The Transition |April 2022
People and progress in solving the ocean plastic crisis

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About OpenOceans Global. Our work centers on mapping ocean plastic, curating the best solutions and linking together a community of ocean plastic experts and leaders. To learn more, watch this short video of a presentation by founder Carl Nettleton at the November 2021 Esri Ocean, Weather, and Climate GIS Forum.

Did You Know?

Plastic is the public's top environmental worry. In a 2021 poll by the Shelton Group, plastic even outranked climate change as the leading concern.

Image credit: GreenBiz

Taking a Deeper Dive

Plastic and the promise of a magical place called "away"

Results of a recent survey by the Shelton Group, as reported in Plastic News on March 29, 2022, revealed the following:

• 90% of the public last year felt the amount of plastic trash in oceans and waterways was at an all-time high, up from 77% in 2020.
• There is increasing skepticism that recycling is a good solution, a troubling sign for the industry because plastics companies have staked a lot around boosting recycling as a key to how they want to solve the problem.
• 30% of the public are not at all confident that what we toss in the recycling bin is actually recycled, double what it was in 2019 when that number was 14%.

While addressing plastic industry leaders at a March 2022 Plastic News Executive Forum, Suzanne Shelton made clear "what the public wants to see are efforts to clean up the ocean, fix problems with recycling, and have recycled content in products that is 'abundantly available.'" The promise the plastic industry has made to people for decades is to "go ahead and buy whatever you want … because you're going to put it into the blue bin, and it's going to go to this other magical place called away, and it's going to become something else."

Her wake-up call to the industry leaders followed, "The waste issue is your issue, and that's the thing that's harming your public perception." In the survey, half of Americans say they're buying fewer single-use plastics.

The Shelton Group is a sustainability marketing and strategy company that conducts statistically valid surveys of between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans three times a year.
Image Credit: Buzzfeed News, Sergei Bobylev / TASS

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New Jersey bag ban could be the strictest in the U.S.

A new law banning plastic and paper bags in New Jersey could be the strictest in the U.S. Beginning on May 4, 2022, it will be illegal for stores to provide either plastic bags or paper bags. If you need a bag, they can only sell (or give away) reusable bags. How stores will package groceries ordered from online sales is still being determined.

Some stores are considering a bag exchange, but there are concerns about this not being hygienic.

Consumers can still buy and use plastic trash bags, sandwich bags, freezer bags, and dog waste bags. Even the single-use plastic bags stores have been using can still be bought online and delivered to New Jersey. But environmental advocates are hoping you won't.

Other exceptions from the law include produce bags, dry cleaning bags, plastic pharmacy bags, newspaper bags, bags for loose bulk food, bags for live animals like crickets or goldfish, and bags for small hardware items. In addition, styrofoam plates and cups will no longer be sold. Plastic utensils, plates, and cups are allowed, and paper plates, but nothing made of polystyrene is allowed. Image credit: State of New Jersey

Mapping Plastic-Fouled Coastlines

See more beaches fouled by plastic on our ocean plastic trash map.

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Coastal Hotspot: Saint Helena Island

According to Wikipedia, Saint Helena Island is a remote volcanic tropical island 1,950 kilometers (1,210 miles) west of the coast of south-western Africa and 4,000 kilometers (2,500 mi) east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. Despite its remote location, Saint Helena's coastline has been fouled by plastic. According to an October 18, 2018, article in Smithsonian Magazine, plastic pollution around St. Helena, East Falkland, and Ascension islands has increased tenfold in less than ten years and 100 times in the last 30 years. While it's hard to say where most of the plastic comes from, the degree of UV damage suggests that about 70 percent of the plastic floated to the islands from other sources.

OpenOceans Global plastic tracing tool aims to identify possible sources using current, wind, and wave data with the goal of stopping the plastic leakage before it reaches the ocean. Image credit: Dave Barnes

Solutions

See more solutions on our ocean plastic solutions page. Have a solution we should know about? Submit it here.

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MacArthur Foundation: Upstream Innovation Guide

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has taken a circular economy focus to address the ocean plastic crisis and has created an Upstream Innovation Guide to Packaging Solutions. According to the foundation, “in a circular economy, upstream innovation is about tracing a problem back to its root cause and tackling it there." Rather than dealing with a pile of waste, MacArthur wants to prevent it from being created in the first place. The foundation says upstream innovation requires a shift in mindset that includes:

• Rethinking the packaging – innovating at the packaging design level to provide the same essential packaging function, while designing out waste. For example, moving from non-recyclable to recyclable packaging formats or using a completely different type of material.
• Rethinking the product - innovating at the product design level to change the packaging needs while maintaining or improving the user experience. For example, changing from a physical product to a digital product or from a liquid product to a solid product.
• Rethinking the business model - innovating at the system design level to change the packaging needs. For example, selling products in refillable or returnable packaging rather than single-use packaging.

The upstream innovation mindset can be used to achieve three key circular economy innovation strategies — elimination, reuse, and material circulation. The Upstream Innovation Guide to Packaging Solutions provides more than 110 innovation case examples to show what good solutions look like in practice.

One example of innovation at the system design level is Carlsberg's beer cans that are now attached with glue rather than plastic rings. Image credit: Carlsberg

Meet the Experts and Leaders

OpenOceans Global is identifying ocean plastic experts from around the world. Here are two experts leading efforts to reduce plastic pollution that you should know about.

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Winnie Lau, Pew Charitable Trusts

Winnie Lau is a project director with Pew's Preventing Ocean Plastics Project, which aims to implement strategies to reduce the global ocean plastic pollution problem. Lau led Pew's landmark July 2020 study, in conjunction with SYSTEMIQ, "Breaking the Plastic Wave: Top Findings for Preventing Plastic Pollution," which is a global analysis using first-of-its-kind modeling, that shows that we can cut annual flows of plastic into the ocean by about 80% in the next 20 years by applying existing solutions and technologies. No single solution can achieve this goal; rather, the plastic wave can only be broken by taking immediate, ambitious, and concerted actions. She is leading Pew's current efforts to develop model policies and a disclosure and reporting system for plastics. She has also worked on Pew's international conservation unit, developing new projects and partnerships in Asia. Before joining Pew, she was the climate change science and technology adviser with the U.S. Agency for International Development's mission to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Lau also managed the Marine Ecosystem Services Program at Forest Trends and was a science and technology policy fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the U.S. State Department. Lau holds a bachelor's degree in integrative biology and environmental sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Washington. Image credit: Pew Charitable Trusts

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Eric Chassignet, Florida State University

Eric Chassignet is the director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS), a center of excellence that promotes interdisciplinary research in ocean-atmosphere-land-ice interactions to increase understanding of the physical, social, and economic consequences of climate variability. For the past 20 years, he has also been the coordinator of a partnership of institutions (academic, government, and industry) to develop and demonstrate the performance and application of high resolution, real-time global and basin-scale ocean prediction systems using the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). These systems are currently used operationally by the U.S. Navy's Naval Oceanographic Office, the Stennis Space Center, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). As a result of this work, he was the lead author of a 2021 paper in Frontiers of Marine Science, "Tracking marine litter with a global model: Where does it go? Where does it come from?" This work led to the development of an Ocean Litter site that provides a dynamic display of marine litter trajectories in the ocean and statistics of the litter generated and received by each country. Viewers can watch over time as the currents move plastic around the global oceans. Chassignet is also co-chair of OceanPredict, an international science forum supporting the development and advancement of global and regional ocean analysis and forecasting systems. Image credit: Florida State University