Ocean pollution – The Conversation

The UN Ocean Decade: can a UN resolution turn into a scientific revolution?

Mon, 17 May 2021 17:36:00 GMT

The ocean we want is one that plays a key role in solving humanity’s three main global issues: protecting biodiversity, creating a sustainable economy and regulating climate. The ocean today moderates climate change, absorbs a significant fraction of our CO ₂ emissions, hosts valuable biodiversity and provides food to millions.

But all of these services are threatened by pollution and human activities. If we continue business as usual, the natural capital represented by the ocean is set to decline.

In June 2017, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) adopted a resolution to propose an “ocean decade”. In December of the same year, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed that 2021-2030 would be the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development .

The IOC was tasked to coordinate the Ocean Decade, with implementation happening through collaboration between all interested and relevant parties in the UN system and beyond. The bold vision is “the science we need for the ocean we want” and the mission is “to catalyse transformative ocean science solutions for sustainable development, connecting people and our ocean”.

What are these solutions and how can they be developed to achieve the “ocean we want” by 2030?

Transforming our relationship with the seas

A momentous transformation in our relationship with the ocean is required if we are to achieve the stated outcomes of the Ocean Decade of a clean, healthy, resilient, productive, safe, accessible, inspiring and engaging ocean. But some promising ocean solutions that benefit people, nature and the economy have already been identified .

Regenerative ocean farming involves focusing on species such as shellfish and seaweed that do not require active feeding. Seaweed farming is well developed in parts of Asia but not globally. A practical example in the United States is the Greenwave initiative , spearheaded by Bren Smith , a fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer. With limited investment, he has created a profitable business combining kelp, clams, scallops, mussels and oysters. The vision is that this approach can be scaled up with neighbouring farms collaborating on hatcheries, processing and science support.

Sustainable management of existing fisheries and finfish mariculture is also needed and should not be neglected. It requires political action supported by shared data, information and science. However, it is the scaling up of unfed mariculture for food and animal feed that can really become a game changer for the future role of seafood in feeding the world.

Combining practical farming approaches with scientific testing of species, analysis of nutrients and contaminants https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242086 holds great promise.

Ocean transportation and renewable energy

In addition to fisheries and aquaculture, ocean transport is a key global economy sector. Just like seafood in comparison to land-based food, ocean-based transport has a considerably lower environmental footprint than land- or air-based transport. Still, with global trade increasing, the reduction and ultimately elimination of related greenhouse-gas emissions is imperative. Battery-electric near-shore ferry and short sea shipping solutions are already proven and hydrogen fuel cell based solutions for such applications are emerging.

For deep sea shipping, an exciting possibility is to power the ships with ocean-based renewable energy. Based on geophysical, technical and economic potential, offshore wind is set to increase at least 40-fold by 2050 compared to 2018 – without any subsidies. Some of this electricity can be converted to hydrogen and ammonia at offshore fueling stations used by ships. This may seem like science fiction, but several industry-led projects are on the way, notably in the North Sea . Speeding up innovation to realise these opportunities early enough to avoid global climate crisis should be a priority.

In addition to potentially delivering a substantial portion of the global protein and nutrient supply to the world, powering marine transport and also activities on land, the ocean also holds other opportunities. Coastal protection against storms and tsunamis by maintaining and restoring mangroves https://www.mangrovealliance.org/mikoko-pamoja/ also stores carbon, as does other kinds of blue forests, i.e. seagrass, salt marshes and kelp. https://www.cell.com/one-earth/pdf/S2590-3322(20)30209-8.pdf

Protected marine areas have a proven track record of both conserving biodiversity and ensuring the sustainability of commercial fisheries nearby. Coastal tourism is contingent upon clean and attractive ocean and coastal regions, after all, and conserving them positively impact human well-being.

Common to many of these issues is that they cannot be dealt with in isolation. Rather, there is a need for an integrated, science-based approach. For example, offshore wind holds great promise, but should be located where it does not conflict with other uses. And the ocean needs to be protected from land-based pollution in order to be able to deliver its services. The cumulative impacts of a series of human activities must be considered together in an ecosystem-based approach.

Planning and working together

Providing science support to sustainable ocean planning is an overarching challenge to the science community. I would contend that a revolution is needed and on its way, not only in technological innovation for energy, food or transport, in biogeographic characterisation of the ocean environment, including its biodiversity, but also in the way we orchestrate the entire science-policy-society interface .

If we are to manage seafood production sustainably, mitigate climate change, stem biodiversity loss, seize opportunity for economic recovery and manage the ocean holistically , there is a need for a series of scientific revolutions. Some are well on their way, but more are needed. The Ocean Decade is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all ocean scientists. It is a framework that does not in itself guarantee scientific progress, but the ocean challenges and opportunities have never been larger than they are today. We should not miss these opportunities.

For 60 years, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) promotes international cooperation and coordinates programmes in marine research, services, observation systems, hazard mitigation, and capacity development in order to understand and effectively manage the resources of the ocean and coastal areas.

Peter M. Haugan ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Why ocean pollution is a clear danger to human health

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:11:00 GMT

Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now. Our recent study provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health.

Ocean pollution is a complex mixture of toxic metals, plastics, manufactured chemicals, petroleum, urban and industrial wastes, pesticides, fertilisers, pharmaceutical chemicals, agricultural runoff, and sewage. More than 80% arises from land-based sources and it reaches the oceans through rivers, runoff, deposition from the atmosphere – where airborne pollutants are washed into the ocean by rain and snow – and direct dumping, such as pollution from waste water treatment plants and discarded waste. Ocean pollution is heaviest near the coasts and most highly concentrated along the coastlines of low-income and middle-income countries.

Ocean pollution can also be found far beyond national jurisdictions in the open oceans, the deepest oceanic trenches, and on the shores of remote islands. Ocean pollution knows no borders.

The most hazardous ocean pollution

Plastic waste is the most visible component of ocean pollution. More than ten million tonnes of plastic enter the seas every year. The majority of this breaks down into microplastic particles and accumulates in coastal and deep-sea sediments.

Some large pieces float in the water for decades ending up as massive concentrations where currents converge and circulate. The Pacific Ocean’s so called “garbage patch” is a well-known example.

Microplastics contain multiple toxic chemicals that are added to plastics to make them flexible, colourful, waterproof or flame-resistant. These include carcinogens, neurotoxins, and endocrine disruptors – chemicals that interfere with hormones, and can cause cancer, birth defects, and reduced fertility.

These chemical-laden particles enter the food chain and accumulate in fish and shellfish. When humans eat seafood contaminated with these materials, we ingest millions of microplastic particles and the many chemicals they carry. Though there is still debate on the harm to humans from microplastics, exposure to these chemicals increases the risk of all the diseases that they cause. Virtually all of us have microplastics in our bodies today.

Mercury is widespread in the oceans, and the major culprit is coal burning in homes and industry . All coal contains mercury, and when it burns, mercury vaporises, enters the atmosphere, and eventually washes into the sea. Gold mining is another source , as mercury is used to dissolve gold from the ore.

Mercury can accumulate to high levels in predatory fish such as tuna and swordfish, which are in turn eaten by us. Contaminated fish can be especially dangerous if eaten by expectant mothers. Exposure of mercury to infants in the womb can damage developing brains, reducing IQ and increasing risks for autism, ADHD, and other learning disorders. Adult mercury exposure increases risks for heart disease and dementia .

Petroleum pollutants from oil spills threaten the marine microorganisms that produce much of the Earth’s oxygen by reducing their capacity for photosynthesis. These beneficial microorganisms use solar energy to convert atmospheric CO₂ into oxygen and are also affected by organic pollutants and other chemicals . When there is a major oil spill, the impact can be huge.

Coastal pollution from industrial waste, agricultural runoff, pesticides, and sewage increases the frequency of harmful algal blooms, known as red tides, brown tides, and green tides. These blooms produce powerful toxins like ciguatera and domoic acid that accumulate in fish and shellfish. When ingested, these toxins can cause dementia, amnesia, paralysis, and even rapid death. When inhaled, they can cause asthma.

Dangerous microorganisms result from a combination of coastal pollution and warming seas, which encourages their spread. Harmful bacteria such as the vibrio species – found in warmer waters and responsible for vibriosis , a potentially fatal illness – are now appearing further north and causing life-threatening infections. There’s a high risk that cholera, caused by vibrio cholerae , could spread to new, previously unaffected areas.

And the health impacts of ocean pollution fall disproportionately on indigenous peoples, coastal communities and vulnerable populations in the Global South , underlining the planetary scale of this environmental injustice.

Political will and scientific evidence

While the findings in this report are alarming, the good news is that ocean pollution, as with all forms of pollution, can be controlled and prevented. Bans on single-use plastics and better waste sorting can curb pollution at its source, especially plastic waste, both on land and at sea.

Wise governments have curbed other forms of pollution by deploying control strategies based on law, policy, technology, and targeted enforcement. The US, for example, has reduced air pollution by 70% since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. They have saved thousands of lives. They have proven highly cost-effective .

