Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 13

opinion
Ingredients of
the 'Plastic Soup'

Plastic doesn't
go away
Sailing to some of the most remote places on our planet alongside the crew
on board eXXpedition, I have voyaged in the name of science to research
ocean plastic pollution. Thousands of kilometers out to sea, we saw fishing
gear, toilet seats, lawn chairs, toothbrushes - surprisingly typical items that
make up the 8 million tons of plastic entering our oceans every year.

H

ow does it end up
out there? How
can we solve this
problem?
These
are the questions eXXpedition
set out to find answers to.

A workhorse with a
short working life

Plastic as a material is the
workhorse of our economy and
modern world. Plastic has capabilities that give it positive qualities such as being lightweight,
safe and durable. As evidenced
during the global pandemic,
plastic is also an important material for public health, transportation, and food/water safety.
But despite these important
functions, we still discard most
plastic as waste after using it just
a few minutes. There is a disconnect between a material made to
outlive us by hundreds of years,
and the single-use mindset.

80% of ocean plastic
comes from land

We know that most ocean
plastic comes from landbased sources. But to understand exactly how the material
ends up out there, on this final
frontier of pollution, we need
to go where the plastic goes.
This is why I sailed with eXX-

pedition, a series of all-women
scientific voyages to research
and raise awareness about
ocean plastic pollution.
The goal is to build actionable data on what types of
plastic leak into our oceans
and use this knowledge to
inform policy and individual
action about what we need
to manage better on land. As
80% of plastic in our oceans
originates on land, preventative solutions upstream are
key to solving this challenge.
This is also the reason Tomra
is a major sponsor of the project, because in order to be
part of the solution with delivering sustainable infrastructure for waste management,
we need to fully understand
the problem.

Connecting the dots
from land to sea

eXXpedition's research is
two-fold: on land, and at sea.
The land-based research is led
by Jenna Jambeck at University of Georgia. Before eXXpedition's departure from Easter
Island (Rapa Nui) for Tahiti in
early March this year, 13 other
crew members and I participated in a beach clean survey to
gather data for a Circularity Assessment Protocol. This builds

data on what litter we found on
streets and beaches on Easter
Island, looking at litter types
and the pathway it takes from
land to sea.
The research at sea is led by
Richard Thompson and University of Plymouth - the first institution to describe microplastics.
We collected microplastics samples from air, surface, and subsurface water. These were analysed according to type, size, and
by mass spectroscopy down to
their type of polymer. Combined,
this research can provide a holistic understanding of where to
focus policy and action.

There is no such
thing as 'away'

One key lesson I learnt during
this research, is that plastic
doesn't go 'away'. I've seen what
'away' looks like, having also
sailed through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North
Pacific - the biggest ocean
plastic accumulation zone on
the planet. In the South Pacific, we sailed past Ducie Island,
one of the world's most remote
islands. The only residents on
Ducie are seabirds, but still we
could clearly see massive fishing nets and buoys washed up
on its shoreline.
Because plastic does not de-

Kristine Berg,
circular economy
advisor at Tomra

compose, bigger pieces only
degrade into ever smaller pieces from the impact of wind, sun,
and waves. So, although we often imagine these 'trash islands'
out to sea, it is actually more of
a plastic soup.
Once thrown 'away', this
valuable material often washes
up on remote beaches such as
Hawaii or Easter Island. This is
not where the plastic comes
from, but these communities
are left with the burden of clean
up and waste management of
these hundreds of thousands
of pieces that litter their coastlines. What is 'away' to some, is
'home' to others.

New perspectives and
new opportunities

The more time we spend out
to sea doing this type of research, the more we realize the
solutions lie on land. The theme
for this year's World Oceans
Day on 8th June was 'Innovation for a sustainable ocean'. We
need innovation, but we also
need to change our perspective
and shift our behavior. There is
so much we can do right now as
individuals and industry about
this massive challenge - the
biggest threat to our oceans is
thinking someone else is going
to fix it for you.
May/June 2020

13



Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020

Contents
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - Cover1
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - Cover2
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - Contents
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 4
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 5
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 6
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 7
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 8
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 9
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 10
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 11
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 12
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 13
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 14
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 15
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 16
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 17
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 18
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 19
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 20
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 21
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 22
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 23
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 24
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 25
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 26
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 27
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 28
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 29
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 30
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 31
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 32
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 33
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 34
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 35
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 36
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 37
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 38
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 39
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - 40
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - Cover3
Sustainable Plastics - May/June 2020 - Cover4
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