activist, 1963)
“We shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy. We must say: Wake up America! Wake up!”
((NARRATOR)) ((1965))
Lewis gained national recognition two years later when he along with other voting rights demonstrators were beaten by police in Selma, Alabama. The 1965 incident known as “Bloody Sunday” triggered a national awakening to end racial discrimination.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“We were beaten, we were tear-gassed. I thought I was going to die on this bridge.”
((NARRATOR)) ((1965))
Months after the violence, Lewis stood next to President Lyndon Johnson when the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. It was a crowning moment for Lewis as the legislation outlawed discriminatory voting practices that kept African Americans from gaining political power.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 freed and liberated so many people.”
((NARRATOR))
In 1986, Lewis began his own political career after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia. Called the “conscience of the Congress” Lewis fought against income equality, and for criminal justice reform and gun safety.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“We cannot continue to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of mass gun violence in our nation.”
((NARRATOR)) ((2011))
In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Right before New Year’s Day 2020, the veteran congressman announced he had stage four pancreatic cancer.
While under cancer treatment, he returned to his native Alabama to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, refusing to let his grave condition hold him back.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“I’m not going to give up, I’m not going to give in. I’m going to continue to fight. We need your prayers now more than ever before. Let’s do it!”
Chris Simkins, VOA News Washington.
(Greta)
That’s all the time we have.
My thanks to our guests former Governor Christine Whitman ...
Professor Janice Brahney, and Ocean Clean-Up’s Boyan Slat.
For the latest updates on these stories and more…
please visit our website at VOANews.com.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @Greta.
Thank you for being Plugged In.
We hope to see you again next week!
#END
Plastic waste ...
in our landfills …
in our oceans ...
and even in …
the air we breathe.
Tiny plastic fibers …
from everyday products …
are making their way …
into our food …
water and air supply.
(Janice Brahney, biogeochemist, Utah State University)
“Even if we stopped using plastics today, there would still be enough plastics in the environment to circle around the earth.”
We examine …
How microplastics migrate …
Environmental politics …
And how one teenager’s discovery …
Led to a multi-million-dollar effort …
To clean the world’s oceans ...
On Plugged In …
Plastics and the Environment.
(Greta)
Hello and welcome to Plugged In.
I’m Greta Van Susteren, reporting from my home in Washington DC.
It is difficult if not nearly impossible to imagine the modern world without plastic.
From bottles and bags to artificial limbs and life-saving medical devices plastics are a built-in part of daily life.
It is cheap, versatile lightweight and because it is not bio-degradable ...
plastic is almost indestructible.
And that may be its biggest drawback.
(Plastics in the Environment)
The first patent was in 1907 to a Belgian immigrant to the U.S. - Bakelite was the world’s first synthetic plastic.
Initially a novelty mass production did not take off until the 1950’s.
Today, each year the world produces nearly 400 million metric tons.
Most of it is used in packaging; everything from the food we eat to the toys we buy.
Plastic is used to build our homes and offices. It is in the clothes we wear and a key component for our favorite electronic devices.
Plastic is not biodegradable. Depending on the type of plastic - researchers say it takes between 10 and 500 years for plastic to decompose.
Some studies say it takes longer.
But what happens to all that plastic when we no longer need it?
According to the global Change Data Lab - since 1950, 55 percent of all the plastic ever produced ended up in landfills.
25 percent was incinerated. Only 20 percent of it was recycled.
The United Nations estimates each year, 8-million metric tons of plastic waste ends up in our oceans.
((Greta))
The coronavirus pandemic is a new driver of single-use plastic waste.
But innovative people are finding ways to mass produce personal protective equipment that is bio-degradable.
Here is VOA’s Mariama Diallo.
(Plastic Free PPE)
((NARRATOR))
Discarded plastic gloves tossed by the roadside and filling bins are a reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over. As countries try to protect their citizens, demand for PPE has gone up exponentially.
((Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet))
"I think all of us are very aware of this massive ramp up in plastic production that really is in the name of COVID-19. And one of the major uses of that has been to create plastic PPE.”
((NARRATOR))
Sian Sutherland is the co-founder of the group A Plastic Planet. According to them, nearly 750 million items of PPE were distributed to UK front-line staff from late February until mid-April.
((Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet))
“Single use, ripped off, put in the bin, exist forever unless they're burnt. We need to replace those with something that's much more nature friendly.”
((NARRATOR))
As shown here - using materials other than plastic - Reelbrands, a sustainable packaging firm has recently started producing more than a million visor units a week since the beginning of June. Ian Bates, company co-founder explains.