Countries around the world are now applying these same tools to control ocean pollution. Boston Harbour in Massachusetts and Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong have been cleaned. Estuaries from Chesapeake Bay in the US to the Seto Inland Sea in Japan have been rejuvenated. Some coral reefs have been restored, such as those in American Samoa , where vigilance, protection and quick response have happened in relation to various pollution threats.

These successes have boosted economies, increased tourism, restored fisheries, and improved health. They demonstrate that broad control of ocean pollution is feasible and their benefits will last for centuries. Our study offers some clear recommendations for preventing and controlling ocean pollution, including transitioning to cleaner energy, developing affordable alternatives to fossil fuel-based plastics, reducing human, agricultural and industrial discharges, and expanding Marine Protected Areas .

Protecting the planet is a global concern and our collective responsibility. Leaders who recognise the gravity of ocean pollution, acknowledge its growing dangers, engage civil society, and take bold, evidence-based action to stop pollution at source will be essential for preventing ocean pollution and safeguarding our own health.

Jacqueline McGlade receives funding from UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (EPSRC)

Philip Landrigan receives funding from Center Scientifique de Monaco and the Prince Albert II de Monaco Fondation

Can countries end overfishing and plastic pollution in just 10 years?

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 14:05:00 GMT

In my career as a marine biologist, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some of the most remote islands in the world. These beautiful places continue to remind me why I have this job in the first place, but they also bring home the pervasive influence of human societies. Uninhabited bird colonies on the Canadian West Coast, remote tropical Japanese islands, and tiny bits of land in South East Asia all have one thing in common: plastic waste on the beach.

When at home in Sweden, I regularly swim and sail in the Baltic Sea. But agricultural fertilisers and other types of pollution have created dead zones where fish either leave or suffocate. Meanwhile, offshore fisheries and aquaculture farms in many parts of the world overharvest and pollute the water. We know what proper management of these activities could look like, but political will has so far not been equal to the challenge.

That may be about to change. A recent agreement between 14 heads of state – together representing 40% of the world’s coastline – promised to end overfishing, restore fish stocks and halt the flow of plastic pollution into the ocean within a decade.

Interconnected problems

Pollution, plastics and unsustainable seafood may look like isolated problems, but they influence each other. As nutrients run off farmland and into the sea, they affect the conditions fish need to thrive. Pollution makes our seafood less healthy and overfishing is pushing some fish stocks beyond their capacity to renew themselves.

All of these stresses are amplified by global warming. The ocean has been acting as a sink for CO₂ emissions and excess heat for decades, but there is only so much that marine ecosystems can take before collapsing . And we shouldn’t think these problems won’t affect us – stronger storms , fuelled by warmer ocean waters , are happening more often .

It’s in everyone’s interests to protect the ocean. Clean seas would be more profitable and research suggests that better managed fisheries could generate six times more food than they do currently. The exclusive economic zones of coastal states would be more productive if every country agreed to protect the high seas. And sailing in the Baltic Sea would be much nicer if the boat didn’t have to plough a thick, green sludge.

So how can the world make progress – and what’s holding us back?

International solutions

As part of the recent agreement between 14 heads of state, the participating countries – Australia, Canada, Chile, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Norway, Palau and Portugal – committed to a number of goals within their national waters, including investment in zero-emission shipping, eliminating waste and ensuring fisheries are sustainable. The aim is to ensure all activity within these exclusive economic zones is sustainable by 2025.

The countries agreed to fast-track their plan for action, rather than work through the UN. Their combined national waters roughly equal the size of Africa. They each have clear stakes in the continued functioning of ocean ecosystems and economies, so this pragmatic approach makes sense. That’s a sentiment that businesses could no doubt respect. After all, there are no economic opportunities in a dead ocean.

The agreement is an encouraging message from political leaders, and these states can leverage vast sums of money and resources to effect change. But the ocean is home to a dozen global industries , and around 50,000 vessels traverse it at any one time. Clearly, we need more than governments to deliver on this ambitious agenda.

My scientific colleagues and I have been developing a global coalition of businesses concerned with sustainable seafood. Our strategy is to find “ keystone actors ” within the private sector – companies with a disproportionate ability to influence change due to their size and strength.

The seafood industry is vast, and includes some of the largest companies in the world – from entire fisheries, to aquaculture farms and feed processors. After four years of working together, change within the participating companies is accelerating. For example, Nissui, the world’s second-largest seafood company, has evaluated their entire production portfolio for sustainability challenges .

Collaboration between scientists and businesses is vital to delivering commitments made by governments. Scientists can help define the problems, and business can develop, pilot and scale solutions. For instance, we’re developing software that can automatically detect which species of fish are caught on vessels, to radically improve the transparency of seafood production.

The ocean has been a source of inspiration, imagination and adventure since the beginning of time. It has fed us and generated livelihoods for billions. Politicians have stood serenely on the sidelines for some time now, content to be passive observers of deteriorating ecosystems. But the era of passive observation may finally be coming to an end.

Henrik Österblom is a scientific collaborator with the SeaBOS initiative. This work is not funded by the companies involved, but through independent research grants. He has also provided scientific support to the work carried out by the High Level Panel, by producing scientific background papers on ocean equity and ocean transitions.

How Earth's plastic pollution problem could look by 2040

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 12:57:00 GMT

During a visit to a bookstore a few weeks ago, we couldn’t help but stare at a display unit featuring no fewer than ten books telling you how to rid plastics from your daily life. We’re bombarded by information on the topic of marine litter and plastic pollution, but how much do we really know about the problem?

Think about other planetary challenges, like climate change or ozone layer depletion. Mature areas of research have developed around them, allowing scientists to identify where the gases that cause these problems come from, and how much reaches the atmosphere each year.

But when it comes to plastic pollution, we know close to nothing about how and where plastic waste is generated, managed, treated and disposed of, especially in low and middle income countries. As a result, we’re struggling to limit the amount of litter accumulating in the environment.

Our research published in Science involved a herculean effort to spot, track and model the current and future flows of plastics into the world’s land and waterbodies. We found that plastic entering the marine environment is set to double by 2040 and, unless the world acts, more than 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste will be dumped on land and in waterbodies.

By identifying the ways in which this litter is produced and distributed, we’ve also discovered how best to reduce the plastic deluge. In the process, we found the unsung heroes on the frontline fighting the pollution crisis who could be the world’s best hope of stemming the tide.

The world’s plastic problem in numbers

We developed a model called Plastic-to-Ocean (P₂O) which combines years of accumulated knowledge on global flows of plastic. It compares our current production, use and management of waste with what is projected in the future.

Do you burn your waste in the garden or in the street? Do you drop it into the river? If you answered no to both of these questions then you are possibly one of the 5.5 billion people whose waste gets collected. If you were among the remaining two billion, what would you do with your uncollected waste? Would you make use of a nearby stream, cliff edge, or perhaps squirrel the odd bag in the woods after dusk?

More often than not, uncollected plastic waste is simply set on fire as a cost-free and effective method of disposal. Our model suggests that cumulatively, more than 2.2 billion tonnes of plastic will be open burned by 2040, far more than the 850 million tonnes that’s anticipated to be dumped on land and the 480 million tonnes in rivers and seas.

Having tracked the sources of plastic items through the supply chain and their fate in the environment, we explored what might help reduce aquatic pollution. We found that the single most effective intervention is to provide a service for the two billion people who currently don’t have their waste collected.

But, of the nine interventions we tested, none solved the problem on their own. Only an integrated approach that in addition to increasing collection coverage includes interventions such as reducing demand for single-use and unrecyclable plastic and improving the business case for mechanical recycling, could be successful. For the countries suffering most from plastic pollution, this knowledge could offer a way forward.

But even in our best-case scenario, in which the world takes the kind of concerted and immediate action proposed in our study, approximately 710 million tonnes of plastic waste will be released into the environment by 2040. That may sound a lot, but it would mean an 80% reduction in the levels of plastic pollution compared to what will happen with no action over the next two decades.

Could waste pickers save the day?

Our work also cast light on the contributions of 11 million waste pickers in low and middle-income countries. These informal workers collect waste items, including plastics, for recycling, to secure a livelihood for day-to-day survival. The model estimates that they may be responsible for 58% of all plastic waste collected for recycling worldwide – more than the combined formal collection services achieve throughout all the high-income countries put together.

Without this informal waste collection sector, the mass of plastic entering rivers and the ocean would be considerably greater. Their efforts should be integrated into municipal waste management plans, not only to recognise their tremendous contribution but to improve the appalling safety standards that they currently endure.

Establishing a comprehensive baseline estimate of sources, stocks and flows of plastic pollution, and then projecting into the future, has been an immense task. When it comes to solid waste, the availability, accuracy and international compatibility of data is notoriously insufficient.

Plastic items occur throughout the world in tens of thousands of shapes, sizes, polymer types and additive combinations. There are also considerable differences in cultural attitudes towards the way waste is managed, how plastic products are consumed, and the types of infrastructure and equipment used to manage it when it becomes waste.

Our modelling effort was a delicate and tedious exercise of simplifying and generalising this complexity. To understand how reliable, accurate, and precise our findings are likely to be, think of the first models that estimated how sensitive the climate is to human influence back in the 1970s.

