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The Transition | March 2023
People and progress in solving the ocean plastic crisis
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. Learn more on NBC7/39's Down to Earth segment and ArcNews. Past issues of The Transition.
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Did you know?
2.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. As a result, they drink bottled water.
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Taking a Deeper Dive
Plastic water bottles and safe drinking water - a dilemma and an opportunity
Image credit: Shutterstock / arun sambhu mishra
Lack of safe drinking water is a driver of plastic pollution. According to a story in Reuters on March 16, 2023, 2.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, with the number of people who had access growing by only 4% between 2016 and 2020. That means that more than 25% of people in the world need bottled water for safe drinking, and bottled water comes packaged in plastic with no cost-effective option to replace that plastic. According to World Atlas, these are the countries that consume the most bottled water:
- China (10.42 billion gallons)
- USA (10.13 billion gallons)
- Mexico (8.23 billion gallons)
- Indonesia (4.82 billion gallons)
- Brazil (4.80 billion gallons)
- Thailand (3.99 billion gallons)
- Italy (3.17 billion gallons)
- Germany (3.11 billion gallons)
- France (2.41 billion gallons)
- India (1.04 billion gallons)
Five of those countries, in bold, are also on the lists of top ten countries that directly contribute large amounts of marine plastic via their rivers or shorelines. The other five are among the nations that do not directly contribute the largest amounts of plastic to the ocean, but impact marine plastic by:
- Exporting plastic waste to countries with poor waste management,
- Manufacturing products in countries with poor waste management, and/or
- Providing significant numbers of tourists to those countries.
All of the above create more ocean plastic waste. It is also important to note that countries with safe drinking water consume water in plastic bottles as a convenience rather than a necessity.
While global goals to reduce plastic pollution to the ocean and plastic production are ambitious, the following statistics reported by Reuters are strong indicators that when it comes to plastic bottles, the trend is going in the wrong direction.
- The bottled water market grew by 73% from 2010 to 2020.
- Consumption of bottled water is on track to increase by 24% from 350 billion liters in 2021 to 460 billion liters by 2030.
- The industry produced 600 billion plastic bottles in 2021, 85% of which are likely to end up in landfills.
The challenge to reducing this production and the resultant pollution has several tracks:
- Provide safe drinking water. How can global resources be applied to significantly improve access to safe drinking water for those that do not yet have it? And how can we expect a reduction in plastic water bottle use if that is the only way for more than one quarter of the world’s population to obtain safe drinking water?
- Eliminate the convenience use of bottle water. For those of us who have access to safe drinking water, how do we do more to eliminate the use of plastic water bottles as a convenience both at events and for daily use?
- Recycle more PET bottles. For the plastic bottles that continue to be used, how can a large percentage be recycled? The bottles are typically made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a material that can be successfully recycled (see below).
Opportunities for improvement in plastic bottle recycling
Image credit: Shutterstock / rivermartin
If there is a bright spot in the future of plastic bottle pollution, as reported in the January 2023 issue of The Transition, high levels of PET bottle recycling have been achieved, and in varying ways.
- In Norway, 95% of PET bottles are recycled, thanks to a refundable per bottle charge to consumers, readily available recycling opportunities, and a tax on producers that is reduced according to the percentage of bottles recycled. At 95%, the tax is waived. The producers have banded together to form a nonprofit to guide the industry in how to achieve the 95% rate.
- In India, one of the countries challenged by a lack of safe drinking water, 90% of PET bottles are recycled, thanks to a waste picker community that scours landfills for PET bottles and a supply chain that pays for those bottles and moves them to recycling facilities. More evidence of this comes from Reliance Industries Limited, which announced in 2021 that it is doubling its PET recycling capacity to 5 billion post-consumer PET bottles to ensure India maintains a 90% recycling rate.
- The U.S. recycled PET market is competitive, according to a March 7, 2023, story in Plastics News, creating opportunities to expand PET recycling. Compared to Norway and India, the U.S. recycling rate for PET bottles and other products is low, only 18.2%, according to a State University of New York study in 2017. Maine has the highest rate of recycling PET bottles at 72%, while South Carolina only recycles 2%. Many other states have very low recycling rates, too. Could a national program to achieve a 90% recycling rate be implemented in the U.S. while also eliminating much of the convenience-related use of plastic bottles?
PET plastic: villain or hero?
According to a June 11, 2022, paper published in the National Library of Medicine, PET bottles have several factors that make them an environmentally friendly choice:
- PET bottles mono-material composition allows them to be more easily recycled.
- Modern advancements have made recycled post-consumer PET (rPET or PCR) a safe material for reuse as beverage packaging.
- Demand is high for plastic feedstock necessary for producers to reduce their use of virgin plastic.
- Compared to glass, the PET bottle is lightweight and has a lower carbon footprint in production and transportation.
Yet the same study reports that PET packaging accounted for 44.7% of single-serve beverage packaging in the US in 2021, and 12% of global solid waste.
Ultimately, solving the dilemma of plastic water bottles which are essential to providing safe drinking water to more than 25% of the world’s population and a significant contributor of plastic to the ocean is critical to solving the ocean plastic crisis overall.