((Ian Bates, co-founder of Reelbrands))
"It's made entirely of compostable and sustainable material. So, the visor, the clear part, is made of wood pulp, made from trees. It's incredible that it's clear, but that's the case. And this, of course, is made of cardboard. And we've designed so that it will be as simple as possible. So, you literally, you take it out of the pack, arrives flat like that, you don't need assembly instructions, you just pop it in like that, and then straight on your head."
((NARRATOR))
They also plan to produce gowns and gloves. Like Reelbrands, other companies are also trying to do their part by offering more sustainable PPE options including UK-based OceanView masks with its "VP195" reusable face mask. The company claims the three-layer mask can be washed up to 30 times. Nicole Macdermott, Chief Operating Officer.
((Nicole Macdermott, Chief Operating Officer of OceanView Masks))
"The idea that so many of these masks are disposable, you can wear them for one day and have to be put in the bin, just seems madness. For a key part of our wardrobes to be disposable, it's not sustainable."
((NARRATOR))
Discarded PPE items could add to the estimated 13 million tons of plastic that flows into our oceans every year, according to a 2018 United Nations' report. MARIAMA DIALLO VOANEWS.
(Greta)
There is one person who thinks 50-percent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be cleaned up in five years.
We will hear about his ambitious plans ahead in the show.
But first we want to look at the plastic that you do not see.
Janice Brahney is a biogeochemist and assistant professor at Utah State University.
In an opinion article published in June by The New York Times, Brahney wrote that her team discovered tons of microplastics no bigger than five millimeters are floating in the air.
(Greta Interview - Janice Brahney, Researcher)
JB: so we’re just starting to understand how microplastics are moving through the atmosphere and what their atmospheric concentrations are. We looked at really remote locations which helps us understand background deposition rates. And we found that over a year period in the areas that we looked at, more than a thousand tons of microplastic are being deposited.
GVS: Right now in the wilderness, is it unsafe?
JB: No I wouldn't say that it's unsafe for humans. We're more likely to breathe in more microplastics in urban areas or even inside. But we do have concerns about what this might mean for ecological health.
GVS: Is there one product that seems to be the worst offender? I mean are we seeing way too many straws or clothes? And that may not be fair to any particular manufacturers but is there a product that seems to be the one that keeps showing up as one of the big problems?
JB: Well, we can't really identify our microplastics to any type of product
GVS: So there's no sort of fingerprint with the microplastics, they don't. Okay.
JB: No, about 70% of the microplastics were fibers that were, we identified as probable clothing fibers, so polyester and nylon. Also some polypropylene and PTFV and since they're secondary plastics, we don't know where they came from. We did have --about 30% of our particles were microbeads. So these are primary plastics, although we don't know what their use was. So these seem to be a lot smaller than the microbeads that were used in cosmetics. These are between five and 30 microns in diameter, so a little bit smaller than than what's been used for personal care products. But they do seem to be potentially related to paints, or coatings, which might use microplastic beads to create texture or different types of visual effects in the paint. Although we're not sure that that's the that's the main source.
GVS: What are micro plastic beads in cosmetics, what are they?
JB: So they've been used as, for abrasives basically, so to exfoliate your face or clean your teeth. So they add a bit of rough roughness to the cosmetic to help exfoliate. The beads that we saw were in all colors of the rainbow, and also silver, black, gold. We saw just about every color you can imagine, and they were mostly smaller than what we were able to identify using the instrument we were using. But the ones we did identify were acrylic, and this is one of the reasons we started to think that this might be paint. And a little bit of internet sleuthing, the manufacturers of these kinds of microbeads cite paints and coatings as as one of the uses of these of these beads.
GVS: Isn't it inevitable unless we stop using plastics that we're going to have this?
JB: Yes, so I think for some time, because what we're likely looking at is, is decades of plastic, mismanaged plastic waste is what we're seeing in the atmosphere, even if we stopped using plastics today, there would still be enough plastics in the environment to circle around the earth and through the atmosphere. I think that, you know that we need plastics for, you know, some really key reasons, for medical applications for example. But I think that we could all do a little bit better in how we make choices, make consumer choices and also how we manage our waste, not just at the personal level but at the government level.
GVS: You know it's interesting that, you know as I as I talk to you, I realize you know what a potentially big problem this is, one that's, you know, when you can't see because it's microplastics. And, you know, I'm deeply involved in following legislation here in Washington DC and see what's going on, but I have never seen any attention to this particular problem which now makes a lot of sense to me as a real problem just as plastics in the ocean does.