Hopefully, the strong evidence base we have presented today will inform a global strategy and strong local preventive action. The plastic pollution challenge can be substantially controlled within a generation’s time. So, is anyone ready to act?

Costas Velis serves as Leader for the Marine Litter Task Force, established by the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA). P₂O was co-developed by The Pew Charitable Trust, SYSTEMIQ, the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford. Research activities at the University of Leeds were funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts through SYSTEMIQ. The project was supported by 19 experts, 29 co-authors, Common Seas and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Ed Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A theatre project explores collective solutions to saving the ocean

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 14:18:00 GMT

The earth’s oceans are under grave threat. Scientists in many fields have pointed to the large-scale negative shifts brought about by human-made pollutants , mining and overfishing .

How people now choose to behave, make collective decisions and build solidarity around the health of oceans has an impact not just on our own species but on all life on earth.

In the drive to rebuild economies after the COVID-19 pandemic, will nation states and big business return to a myopic view of the oceans as a source of GDP growth and shareholder profit? Or could we expand our imaginations to listen to a multitude of voices that care for the ocean?

A theatre production in South Africa has been trying to find a way. The Lalela uLwandle (Listen to the Sea) research and engagement project, implemented along the KwaZulu-Natal coastline in 2019, offers some useful ideas for such an expansion.

A chorus of voices

The idea emerged from a public consultation meeting . It was between community representatives from small towns along the coastline, and the Petroleum Association of South Africa . Many felt they had not been adequately consulted in an environmental impact assessment for permits to drill for oil and gas along the coastline.

The association, a regulatory body meant to consider public needs when granting or denying such licences, was sympathetic to some of the arguments. But the consultation process failed to make room for the different perspectives and concerns in the room.

In response, a team of researchers working in ocean governance from Rhodes University and the Durban University of Technology began the Lalela project. It set out to explore how different coastal people, in and around the coastal city of Durban, make sense of their relationship with the ocean.

The research participants included a broad spectrum. They were small-scale and subsistence fishers, marine scientists, activists, church followers, marine educators at the aquarium and sangomas (traditional healers).

The opening question was simple: What are your first memories of the sea? It’s important because the symbolic, scientific and spiritual meanings of the oceans are key to understanding humans’ relationship with the oceans . Memories, belief systems, stories and myths are powerful ways in which we make sense of our world and choose to act on and in it.

The research team partnered with Empatheatre , a collective who use research-based theatre as a participatory decision-making tool for social justice. They have tackled issues related to street-level drug use ( Ulwembu ), gender and migration ( The Last Country ), and mining ( Soil&Ash ). They wove these incredible everyday stories of the sea, together with archival material, into the production Lalela uLwandle .

On stage among the audience

Lalela uLwandle draws on the stories of three people. Nolwandle is a marine educator whose mother is a Zionist and grandmother a sangoma. Niren is a young environmental activist whose family has a long history of seine-net fishing. Faye is a retired marine biologist reflecting on life as a scientist and activist.

Audience members sit in a circle with the actors and witness these intergenerational stories. They recount how the ocean is linked to, among other things, livelihoods, medicine and healing, and scientific study. Included is the site of the sea for spiritual connections with ancestors.

The play deals with acts of past and present power and exclusion in South Africa. It performs the painful experiences of forced removals under apartheid , which robbed many of a life on the coast. It explores how extractive mining on land and sea, and industrial fishing, continue to create forms of oppression and exclusion.

It also performs the tensions between environmental justice and environmental conservation. These are frequently played out in real life when local people are restricted from accessing sites of heritage and livelihood in Marine Protected Areas .

Last year the play toured six small towns on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, with a final week’s run in Durban . The general public came to watch along with guests invited from government, civil society, small-scale fisher associations, marine science and conservation.

Each performance was followed by a facilitated discussion. In many, audience members grappled with what it means to think collectively in a time of ocean degradation. They asked of themselves and fellow audience members how the hurt and inequalities in our past, and in the present, should shape thinking on ocean governance.

If we listened carefully

South Africa remains deeply divided by racial injustices and economic inequalities . Rather than skirt over these divides Lalela uLwandle told different stories of power and vulnerability. What arose from the research, performances and discussions was how cultural connections offer valuable contributions towards conservation and environmental efforts.

The play offered an invitation to an alternative conversation. One in which culture, science and conservation may, if people learn to listen to each other carefully, find strategic alignment.

The public discussions showed an encouraging move away from various trade-offs that normally play out. Where big business gains at the expense of poor communities, or conservation wins at the expense of marginal groups, or where marginal groups are awarded socio-economic resources at the expense of environmental conservation.

To find solutions the world desperately needs to become better equipped at more equitable collective decision making. To do that we need to find translation devices between scientific, conservation, cultural and spiritual canons. We need them to spark an imagination for working in solidarity across difference, with and for the oceans that sustain us all.

Lalela uLwandle is led by Dylan McGarry and Taryn Pereira at the Environmental Learning Research Centre , Rhodes University, with Neil Coppen and Mpume Mthombeni from Empatheatre , and Kira Erwin at the Urban Futures Centre , Durban University of Technology. Lalela uLwandle forms part of the One Ocean Hub , a global action research network led by Strathclyde University and funded by the UKRI Global Challenge Research Fund .

Kira Erwin has received funding from the National Research Foundation, as well as other external funders for research projects at the Urban Futures Centre. Her work on Lalela uLwandle is done in-kind with no direct funding.

The ocean's plastic problem is closer to home than scientists first thought

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 11:14:00 GMT

You’re probably used to hearing that the ocean is full of plastic, but scientists are puzzled by a rather different problem – there actually appears to be a lot less of it than there should be. Most large plastic debris floats, but observations of it on the sea surface offshore are far lower than what would be expected, considering that 8m metric tonnes of plastic is estimated to empty into the ocean from land each year.

Scientists assumed that the missing plastic has simply broken down into tiny microplastics and sunk to the sea floor. These particles are smaller than 5mm and either sink or float depending on the type of plastic and what happens while they’re in the ocean. But there’s still plastic that has been floating at the surface in the open ocean for decades , so clearly not enough has fragmented to account for the discrepancy. So where’s the rest of it going?

To try and solve the mystery, scientists from The Ocean Cleanup – an environmental organisation dedicated to removing plastic waste from the ocean – modelled how plastics move in nearshore and open ocean currents to predict where they’re accumulating. Their findings suggest that even radical action to phase out plastics wouldn’t prevent a potential explosion in marine microplastics by mid-century.

Where does all the plastic go?

The researchers found that nearshore currents tend to trap a lot of plastic debris in coastal waters. The plastic that you find littering the strand line on beaches is brought in with the tide and then taken out again. It may swirl around offshore for a while and travel further along the coast, but this plastic tends to return to beaches and may stay stuck in this rhythm – from beach to coastal waters and back – for many years.

Occasionally, some of this plastic escapes the nearshore currents and is buoyed far out to sea by oceanic currents. The plastic waste that’s found far from shore – such as in open ocean areas like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – probably arrived there after a journey of years or even decades.

This means that the plastic on beaches and in coastal waters tends to be much “younger” than that polluting the open ocean. The study found that 79% of all the buoyant plastic in surface waters near the shore came from objects that were less than five years old. Meanwhile, microplastics found far offshore likely broke down from plastics that were created as long ago as the 1950s.

For that reason, travelling out from shore is a bit like travelling back in time. The further you get from land, the older the plastic waste tends to be. The plastic spoon you find tangled in seaweed on the shore may only be a year old. Tiny particles in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean may have came from plastic that was produced during the Cold War.

The reason why there seemed to be plastic missing from offshore waters is because so much of it accumulates in coastal waters, as nearshore currents keep it there. Only some of that plastic eventually filters out to the open ocean.

Even if all the plastic that’s produced on land stopped reaching the ocean tomorrow, the researchers from The Ocean Cleanup predict that marine microplastic could still double by 2050, as the larger debris already out there breaks down. If the plastic debris that’s out there isn’t actively removed, floating islands of plastic waste could persist in the ocean for several centuries.

Solving the ocean’s plastic problem will therefore take governments and manufacturers developing materials that can be re-used and disposed of properly. But it will also require removing the plastic that’s already floating in the sea.

Anyone who has ever taken part in a beach clean will appreciate that it can often feel like an uphill struggle, but the new study offers a note of encouragement. By removing plastic from the beach today, you’re permanently removing it from the cycle and preventing it from spending many decades in coastal waters or offshore. While much needs to be done, the people who give up their time to scour the sand for plastic pieces should be buoyed by the fact that their efforts do add up after all.

Ted Henry receives funding from the NERC.

Cities can grow without wrecking reefs and oceans. Here's how

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 18:55:00 GMT

“ What happens if the water temperature rises by a few degrees? ” is the 2018 International Year of the Reef leading question. While the ocean is the focus, urbanisation is the main reason for the rising temperatures and water pollution. Yet it receives little attention in this discussion.

In turn, rising temperatures increase downpours and urban floods , adding to the pressures on urban infrastructure.

Protecting the reef as Cairns grows

Cairns is an expanding Queensland city located between two World Heritage sites – the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest . While important research focuses on these sites themselves, not much is known about how the surrounding urban areas influence these natural environments. Similarly, little is known about how urban planning and design contribute to the health of the inner city and surrounding water bodies, including the ocean.