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Tracking Plastic News
Image credit: OVERBOARD/Chip Dunham
- March 30, 2023, is the United Nations’ International Day of Zero Waste
- Brazilian researchers find 'terrifying' plastic rocks on remote island, Reuters, March 15, 2023
- Four decades of global analysis reveals unprecedented increase in ocean plastic since 2005, Phys.org, March 8, 2023
- Competition to heat up over recycled PET supply, Plastics News, March 7, 2023
- Environmental impact of PET bottles lower than glass bottles and aluminum cans, study says, Recycling Today, March 6, 2023
- Plasticosis: New disease in birds highlights dangers of microplastics, New Atlas, March 5, 2023
- U.S. Plastics Pact Reports Status Relative to 2025 Targets, Plastics Technology, March 1, 2023
- Another study says efforts to curb plastic waste will not make its goal, Plastic News, February 27, 2023
- Storm is an ‘extreme test’ of waste capture system protecting the Pacific from L.A. runoff, Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2023
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Mapping Plastic-Fouled Coastlines
See more beaches fouled by plastic on our ocean plastic trash map. To report a shoreline pervasively fouled by significant amounts of plastic debris, use our online plastic trash reporting app.
This Month's Coastal Hotspot: Honiara Beach, Solomon Islands
The Solomon Islands is a superb diving destination fouled by plastic. Major offenders are the mass importation of bottled water because of the lack of clean drinking water and the lack of infrastructure to collect and recycle plastic. The primary source of plastic debris is local litter and plastic reaching the sea from the Matiniko River, where the people of Tuvaruhu dump their rubbish. Food used to be wrapped in banana leaves or other plant materials that was easily discarded into the environment. Plastic waste is now similarly discarded, and plastic overwhelms landfills. The Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau’s “Green Team” encourages the population to keep their country clean. A video, "Our Home - look after it," underlines the impact of littering. According to Diveplanit, “The main problem most people have is the bad attitude of throwing away plastic wastes carelessly wherever they want and whenever they want.” Image credit: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) / Tejas Tamobhid Patnaikis
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Solutions to the Ocean Plastic Crisis
See more solutions on our ocean plastic solutions page. Have a solution we should know about? Submit it here.
This Month’s Featured Solution: Bricks & Blocks by Conceptos Plasticos
Conceptos Plasticos creates Lego-like bricks by melting waste plastic and pouring it into molds to create a construction system called “Bricks & Blocks.” Columbian co-founders Isabel Cristina, an electronic engineer, and architect Óscar Mendez invented the industrial solution using discarded plastic as an essential product. Made from 100% recycled plastic, Bricks & Blocks is used to assemble safe, durable houses and schools. Even difficult-to-recycle plastic is transformed and each type of plastic gives the bricks a different property. Stronger than traditional construction materials, the product is easy to assemble and inexpensive. It can be used in cold, hot, even humid tropical weather, won’t spread fire, and is immune to microorganisms, insects, and even rodents. Bricks & Blocks is partnering with UNICEF to build classrooms in the Ivory Coast. To date, 3,000 tons of plastic have been recovered and transformed, employing 250 people and giving 8,400 children access to classroom education. Image credit: Conceptos Plasticos
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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.
David Katz, Founder, Plastic Bank
David Katz is the founder of Plastic Bank – a for-profit social enterprise headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and an internationally recognized solution to ocean plastic. Today, his social enterprise is a global network of over 500 collection communities with more than 30,000 members that are transcending poverty by saving the ocean from plastic. David’s leadership has helped guide global partners like SC Johnson, Henkel, and more, to stop more than 77 million kilograms of plastic waste before it enters the ocean – equivalent to over 3.8 billion plastic bottles. Communities in the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, and Egypt exchange plastic waste as currency for access to health, work, and life insurance, digital connectivity, grocery vouchers, school supplies, and fintech services. The llected material is then processed into Social Plastic® feedstock for reuse in products and packaging. In an interview with Goldman Sachs, Katz said, “It’s one thing to go clean the ocean, but if we’re not actually at the source and keeping plastic from entering the ocean to begin with, cleaning up the ocean is futile…. Much of it is coming from the waterway, where people use the waterway as a source of waste management. There is no other opportunity than to throw it in the river, or in the stream, or the canal, or whatever else it is. Then it washes into the ocean.” Katz has been featured in Forbes, Time Magazine, Business Week, National Geographic, TED.com, an award-winning documentary, and an international reality TV show. He is also a recipient of the United Nations Lighthouse award for Planetary Health, the Paris Climate Conference Sustainable community award, the Ernst & Young Lifetime Achievement award, and was named EO’s Global Citizen. Image credit: Plastic Bank
Romell Nandi, Trash Free Waters National Program Lead, USEPA
Romell Nandi has been the US EPA’s Trash Free Waters (TFW) national program lead since 2018. The mission of the TFW program is to prevent trash – including plastic waste - from getting into domestic waterways and remove trash that is already in the environment. As TFW national program lead, Romell has been a key national leader on effectively addressing the problem of trash loadings into waterways. His work in the TFW program includes working directly with stakeholders around the country to develop and implement projects in specific locales to reduce the amount of trash in waterways, collaborating with partners on developing strategies that address trash (especially plastic waste) in the environment at the national, regional, state, and local levels, developing technical and educational materials to assist project champions and program managers, providing professional expertise on national legislation and important US government and international organization strategy and technical documents, and working to foment private sector change with respect to reducing solid waste as well as helping members of the public be stewards of the environment through individual and group actions. Romell believes that while proper waste management, consumer education and trash capture all constitute important parts of the solution space for keeping trash out of waterways or removing it once it is there, more systemic changes such as circular economy approaches (including Extended Producer Responsibility and reuse policies) are ultimately needed to effectively address the issue. Romell received his Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College, a Master of Science degree in Political Science from the University of Oregon, and a Master in Public Policy with a focus on Environment and Natural Resources from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
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