JB: I think that microplastics are very tangible in the sense that, even if we can't see them. There's a lot of very poignant imagery of microplastics in organisms and in unnatural environments, or looking unnatural in natural environments. And I think that that can really speak to people, and they can relate it to their daily choices. so I think this is why some activities or some campaigns for example to reduce straw usage, or the microbeads in cosmetics, I think some of these movements have been very effective for that reason. But what we're seeing in the atmosphere is most, mostly clothing fibers and it's likely that a lot of emissions come from roads. And so I think different kinds of consumer choices and management strategies are needed to sort of limit these kinds of emissions into the atmosphere and maybe some new technologies that can help limit shedding from clothing or different types of clothing material.
(Greta)
So, who is producing all that plastic waste?
There is no question that the United States creates more plastic waste than most other countries.
Most of America’s plastic waste either stays in landfills, is incinerated or is recycled.
But much of the plastic in our oceans is the result of what is called “mismanaged waste.”
It flows out of landfills and into regional waterways that flow out to sea.
A 2015 study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that China was responsible for nearly nine million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste.
About three-and-a-half million tons wound up in the ocean.
Indonesia …
The Philippines …
Vietnam and Sri Lanka …
round out the top five.
(Greta)
In the United States the Environmental Protection Agency is tasked with implementing policies to protect human health and the environment.
Christine Todd Whitman led the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.
She is also a former governor of the state of New Jersey.
I asked Governor Whitman what motivated her interest in the environment.
(Greta interview – Governor Christine Todd Whitman)
CTW: I live on a farm. I grew up on the farm. And when you grow up on a farm, you see the very direct relationship between human activity and what happens in the environment. And I have parents who were very, very committed to the outdoors and always said, “always leave a place better than you find it.” We spent a lot of time outdoors, spent a lot of time on the river, fishing and doing all sorts of things so the outdoors is part of my life and my upbringing. And then as governor particularly, this is the most densely populated state in the nation, New Jersey, and yet it's done some extraordinary things. We have actually on a percentage basis, we have preserved more farmland than any other state in the nation. But as you drove around, certainly when I first became governor, it was very obvious where you saw that development happening, it was on farmland. because that tends to be flat and easily drained so we did a lot to protect farmland and open space and as part of our quality of life. and mother nature does a much better job of cleaning the water and clean air than than any plant that we can construct, and does it much less expensively.
GVS: you're a member of the Republican party, you have been. We have a Republican administration, but I know that you're at odds with the republican administration now. So I'm curious if, from your personal position how you think the Trump administration is doing worldwide on the issue of climate change or on pollution or all these issues having to do with the food supply in interacting with these other nations. Is it, is it going in a positive direction or negative direction?
CTW: No, it's a very negative direction because we're just not engaging at all. I mean getting out of the Paris accord, instead of trying to work with it to make sure it was what we wanted, where we could live with it and change it if we needed to change it.
You’ve got to be engaged and this administration is not and the problem with that is, Greta, China is. I mean we're cutting back on our science, we're cutting back on the research and development, they're starving EPA, NOAA, all the scientists throughout the administration they're starving them for money. and yet China's, they've got a road and belt project which is their big development project that's taking them, it's the old Silk Road but it's getting them into countries from going west, all the way across the continent there. But they have the same thing digitally. they're working on science they have put an enormous amount of money in that where we're now, way, way behind. And that's a dangerous place to be.
GVS: I think if the Trump administration were responding to you, it would say look, you know we have to take that these regulations, these rules are putting a foot on the throat of America's economy, and that you know we've got to take care of the Americana, in addition to the coronavirus we've got other issues. And so that's why I think that they want to relieve some of the regulations to make the economy more robust. Is that not a fair assessment?
CTW: Sure, no I think you're right. That's what they're saying. But as I mentioned before, we have, we have the facts of how that's just not the case. That is really overlooking the ingenuity of American business and our ability to compete. Let's just take their rollback of the Safe Drinking Water Act, basically to enable the coal companies to keep going. Coal is dying not because of environmental regulations. Coal is dying because of fracking and cheaper ways of producing power. that's an economic decision being made by the utilities. And yet what they what this administration has done is now said that the coal companies can dump their tailings, which are highly pollutant, they're full of arsenic and lead all sorts of things from the coal mines right at the edge of water sources. That's not going to bring back coal mining in those areas in West Virginia and Kentucky, but it can poison the water of the people who depend on that water. because they have wells.
GVS: It seems to me that what would be a huge boost to the whole world, especially you know nations in Africa where they have so much sunshine is if we could figure out a way to store solar energy, the storage thing would be would be leaps and bounds, helping us.