Cairns is a major Australian tourism destination with a unique coastal setting of rainforest and reef. This attracts growing numbers of visitors. One effect of this success is increased urbanisation to accommodate these tourists.

There are many opportunities to promote sustainable and socially acceptable growth in Cairns. Yet this growth is not without challenges. These include:

As with most Australian cities, Cairns has an urban layout based on wide streets, mostly with little or no greenery. Rain gardens , for instance, are rare. Bioswales that slow and filter stormwater are present along highways, but seldom within the city.

The arguments for not adding greenery to the urban environment are familiar. These typically relate to costs of implementation and maintenance, but also to the speed with which water is taken out of streets during the tropical rainy season. This is because green stormwater solutions, if not well planned, can slow down the water flow, thus increasing floods.

However, cities can be designed in a way to imitate nature with solutions that are an integral part of the urban system. This can include dedicated areas of larger wetlands and parks, which capture water and filter pollution and undesired nutrients more efficiently, reducing polluted runoff to the reef.

Integrated urban design

Integrated urban design is an aspect of city planning and design that could be further developed to ensure the whole system works more efficiently. This involves integrating the three elements that make up urban infrastructure:

Urban infrastructure, therefore, can and should be planned and designed to provide multiple services , including coastal resilience and healthier water streams and oceans. To achieve this, a neighbourhood or city-wide strategy needs to be implemented, instead of intermittent and ad hoc urban design solutions. Importantly, each element should coordinate with the others to avoid overlaps, gaps and pitfalls.

This is what integrated urban design is about. So why don’t we implement it more often?

Challenges and opportunities

Research has shown that planning, designing and creating climate-resilient cities that are energy-optimised, revitalise urban landscapes and restore and support ecosystem services is a major challenge at the planning scale. To generate an urban environment that promotes urban protection and resilience while minimising urbanisation impacts and restoring natural systems, we need to better anticipate the risks and have the means to take actions. In other words, it is a two-way system: well planned and designed green and blue infrastructures not only deliver better urbanised areas but will also protect the ocean from pollution. Additionally, it helps to manage future risks of severe weather.

The uncertainties of green infrastructure capacity and costs of maintenance, combined with inflexible finance schemes , are obstacles to integrated urban solutions. Furthermore, the lack of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches results in disciplinary barriers in research and policymaking to long-term planning of the sort that generates urban green infrastructure and its desired outcomes.

On the bright side, there is also strong evidence to suggest sound policy can help overcome these barriers through technical guides based on scientific research, standards and financial incentives.

Collaborative partnerships are promising, too. Partnerships between academia and industry tend to be more powerful than streamlined industry project developments.

Finally, and very promisingly, Australia has its own successful green infrastructure examples . Melbourne’s urban forest strategy has been internationally acclaimed . Examples like these provide valuable insights into local green infrastructure governance.

Cairns has stepped up with some stunning blue infrastructure on the Esplanade which raises awareness of both locals and visitors about the protection of our oceans.

This is only the start. Together academics, local authorities, industry stakeholders and communities can lead the way to resilient cities and healthier oceans.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

COP24: how a plastics treaty could clean up our oceans

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 11:18:00 GMT

It seems new action to tackle plastic pollution is announced every week, from the 5p plastic bag charge to governments debating a tax on plastic packaging . Businesses are also showing their green credentials as major supermarkets pledge to reduce plastic packaging alongside some multinational companies .

With such serious steps, it looks like our problem with plastic will soon be fixed. Before we get too excited though, other recent news stories include billions of dollars being invested in new plastics refineries and plastics being found everywhere, including in our soil .

It’s estimated that 4.8–12.7m metric tonnes of plastic enters the ocean from land-based sources annually . That’s everything from toothbrushes to microplastics worn off vehicle tyres. The plastics found in the ocean come from every country in the world and if we are to tackle it we need a worldwide solution.

Like COP24 for climate change, an international summit for plastic pollution could achieve just that.

Getting the world to recycle

We do have some international laws that attempt to tackle plastic pollution. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea contains a commitment to “prevent, reduce and control pollution from land-based sources” which covers plastics. More recently, the Honolulu Strategy was agreed in 2011 to help tackle marine debris coming from land-based activities. If these commitments were to be fully met then our plastic problem would be vastly reduced.

One issue is that these obligations depend on plastic being recognised as harmful to humans or marine life. Plastic has long been considered a wonder material, which makes modern life possible. Like other “wonderful inventions” such as the ozone-eating CFCs , it is only as plastic has started to accumulate in the world that we have realised it is a problem.

A second issue is that each country has responded to this problem in different ways. Kenya , for example, has adopted legislation banning single use plastic bags, while the UK has added a charge to their use.

Current proposals to tackle plastics focus on increasing recycling. It is worth remembering though that only around 11% of plastic is currently recycled around the world . If we are to rely on recycling as a means to tackle plastic pollution we need to rapidly increase recycling in almost every country.

An increase in recycling to the extent needed can’t happen overnight. We’d need effective and accessible recycling facilities and public education. Both would need huge investments of time and resources across the world.

A treaty may be one way of coordinating such action and sharing knowledge about how best to improve recycling. Countries already share knowledge about how they meet some treaty obligations through reports to a governing body on climate change, a similar approach could be taken in a plastics treaty.

Tax and replace

Another measure being used is taxation. The assumption is that if we make plastics more expensive then either less will be used or alternative materials will replace them. Deposit return schemes are also suggested as a way to “nudge” producer and consumer behaviour. These types of measures do not always, however, prompt the desired response .

Sometimes, for example, costs are simply passed on to consumers. It is also difficult to apply these measures in emerging economies which lack the same regulatory bodies and infrastructure to monitor these measures, so other approaches may be needed.

Governments have faced the question of how to tackle a pervasive pollutant produced by all countries before and the answer was to adopt a treaty for a rapid and coordinated response. The best known example is the Ozone Convention which was adopted in 1985 to reduce chemicals used in refrigeration and aerosols which damaged the ozone layer.

Like subsequent treaties addressing other harmful chemicals, such as the POPs Convention , the Ozone Convention tackled the most harmful first and was designed to enable alternatives to be introduced. Alternatives to harmful plastics do already exist – current plastics are largely derived from oil and so do not easily degrade.

Alternative plastics are being developed from prawn shells and from plants such as seaweed which will degrade more easily.

Ban the unnecessary, phase out the rest

World leaders have called for action on plastics . It’s time to follow through with a “plastics convention”, containing binding commitments to phase out and prevent future plastic pollution.

A plastics convention could ban oil-based plastics in a similar way to the ban on ozone-eating chemicals. Single use bags and straws could be phased out almost immediately under a global treaty, with other plastics addressed over a longer time frame. Those used in medical surgery may take decades to phase out, but support could be provided to industry to develop bioplastics, or other alternatives to plastics.

A treaty could also address gaps in the current law. There is, for example, no provision for cleaning up the plastics already in the ocean. A new treaty could provide for a clean up fund to address these “legacy” plastics.

The fund could be supported through contributions from importers and exporters of plastics, as already happens with importers and exporters of oil who pay into a fund to address harm from oil spills, or through a tax on oil-based plastics products.

The public are clearly supportive of action to tackle plastic pollution and alternative materials are being developed that could replace oil-based plastics. A treaty negotiated by the world’s governments would allow us to take coordinated action against oil-based plastics.

Elizabeth Kirk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The world's plastic problem is bigger than the ocean

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 11:46:00 GMT

As you read this, a strange object that looks like a 2,000-foot floating pool noodle is drifting slowly through the central north Pacific Ocean. This object is designed to solve an enormous environmental problem. But in so doing, it brings attention to a number of others.

There are an estimated five trillion pieces of plastic floating on and in the world’s oceans. The massive pool noodle will move through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch , driven by the wind and currents and picking up the plastic it encounters along the way. Ocean Cleanup, the organization that developed the device, promises “ the largest cleanup in history .”

If it works , the device – blandly named System 001 – could make a dent in the enormous amount of ocean-borne plastic . But once that plastic is collected the options are not good. That’s where an environmental ethicist like me starts thinking about where this plastic will end up next. The ocean is better off without it, of course, but the plastic problem has many more layers than it first appears.

The struggle of sorting

Recycling plastic is only possible if it can be meticulously separated into its various chemical types. What people generally describe with the single word “plastic” encompasses seven main types of materials – the ones used to make soda bottles, trash bags, cling wrap, shopping bags, yogurt containers, fishing nets, foam insulation and non-metal parts of many household appliances. Recycling each of these types, which you might know by their acronyms – such as PETE, LDPE, PVC, PP and HDPE – requires a different chemical process.

That’s why many household recycling programs ask residents to sort their plastics – and why communities that let people put recyclables of all types into one big bin employ people and machines to sort it after it’s collected.

Sorting won’t be easy with the plastic in the ocean. All the different kinds of plastic are mixed up together, and some of it has been chemically and physically broken down by sunlight and wave action. Much of it is now in tiny pieces called microplastics , suspended just below the surface. The first difficulty, but by no means the last, will be sorting all that plastic – plus seaweed, barnacles and other sea life that may have attached itself to the floating debris.

Recycling or downcycling?

Ocean Cleanup is working on how best to reprocess, and brand, the material it collects, hoping that a willing market will emerge for its uniquely sourced product. Even if the company’s engineers and researchers can figure out how to sort it all, there are physical limitations to how useful the collected plastic will be.

The act of recycling involves grinding up materials into very small pieces before melting and reforming them. An inescapable part of that process is that every time plastic is recycled, its polymers – the long chemical sequences that provide its structure – become shorter.

Generally speaking, lighter and more flexible types of plastic can only be recycled into denser, harder materials – unless large amounts of new virgin plastic are added to the mixture. After one or two rounds of recycling, the possibilities for reuse become very limited . At that point, the “downcycled” plastic material is formed into textiles, car bumpers or plastic lumber, none of which end up anywhere else but the landfill. The plastic becomes garbage.

Plastic composting

What if there were a way to ensure that plastic was genuinely recyclable over the long term? Most bacteria can’t degrade plastics because the polymers contain strong carbon-to-carbon chemical bonds that are different from anything bacteria evolved alongside in nature . Fortunately, after being in the environment with human-discarded plastics for a number of decades, bacteria seem to be evolving to use this synthetic feedstock that pervades modern life.

In 2016, a team of biologists and materials scientists found a bacterium that can eat the particular type of plastic used in beverage bottles . The bacteria turns PET plastic into more basic substances that can be remade into virgin plastics . After identifying the key enzyme in the bacteria’s plastic-digestion process, the research team went on to deliberately engineer the enzyme to make it more effective. One scholar said the engineering work has managed to “ overtake evolution .”

At this point, the breakthroughs are only working in laboratory conditions and only on one of the seven types of plastics. But the idea of going beyond natural evolution is where the ears of an environmental philosopher go on alert.

Synthetic enzymes and bacteria

Discovering the plastic-eating bacterium and its enzyme took a lot of watching, waiting and testing . Evolution isn’t always quick. The findings suggest the possibility of discovering additional enzymes that work with other plastics. But they also raise the possibility of taking matters into our own hands and designing new enzymes and microbes.

Already, completely artificial proteins coded by synthetically constructed genes are acting like artificial enzymes and catalyzing reactions in cells . One researcher claims “ we can develop proteins – that would normally have taken billions of years to evolve – in a matter of months.” In other labs, synthetic genomes built entirely out of bottles of chemicals are now capable of running bacterial cells . Entirely synthetic cells – genomes, metabolic processes, functional cellular structures and all – are thought to be only a decade away .

This coming era of synthetic biology not only promises to change what organisms can do. It threatens to change what organisms actually are. Bacteria will no longer just be naturally occurring life forms; some, even many, of them will be purpose-built microbes constructed expressly to provide functions useful to humans, such as composting plastic. The border between life and machine will blur .

The plastics polluting the world’s oceans need to be cleaned up. Bringing them back to land would reinforce the fact that even on a global scale, it’s impossible to throw trash “away” – it just goes somewhere else for a time. But people should be very careful about what sort of technological fixes they employ. I cannot help but see the irony of trying to solve the very real problem of too many synthetic materials littering the oceans by introducing to the world trillions of synthetically produced proteins or bacteria to clean them up.

Christopher J. Preston has received funding from The US National Science Foundation, The John Templeton Foundation, and Critical Scientists Switzerland. He is also the author of The Synthetic Age, published by MIT Press, which provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

An international plastics treaty could avert a 'Silent Spring' for our seas

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 22:41:00 GMT

Global problems — like our plastic-choked seas — need global solutions.

It was welcome news when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will use its year-long G7 presidency to turn the global spotlight on ocean plastics and pollution.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has said plastics will be a main theme of June’s summit when leaders from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States join Trudeau in Charlevoix, Quebec.

But can Canada move these nations to establish enforceable rules?

The G7 has raised the plastics issue before. The Germans launched an action plan to combat marine litter in 2015 and Japan reaffirmed the commitment to address the problem in 2016.

During the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos later that year, headlines blared “More Plastic than Fish in the Sea by 2050” after the release of a report on global plastic waste. In 2017, Italy held a workshop on marine litter during its G7 presidency.

Promises proliferate while plastic waste piles up

But despite these promises, plastic production and waste continues to grow .

Globally, millions of metric tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean each year. In 2010, for example, between 4.8 million and 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic hit the water. That’s equivalent to dumping a garbage truck of plastic into marine waters every minute.

Alarmingly, production of single-use plastic, like grocery bags, contributed nearly 40 per cent of total plastic production in 2015. Many end up in our oceans.

Boris Worm, a marine scientist at the Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has warned that if current trends continue, we’ll face a new “Silent Spring” of the seas. Today, close to 90 per cent of seabirds have plastics in their guts, similar to the ubiquitous presence of the toxic chemical DDT in the 1960s, the focus of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring .

These voluntary international pledges are failing to stem the plastic tide.

Most of the plastic in the sea comes from land. Most of it is not abandoned fishing gear, but plastic bags, milk and water bottles, and consumer goods like flip-flops dumped into waterways and washed out to sea. We’ve recognized this for years — more than 100 countries have endorsed efforts to reduce the impacts of marine litter worldwide since 1995. But that was also a non-binding agreement.

Since then, promises to cut ocean plastics have proliferated, including the 2011 Honolulu Strategy and “The Future We Want” agreement at the 2012 Rio+20 conference.

The 2015 Oceans Goal , one of the UN’s 20 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), repeats the target of significant marine pollution reduction.

And last year, the United Nations Environmental Programme launched its “war on plastic” with the Clean Seas campaign, which aims to eliminate microplastics in cosmetics and the wasteful usage of single-use plastic by the year 2022.

Law rules

What we lack are binding rules for land-based sources of plastic pollution that apply to countries around the world. As the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) noted : “Current initiatives to tackle plastic pollution focus on the symptoms but not the root of the problem.”

At home, Trudeau can support the development of a coordinated national strategy to combat plastics pollution, backed up by law.

There’s plenty of evidence that voluntary actions aren’t enough. In 2000, Canada was the first country to act with a National Plan of Action on land-based sources of marine pollution . But with no legal mechanism to compel action, the national plan to keep plastic pollution from entering the sea has languished.

It would be a step forward even if the G7 only acknowledged the need for binding laws.

G7 to the rescue?

Still more can be done. Canada can start a race to the top to see who can put the best laws in place, and who can reap the gains from a new plastic economy.

Trudeau can convince his fellow G7 leaders to emulate Canada’s new regulations that prohibit the manufacture, import and sale of personal toiletry products that contain plastic microbeads. The G7 leaders can share their experiences on what’s worked well for them, whether it’s the European Union’s new Plastics Strategy and legislative initiative on single-use plastics, France’s ban on plastic cups and plates, or the U.S. initiative called Save Our Seas Act .

Canada could plan a “Plastic-Free Day” during the meeting, or host an ocean plastics art competition at the Charlevoix venue with entries from all G7 nations. It could help to bring industry on side by showcasing promising initiatives like the New Plastics Economy , focused on increasing recapture, reuse and recycling of plastics. And it could screen a heart-wrenching film like Blue for the world leaders.

A bold step forward would be a G7 agreement to fast-track an international plastics treaty.

End game: A plastic pollution treaty

Canada can build on its past leadership on environmental treaties, such as the Montreal Protocol that eliminated more than 99 per cent of ozone-depleting substances globally, to tackle marine plastic pollution.

During the G7 presidency, Trudeau can take the lead to initiate an international treaty that sets global reduction targets for the production and consumption of plastics, and regulates their production, consumption, disposal and clean-up.

At the U.N. Environment Assembly in December, nations failed to include any reductions targets or a timetable in their resolution on marine litter and microplastics. They did, however, establish a group to “further examine the barriers to, and options for, combating marine plastic litter and microplastics from all sources, especially land-based sources.”

This group can recommend the formation of a treaty. If the G7 were to endorse this idea, it might get the international treaty-making machinery moving even more quickly.

There are many proposals at hand.

One based on the Montreal Protocol — widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful environmental agreements — would impose caps on plastics production and trade bans.

Another points to the climate treaty , with countries setting a binding plastics goal and then developing national action plans.

Alternatively, others call for an agreement that institutes a waste hierarchy, where plastics are first reduced, then reused, re-purposed and finally recycled, and creates a global fund to help pay for better waste management practices and infrastructure.

But successful treaties need industry involvement — and commitment to change. A recent CIEL report traces industry awareness of the ocean plastics problem back to the 1970s. There is no time for the kind of industry denial we’ve seen regarding climate change.

It’s an opportune time for Canada to use its G7 leadership to avert another Silent Spring and begin tackling the problem of plastics in the oceans.

Linda Nowlan receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Oceans5, a a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc. She works for West Coast Environmental Law.

Five things to consider about glitter this Christmas

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 14:02:00 GMT

Does glitter bring to mind the prospect of shiny, sparkly, Christmassy, harmless fun? I’m afraid it is a bit more complicated than that. The popularity of glitter and the sheer volume used at Christmas presents us with a growing problem. Here are five reasons to rethink your glitter habit.