CTW: Absolutely. I mean, these renewables are great but they're still peak shaving, meaning they're only on when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and they need to be base power, always on. And there are lots of things we can do and people are working on it. But again, the government has to say “this is an important thing we should be doing,” and help, letting the scientists actually start to look at this stuff for those reasons. And we're just not taking it as seriously at the federal level as we should be, and sending that message that we can be, we can be a leader economically doing this. Because this is the way the world is going,
GVS: Is it too late? We've talked about the air we've talked about going all you know, going all around the world with this pollutants but is it too late?
CTW: I hope not. I would say no, it's never too late. Look-- the climate has been changing since the earth was formed, and we weren't around the mess that up always. But it's very clear that our activities is exacerbating making much worse that natural trend. So, we need to take responsibility where we can for that because it's in our best interest to do it. And we can do that and continue to grow the economy. we can start investing in some of the new --there's so many exciting new technologies, new ways of doing things that are coming along that I think we can, we can do this but we have to take it seriously and unfortunately, that means it has to come from the top. It sends the message: this is important. It's a little bit like I would argue with the pandemic we've needed from the very beginning, someone saying, “This is what we know, this is what we don't know these are the minimum things you have to do.” but take a consistent message out there so that people have some confidence that what they're hearing or being asked to do will actually make a positive difference.
(Greta)
It is not just plastic waste that is endangering our planet.
Other pollutants and rising ocean temperatures threaten our fish and seafood.
In the blue waters near Hawaii, warming waters are fueling the growth of an invasive type of seaweed that is choking off marine life.
Here is VOA’s Arash Arabasadi.
(Fragile Waters)
((NARRATOR))
Beneath the surface of Hawaii’s blue waters lurks a menace swaying in the currents and choking life.
((Alison Sherwood, University of Hawaii))
“I think what makes this really concerning is that it’s very rare. It’s very alarming to find that there’s something that’s behaving like an invasive species.”
((NARRATOR))
Alison Sherwood is Chief Scientist of Seaweed Study at the University of Hawaii. She says in 2016 researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, discovered small clumps of a new alga they’d never seen before.
((Alison Sherwood, University of Hawaii))
“This is a nuisance seaweed, and we don’t have a name for this alga. That’s rare. You don’t typically find something coming into an environment and causing this level of alarm and simply not knowing what it is and where it might have come from.”
((NARRATOR))
Sherwood says the discovered seaweed overtook parts of the reef by 2019, and NOAA’s Randall Kosaki warns invasion could suffocate other waters as well as local industry.
((Randall Kosaki, Seaweed Expedition, NOAA))
“If something like this got back to Waikiki or anywhere in the main Hawaiian Islands it would be an ecological disaster but also an economic disaster. You can imagine what that would do to tourism to have an algae like this overgrowing the reefs.”
((NARRATOR))
Without controlling its spread, the new seaweed could deliver a major blow to America’s 50th state, where tourism drives nearly a quarter of the economy. Meanwhile, rising water temperatures around the East African Seychelles Archipelago contribute to low oxygen levels that threaten fish when they’re most at risk: as embryos or newborn spawn.
((Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research))
“The reason for them being sensitive to temperature has to do with the provision of oxygen to these organisms.”
((NARRATOR))
Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner of the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research says the concern is rising temperatures forcing fish in oceans spanning the globe to find cooler waters to spawn.
((Professor Hans-Otto Pörtner, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research))
“The species would have to move out of this area and look for different sites that may be more suitable based on other reasons like food availability and so forth.”
((NARRATOR))
Among those hardest hit will be the Alaskan pollock, the United States’ biggest fishery. Arash Arabasadi, VOA News, Washington.
(Greta)
Communities around the world are coming up with solutions to tackle climate challenges.
When he was 16 years old, Boyan Slat decided to clean the world’s oceans. This after a diving expedition where he found more plastic than fish.
Two years later at age 18 he started “The Ocean Cleanup” foundation whose goal is to remove 90 percent of floating ocean plastic.
We spoke earlier about the group’s latest efforts.
(Greta Interview – Boyan Slat, The Ocean Cleanup)
BS: So what we see is that the rivers are really the main source of plastic leading to the oceans. We see that 1% of rivers are responsible for about 80% of all plastic leading to the oceans. So what we thought was ‘well, we want to stop more plastic from going into the ocean. Why don't we put systems in the mouths of those rivers to, using solar power, catch the plastic and really stop it from from reaching the oceans?’ so we've developed these interceptors which are autonomous solar power devices that stop the plastic before it reaches the ocean.
GVS: What do you do with the plastic once you have collected it?
BS: Yeah. So, once the system is full, which is like a vacuum cleaner for the river, we take out the barge with the plastic. We bring it to the side of the river where we can then process it; part of it can be recycled, part of it has to be disposed of in another way. But we do feel that we carry the responsibility to make sure that it's disposed of properly, rather than it having the risk of ending up back in some river ocean.