1. All that glitters is … plastic

Millions of items are adorned with glitter, from baubles to wrapping paper. Christmas is not Christmas without sparkly accessories and flamboyant decorations, but is it really? Modern glitter originated in 1934, when an American farmer named Henry Ruschmann created a way of cutting mylar and plastic sheets into tiny shapes. He formed Meadowbrook Inventions , which today is still one of the main global suppliers of glitter.

The majority of commercial products that contain glitter, whether these are single use items, such as Christmas cards, or more permanent items such as Christmas tree decorations, use inorganic glitter – chiefly plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and also polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Glitter is usually layered with other materials , such as aluminium to provide extra sparkle. Underneath the microscope, it is possible to see the huge variation of glitter shapes and sizes : hexagons, squares, rectangles and even hearts and stars ranging from 6.25mm to a truly tiny 0.05mm.

2. Glitter is not fabulous (for marine life)

Most people now understand that microplastics, such as fibres from clothes or microbeads in facial scrubs, are dangerous to sea life . Glitter is a microplastic too, classed as a primary type of microplastic as the particles are less than 5mm in size and have been purposely manufactured to be of microscopic size.

Glitter can enter seas and oceans from rivers , via wastewater from our homes and via run-off from landfill sites. Although many microplastics are removed at wastewater treatment plants, a huge amount of microplastics still find their way through to the oceans. The size of these particles means they are easily consumed by small marine organisms, who cannot discriminate between particles of food and plastic .

Microplastic particles attract inorganic and organic chemicals to adhere to them, such as polychlorinated biphenyls ( PCB’s , which have been banned since 1979 ) and toxic heavy metals . A big risk to wildlife comes from the bioaccumulation of these toxins in the food chain – as recently highlighted in the final episode of the BBC’s Blue Planet II television programme on Earth’s oceans, which showed how young dolphins have been found dead, possibly killed by toxins accumulated in their mother’s milk.

3. Glitter is not just for Christmas

Microplastics break down under UV light which changes the structure of the plastic , by the mechanical action of water and by microbes . Some plastics such as PVC contain plasticisers, which can extend the degradation time of plastic . Given that plastics already may take hundreds, possibly even thousands of years to decompose, this is a concern. Glitter, like any other plastic, will degrade in the marine environment into further smaller pieces, called secondary sources of microplastic , but while it may grace your Christmas card only for a few weeks, it will hang around for much longer.

4. Glitter is hard to dispose of

Knowing the problems posed by glitter, you may be wondering what now to do with it all. This is a difficult question to answer, as whichever way you dispose of it there is a chance it will end up in the oceans. Most importantly, do not wash glitter down the sink. Instead, try reusing the glitter (or item adorned with it) for a future festive project. This still does not eliminate the risk, merely potentially prolonging the moment it enters the ocean. So what to do?

Where possible try not to buy cards or paper that features glitter, or make-up containing glitter particles. Nurseries in Dorset have already banned the use of glitter – could you do without it too? Ultimately, the only way to prevent this type of plastic adding to the global microplastic problem is to get rid of it completely, and opt for an eco-friendly alternative.

5. There are guilt-free glitter alternatives

In line with the 2017 ban on microbeads in toiletries , there have recently been calls to ban glitter. . This has been met with some resistance and accusations that this represents scientists “ wanting to take the sparkle out of life ”. But we don’t have to go all the way from bling to bland.

Just as manufacturers of facial scrubs are looking at using natural exfoliating materials, such as apricot or walnut husks, glitter manufacturers have now started producing biodegradable glitter, available from many online stores (such as Glitterevolution and Ecoglitterfun ). Biodegradable glitter is made from the cellulose of plants, such as the eucalyptus tree, grown on land unsuitable for food crops using sustainable forestry initiatives that require little water . On top of that, it is also compostable – truly an eco-glitter.

Even the company where modern glitter was born is getting environmentally friendly: Meadowbrook Inventions also now supplies biodegradable glitter , which means that with such a major supplier on board, there is hope for sparkly yet environmentally friendly Christmases in the future.

Claire Gwinnett is affiliated with the UK Microplastics Network.

Tax plastic takeaway boxes: the scourge of the oceans

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:44:00 GMT

That takeaway box that was in your hands for 10 minutes on Friday night could be in the ocean forever. Single use plastics are a real concern for the planet. The use and throwaway nature of items such as food packaging and drinks bottles means that millions of tons of plastic waste are created. Unfortunately, much of this can enter waterways and oceans.

This week, the UK Government will discuss the possibility of introducing taxes on single-use plastic items , such as bottles and takeaway containers, to try to reduce the amount of plastic pollution entering the oceans. This follows the successful introduction of the 5p plastic bag initiative in 2015 which reduced plastic bag use by 80% . This taxation on single-use plastics could be a major step towards improving the “ plastic ocean ” which humans have created.

Studies showing entangled turtles , sea birds with stomachs full of plastic pieces and can holders cutting into the flesh of seals are shocking and clearly show the effect of plastics on marine life – but it doesn’t stop there.

So, let’s imagine your Friday night takeaway box for a moment. If you are a careful consumer, you will have checked to see if it’s recyclable before throwing it in the bin. Unfortunately, many containers are not recyclable. Even some of those that are may be thrown into general waste if they have food residue on them that can’t be rinsed off. And how many people carry round washing-up liquid and a sponge on a Friday night anyway?

The excess of these containers enters the waste system due to the extreme amounts entering our waterways from land or through drainage systems . A study by the Rozalia Project that monitored storm drains in Boston Harbour found that a plastic item was released into the water every three seconds .

Now imagine that takeaway box has made its way to sea via urban waterways, moving with the currents until it reaches the deep ocean. At this stage, your takeaway box is a megaplastic (items of plastic bigger that 10cm in size that stay intact for a long time). These plastics have been made to resist age and not break down easily. They can move around the planet, enter huge floating garbage patches , reach far flung beaches and become buried in sand and sediment .

Degradation and sea pollution

But these takeaway boxes and bottles don’t just stay as they were when we were using them. These containers slowly degrade and break down into macroplastics (2.5cm to 10cm), mesoplastics (5mm to 2.5cm), microplastics (smaller than 5mm) and sometimes even into nano particles (smaller than a micrometre, the equivalent of around 1/70th of the width of an average human hair). Depending on the size of your takeaway box, this can mean one box is turned into millions of pieces.

To get to this size, your takeaway box has been exposed to the sun, where UV degradation occurs. The pounding action of the waves, which causes mechanical damage, helps to fragment the plastic. Your takeaway box also becomes a home for many microbes which cause biodegradation of the plastic. As the plastic particles become less buoyant and covered in microorganisms, your takeaway box will sink, disappearing from the ocean surface into the depths. So, is this the last we see of your takeaway box? Unfortunately, no.

At this stage, the box may be at its most dangerous. Now, these many individual pieces can be eaten by marine life large and small, even those in the deepest depths of the ocean . These microplastics have large surface area to volume ratios, which mean that they concentrate chemical toxins on their surfaces that then can transfer to the animals that eat them. This ingestion has been seen in multiple marine organisms and has led to a debate over whether these can lead to ecological effects both to the organism and any humans who consume them.

What we do know, is that we need more research into how plastics degrade in the ocean and where they end up to fully understand what effect they may have on marine life.

So how much do you really care that your Friday night takeaway is being served in a plastic tray? Would it taste different if it was in a recycled cardboard container or even something as hipster as a bamboo tray? However you feel about this, without some action, you actually might end up eating your discarded takeaway box at some point in the future.

Claire Gwinnett is affiliated with the UK Microplastics Network.

Blue Planet academic consultants: the message humanity cannot afford to ignore

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 15:43:00 GMT

As expected, the first episode of Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II has been greeted with rapturous applause. But alongside the gasps of delight at the beauty of the natural world, the programme came with an urgent message for viewers which we can no longer afford to ignore.

Produced by the BBC’s Natural History Unit in partnership with the Open University , and narrated by the world’s favourite natural historian, the series revisits The Blue Planet after a gap of 16 years.

The series does what the BBC’s Natural History Unit does best – films the natural world in a fresh and compelling way using the latest technology. Blue Planet II allows the audience to get up close and personal to an array of extraordinary creatures that depend on and harness Earth’s vast oceans for their survival.

From the depths of the abyss where sunlight is absent and the pressure immense, to the wild rapidly changing coast, viewers are introduced to a variety of habitats and privy to remarkable behaviours, some of which have never been filmed before.

An ocean-going journey

The series is based around five ocean habitats, exploring the world of the animals that live there and the threats they face. There are many filming firsts: the ingenious tusk fish which uses rocks as an anvil to smash clam shells; co-operative hunting between bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales ; as well as a giant trevally fish that hunts terns by plucking them out of the air. All that and sealions hunting as a co-ordinated pack, driving 60kg tuna into the shallows; as well as coral grouper and reef octopus hunting together and communicating using gestures – a behaviour usually associated with apes.

There are also behaviours that are new to science, such as an octopus that covers itself with shells to create a suit of armour to deter predators and female cuttlefish that flash a white stripe to indicate to amorous males an unwillingness to mate. Some of these uncovered behaviours demonstrate an intelligence that has been vastly underestimated.

As academic consultants on the series, we were captivated by the footage that leads viewers into this largely unexplored world from the perspective of the creatures that live there, capturing fascinating behaviour in exquisite detail.

But working on it also made us acutely aware how much humans and the planet stand to lose if we fail to recognise and acknowledge the negative impact we are having on the oceans. And it is this awareness which makes the timing of Blue Planet II so important. By revealing the awe-inspiring nature of the oceans in a way the audience can connect with emotionally, Blue Planet II raises critical awareness of the immediate threats facing our oceans and underscores what we stand to lose by ignoring them.

The cost of global warming and pollution

Scientific research now overwhelmingly demonstrates that the ocean is changing. Sea surface temperatures have increased , levels of dissolved oxygen are declining , sea water has become more acidic and food supplies have declined . The consequences are uncertain in their details but the rapidity and breadth of changes means that they will be profound.

Recent research suggests that more than half the world’s oceans could suffer these multiple effects of rising carbon dioxide level over the next 15 years. By mid-century it is possible that more than 80% of oceans could be affected, forcing its inhabitants to migrate, adapt, or in some cases, face extinction.

It’s happening already. Huge swaths of coral reefs around the world have bleached in recent years, and two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is affected by coral bleaching. Seagrass meadows, kelp beds and mangrove forests are some of the most productive habitats on earth, storing vast amounts of carbon – but are also some of the most threatened. In 2015 and 2016 the worst instance of mangrove forest die-off ever recorded occurred off the Australian coast.

And that is not all. The oceans are facing a major threat from pollution – by 2050 it is predicted that without significant action there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. It is estimated that between 4-12m metric tons of plastic makes its way into the oceans each year.

Nearly 700 marine species have been found entangled in plastic, and an increasing number – from microscopic plankton to whales – ingest it, compromising their ability to digest food, maintain body condition and give birth to healthy young. Persistent organic pollutants have been found 10km down in the Mariana trench , and are ingested by organisms that live there.

This is the more serious message that the series addresses alongside its spellbinding footage, particularly in the final episode that explores the struggle many species experience in the face of environmental change caused by humans.

But, there is also a message of hope. Now we understand more fully the consequences of our actions we can act to stop or at least slow them. Some of the initiatives aimed at mitigating the damage humans have inflicted are highlighted in the final episode.

For example, overfishing in the 1950s resulted in the collapse of Norway’s herring stock, but better regulation and scientific monitoring has led to a spectacular recovery in numbers. Today, there is enough herring for both humans and the hundreds of humpback whales and orcas that feed on them. Ultimately though, keeping our oceans healthy and functioning properly will require bold leadership, motivation and coordinated effort on a global scale.

As Sir David Attenborough succinctly puts it: “For the first time in 500m years, one species has the future in its hands.”

The authors would like to acknowledge Dr Pallavi Anand and Dr Mark Brandon of the The Open University, who also served as academic consultants on Blue Planet II.

Philip Sexton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Your sunscreen may be polluting the ocean – but algae could offer a natural alternative

Fri, 01 Sep 2017 10:44:00 GMT

An estimated 6,000-14,000 tons of sunscreen are deposited into coral reef areas of the sea every year. The chemicals we rub onto our skin might help prevent skin cancer but we’re only just beginning to understand the environmental impact of sunscreen – and the initial assessments are not looking good. But early stage research suggests that nature might provide a solution to this emerging problem if we can mimic the way that some plants and animals protect themselves from the sun.

Sunscreen is vital to helping prevent skin damage from ultraviolet radiation (UVR) that can cause melanoma and other skin cancers. They contain a number of ingredients that act as UVR filters, absorbing and scattering the radiation and stopping it from reaching the skin. Many studies have demonstrated the benefits of regular sunscreen use, including long-term studies in Australia that have shown reduced skin cancer rates. .

The potential problem is that many ingredients used in sunscreen products are synthetic organic molecules, like those used to make plastics. These molecules are designed to be highly stable and so they don’t break down when they enter the environment. As a result, sunscreen ingredients are detectable in species including fish, sea mammals such as dolphins and even marine dwelling birds.

The impact of these molecules on the environment isn’t fully understood but is a growing focus of research. We know that some filters have a similar structure to the hormone oestrogen and mimic can its action. This can cause hormonal changes and even alter the sex characteristics of some fish. UVR filters have also been linked to coral bleaching .

These concerns are being monitored by many regulatory agencies. The European Chemicals Agency has listed eight out of the 16 most commonly used sunscreens in Europe as a potential threat to the environment and health, raising the ultimate possibility of a ban. Fears about damage to coral reef systems has already led to bans of particular sunscreen ingredients in some coral hotspots such as Hawaii .

These fears are currently relatively minor – but ways to improve the safety and biocompatibility of sunscreens need to be investigated. As is often the way, the answer may lie within the very environment that is being affected. Many marine species are continuously exposed to high levels of UVR throughout the day and have evolved efficient ways to prevent damage.

For example, microorganism species such as cyanobacteria and algae produce a group of compounds called mycosporine-like amino acids (MAA) , which act as UVR filters. These are passed up the food chain to animals such as corals, invertebrates and fish, which then store the compounds in tissues exposed to UVR such as the skin, eyes and eggs . MAA efficiently absorb UVR and convert it to harmless light and heat, and aren’t broken down by the radiation.

There is also evidence that these compounds can act as potent antioxidants , another very beneficial property that most synthetic filters don’t have. Solar radiation can cause highly reactive atoms or molecules, known as free radicals, to break away from other bigger molecules. Free radicals can cause what is known as oxidative damage to tissues, but they can be neutralised by antioxidants

The potential for these compounds to be applied to human health, particularly as sunscreens, is only just beginning to be explored . They have shown excellent potential in laboratory models. The next step is to translate this to human studies to truly understand their potential.

In the meantime, it’s very important for public health that people don’t stop using synthetic sunscreens. So far, there is only limited evidence for the potential ecological harm of sunscreens, especially at the concentrations at which UVR filters are found in the environment. But the effects of UVR on the skin are well known and proven beyond any doubt.

Karl Lawrence's PhD studentship was funded by a sunscreen manufacturer.

Antony Young receives funding from MRC, British Skin Foundation, NIHR and sunscreen manufacturers.

When it comes to disappearing ocean history, HMAS Perth is the tip of the iceberg

Tue, 06 Jun 2017 01:52:00 GMT

This Thursday is World Oceans Day and so critical are the issues facing our oceans - including climate change and plastic pollution - that the United Nations has convened a high-level conference on their future. While its focus is ocean conservation, another aspect of our seas has been conspicuously neglected: the vast array of human history lying underwater.

Millions of shipwrecks and archaeological sites lie under the ocean, including most infamously the Titanic , resting almost four kilometres below the North Atlantic. These relics are just as important as terrestrial sites such as the Egyptian pyramids or the temples of Angkor, and preserve a history of our relationship to the seas. Just like marine ecosystems, this underwater cultural heritage is threatened by climate change, pollution, development, fishing and looting.

Indeed just this week, Australian and Indonesian maritime archaeologists reported that HMAS Perth, a World War II wreck lying in the Sunda Strait and the final resting place for hundreds of men, has suffered extensive and recent damage . There is now less than half of the ship left.

Stories from the sea

Humanity’s close relationship with the ocean stretches back thousands of years. Our oceans have provided food, connected civilisations, facilitated trade, travel and conquest, and also served as a sacred place of veneration. It’s estimated that three million ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities lie on the ocean floor.

These include a 9th century shipwreck discovered off Indonesia’s Belitung island in 1998. The ship originated in the Middle East, and its cargo was dominated by commercial quantities of Chinese ceramics. It represents some of the earliest evidence of maritime trade between Southeast Asia, the Chinese Tang dynasty and the Middle Eastern Abbasid Empire.

Nor are these vestiges of the past restricted to shipwrecks. Archaeologists have discovered evidence of sunken civilisations , buried under silt and sand for centuries. In Egypt, relics of the ancient city of Alexandria include temples, palaces, and the 130-metre Pharos Lighthouse , one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. Egyptian authorities now plan to construct an underwater museum to share these discoveries with a broader audience.

Sometimes, the smallest of objects discovered underwater can reveal as much as an entire city. Lost for centuries in waters off Crete, the 2000-year old Antikythera mechanism is known as the world’s first computer for its use of gears and dials to predict eclipses and track moon phases. The same site has also yielded human bones , from which scientists hope to be able to extract genetic information for insights into ancient shipwreck victims.

Mother-of-pearl inlays - gathered by early breath hold divers and fashioned by artisans - found at a Mesopotamian site indicate that humans have been responding creatively to the ocean’s resources as far back as 4,500 BCE .

Underwater heritage is the legacy of these past activities, bearing witness to the development of both ancient and modern civilisations. But the significance of ocean artefacts extends beyond trade, travel and recreation. For example, the study of this heritage can show us the impact of rising sea levels on human life. Such information serves as a sobering reminder of the effects of climate change, and can also help us to develop solutions to the present environmental problems we are facing.