GVS: How small particle can the interceptor collect?
BS: Yes. So we, we can collect down to roughly a quarter of an inch, that order of magnitude. What I think is important to note, though, is that most of the microplastics that are currently in the oceans, actually used to be larger objects before they ended up in the ocean. So, when, the fragmentation process of these big objects to microplastics, usually happens over the course of decades really in the middle of the ocean. So in rivers, you don't really see that much microplastics. of course they are there but the vast bulk of the mass is still large objects when it enters the oceans. And by collecting those, we prevent the future creation of microplastics from the fragmentation of those big objects.
GVS: You know this obviously I think it's a great idea to protect the oceans from the plastic getting into the ocean, but we've got also a second problem a pre-existing problem, we already have plastic in the ocean like the Pacific Garbage Patch is about three times the size of our state of Texas. Do you have any sort of idea or solution registered to collect that plastic?
BS: Well, it's. Glad you asked because, actually, that's really the other side of the equation of what we're trying to do. Yes, we need to stop more plastic from going into the oceans, I think the interceptors will help. I think there's a lot of other great initiatives on that side as well. But that still leaves the legacy pollution of 60 years of plastic that is already accumulated in the oceans, of course, most famously, the largest accumulation is between Hawaii and California, Great Pacific Garbage Patch. So, really over the past few years, in parallel to what we're doing on rivers, we've developed what we call ocean cleanup system, which are systems that we actually put in these garbage patches to use the forces of the ocean to, to allow us to to really collect plastic that's already in the ocean. And last year we had the, the first success there. We had a system in the patch, collecting plastic. And now we're working towards to preparing to really scale this up in the coming years.
GVS: Are you finding that there's a lot of enthusiasm for this?
BS: Yeah, so I think, yes and no. I think on one hand, what we see is the company, the companies and the, the partners, the governments that we've worked with have been really receptive, have been really great partners in intercepting plastic in the rivers where we are already active. But I think still more can be done to really show what's possible to the other governments and organizations that aren't yet involved. And that's what we hope to really achieve in the coming year. And I think that's something that you right now actually are, are helping with as well is, the more people know about this, the better, and really demonstrating that say, the next 10-15 interceptors work really well and really solve the problem for that city or country. I think that's what's required to really make this scale around the world.
(Greta)
Before we go a few moments to remember the life of Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights champion. He died July 17th after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Here’s VOA’s Chris Simkins.
(Death of a Civil Rights Icon)
(John Lewis, US Congressman)
“We cannot give up now, we cannot give in.”
((NARRATOR))
A leader of the modern-day American civil rights movement, John Lewis worked closely with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was the last surviving keynote speaker from the 1963 March on Washington.
((John Lewis, Civil Rights Activist, 1963)
“We shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in the image of God and democracy. We must say: Wake up America! Wake up!”
((NARRATOR)) ((1965))
Lewis gained national recognition two years later when he along with other voting rights demonstrators were beaten by police in Selma, Alabama. The 1965 incident known as “Bloody Sunday” triggered a national awakening to end racial discrimination.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“We were beaten, we were tear-gassed. I thought I was going to die on this bridge.”
((NARRATOR)) ((1965))
Months after the violence, Lewis stood next to President Lyndon Johnson when the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed into law. It was a crowning moment for Lewis as the legislation outlawed discriminatory voting practices that kept African Americans from gaining political power.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“The Voting Rights Act of 1965 freed and liberated so many people.”
((NARRATOR))
In 1986, Lewis began his own political career after being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia. Called the “conscience of the Congress” Lewis fought against income equality, and for criminal justice reform and gun safety.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“We cannot continue to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of mass gun violence in our nation.”
((NARRATOR)) ((2011))
In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded Lewis the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Right before New Year’s Day 2020, the veteran congressman announced he had stage four pancreatic cancer.
While under cancer treatment, he returned to his native Alabama to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, refusing to let his grave condition hold him back.
((John Lewis, US Congressman))
“I’m not going to give up, I’m not going to give in. I’m going to continue to fight. We need your prayers now more than ever before. Let’s do it!”
Chris Simkins, VOA News Washington.
(Greta)
That’s all the time we have.
My thanks to our guests former Governor Christine Whitman ...
Professor Janice Brahney, and Ocean Clean-Up’s Boyan Slat.
For the latest updates on these stories and more…
please visit our website at VOANews.com.
And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @Greta.
Thank you for being Plugged In.
We hope to see you again next week!
#END