Ulrike Guérin from the UNESCO Secretariat of the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage explains:

Underwater cultural heritage can also help to assess the impact of the ocean on human life, and assist in monitoring issues such as potential ocean pollution from oil and the threat of unexploded ammunition from WWII shipwrecks. Guérin argues that protecting and researching this heritage can lead to better conservation of coastal and marine areas, with increased economic benefits for small island developing states and least developed countries through tourism.

An ocean without history?

Like fish stocks and coral reefs, underwater cultural heritage faces destruction from climate change , marine pollution and over-development . Industrial activities like fishing are becoming a greater concern.

Commercial deep-sea fishing trawlers destroy not only fishing stocks but also well-preserved wrecks. These bottom trawl nets act like ploughs, digging up the ocean bed and tearing archaeological sites apart. In the Baltic Sea , thousands of synthetic fishing nets are lost every year. These “ghost nets” get tangled in wrecks, trapping fish and seals in the process. In Southeast Asia, historic shipwrecks in both Malaysia and Thailand face destruction from “massive trawl nets that scour every metre of the seabed” .

Just as fishing stocks are targeted by illegal poachers, so too is underwater heritage threatened by illegal salvaging and looting. The recent unauthorized disturbance of three near-pristine Japanese shipwrecks in Malaysian waters has destroyed the thriving marine ecosystems that such wrecks support. The damage caused to these underwater museums has had a devastating impact on local diving companies and small-scale fishermen. In Indonesia, these illicit activities appear to be becoming increasingly sophisticated and audacious , including the most recent damage to HMAS Perth.

Heritage in the margins

Despite its importance, underwater cultural heritage remains a relatively new concept, and tends to be overshadowed by other legal and policy priorities. At this week’s UN oceans conference in New York, plenary meetings are focusing on reducing marine pollution, protecting marine and coastal ecosystems, and addressing ocean acidification. Underwater cultural heritage, meanwhile, was discussed in a side event held in the margins.

The 2001 underwater heritage convention establishes basic principles for protecting these sites, but faces a number of challenges. Only 56 nations have signed or ratified the convention , and big maritime nations such as the US, China, and the UK have not. Australia has not ratified, but introduced new underwater cultural heritage legislation in November 2016 that brings this step closer. The heritage convention also faces the problem of perceived competition with the Law of the Sea , which sets the rules for how the oceans are shared and governed.

And what of HMAS Perth? In a strange twist of history, in the 1970s the Australian Embassy in Jakarta became aware that the bell of the ship had turned up in an Indonesian salvage yard. The embassy successfully negotiated the bell’s exchange, and it is now held in the Australian War Memorial : a small piece of history saved through cultural diplomacy.

Underwater cultural heritage is an essential part of our oceans and the way we relate to them. As important as it is to ensure a sustainable future for our oceans, it is also vital that we understand humanity’s historical relationship with them. Our future is invested in our oceans, and so is our past.

Dr Natali Pearson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

This South Pacific island of rubbish shows why we need to quit our plastic habit

Wed, 17 May 2017 03:48:00 GMT

A remote South Pacific island has the highest density of plastic debris reported anywhere on the planet, our new study has found.

Our study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , estimated that more than 17 tonnes of plastic debris has washed up on Henderson Island, with more than 3,570 new pieces of litter arriving every day on one beach alone.

It is estimated that there are nearly 38 million pieces of plastic on the island, which is near the centre of the South Pacific Gyre ocean current .

A 2014 paper published in the journal PLOS One used data from surface water all over the world. The researchers estimated that there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the top 10 centimetres of the world’s oceans.

Plastics pose a major threat to seabirds and other animals, and most don’t ever break down – they just break up. Every piece of petrochemical-derived plastic ever made still exists on the planet.

The Henderson research program was funded through overseas agencies, primarily UK based philanthropy. A complete list is in the acknowledgements of the published paper here http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/09/1619818114.abstract . For the Henderson Island project, Jennifer Lavers is affiliated with the University of Tasmania, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the United Kingdom.

Film review: A Plastic Ocean shows us a world awash with rubbish

Wed, 22 Mar 2017 04:37:00 GMT

We live in a world of plastic. Shopping bags, drink bottles, your toothbrush and even your clothes are among the everyday items made from plastic. But plastic isn’t fantastic, and neither is the current state of our environment.

Humans have been mass-producing plastic since the 1950s. We produce hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic every year and production is only increasing. Unfortunately, most of it is used only once and then thrown away.

Only a small proportion of plastic is recycled . The majority ends up in landfill or, in the worst case scenario, our oceans.

A Plastic Ocean is a documentary film directed by the Australian journalist Craig Leeson. It dives into and investigates the devastating impacts that plastic has caused to our environment, especially our marine life.

What starts off as an adventure to film the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, leads to the shocking discovery of a thick layer of plastic debris floating in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Craig, alongside Tanya Streeter, a world record-breaking free diver and environmental activist, then travel across the globe to report on the havoc caused by decades of plastic use.

The film presents beautiful shots of the marine environment. This contrasts with footage of heavily polluted cities and dumps full of plastic rubbish. The juxtaposition between these images sends the message that our actions and choices can severely impact the planet. Throughout the film, experts are interviewed to provide further insight into some of the problems derived from plastic.

Impacts of plastic use

Plastic is so widely used because it is durable and cheap. Unfortunately, this durability is the same quality that makes it so detrimental to the environment. Most plastics do not break down chemically. Instead, they break into smaller and smaller pieces that can persist in the environment for an extensive period of time.

Because it is so affordable, developing countries use plastics extensively. However, many regions lack proper waste management, and much of the rubbish is washed into the ocean when it rains. As a result, a large percentage of all plastics in the ocean are due to only a handful of countries . Scientists estimate that more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic are currently floating in our oceans.

Throughout the film, we are shown footage of numerous marine species that have been affected by plastic debris. Marine animals and sea birds often mistake floating plastic for food. Large pieces of plastic, when eaten, can obstruct the animals’ digestive tracts of the animals, essentially starving them to death.

When smaller “microplastics” are ingested, toxins are released and become stored in their tissue . These toxins accumulate up the food chain and can eventually end up on our dinner tables. The consumption of the contaminated seafood can cause many health problems including cancer, immune system problems, and even childhood developmental issues . This is a major problem, as almost a fifth of the world’s population relies on the ocean for their primary source of protein . Society’s huge appetite for plastic is literally poisoning us.

The future of plastics

There is no quick fix for a problem that has grown hugely over the past few decades. The use of plastics is so ingrained in society that it is all but impossible to eliminate them completely.

The film does, however, offer various strategies that can be implemented to reduce the impact of plastics.

Ideally, avoid plastic-containing products as much as possible. Avoid single-use plastic products and recycle whatever you can. Local governments also need to implement a refund scheme for the return of plastic bottles to incentivise recycling.

For unrecyclable plastics, new technology has been developed to convert them into fuel , providing a second life for those plastics.

It is up to us to embrace these changes and move away from the plastic culture. We need to get this problem under control, as it will only become worse as the human population increases. Our marine animals deserve to live in a blue ocean, not a plastic soup.

A Plastic Ocean is touring internationally , including screenings in Brisbane on March 25 and Cairns on March 27 .

Gary Truong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Plastic fibres are causing major harm to South Africa's marine life

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 14:55:00 GMT

Next time you take a stroll along your favourite isolated beach, far from any city, take a moment to look down at the high tide mark. You’ll almost certainly see small plastic particles dotted along your route.

These are microplastics. They’re less than 5mm in size and, for a long time, were only found in industrialised, highly populated areas.

Sadly for our oceans, things are changing. In our recent study of South Africa’s coastline, we compared popular beaches in built-up areas with more remote beaches. The aim was to see which were more contaminated with microplastics. Contamination levels were similar along the sparsely populated west coast, for example in places like Port Nolloth and Paternoster, and the more populated east coast at Salt Rock, and Port Edward. The majority of this contamination are plastic fibres potentially released during a washing machine cycle.

Microplastic pollution is a global phenomenon. Particles are found in deep sea sediment, Arctic sea ice and islands far from civilisation. Marine life of all sizes from zooplankton to whales are affected by this pollution. Ingestion of these non-biodegradeable particles reduces an organism’s ability to consume its natural prey. There also concerns about apparent toxicity. So, there’s major ecological interest around the increase of the particles as marine life suffer.

Where do they come from

The composition of microplastics are common throughout the world. Nurdles – small plastic pellets – microbeads, plastic fragments and microfibres make up the overall burden. Some areas have a higher concentration of a certain type indicating where they come from. For example, harbours have more pellets because they tend to be surrounded by factories. Waterways near populated cities may have more microbeads and microfibres as they are used and produced by consumers. Fragments may be high on polluted beaches far from populated areas since it takes some time for larger items to break down.

Industrial pellets or nurdles are used to manufacture larger plastic items. They may be introduced into nearby ecosystems through accidental losses or spillage occurring mainly during their manufacture and transportation. These pellets have a high affinity for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), meaning that POPs attach to the surface of the pellets, typically found at low levels in sea water. This creates a pathway for an increased concentration of toxins entering the food-web as a result of pellet ingestion.

Microbeads are often incorporated in a number of household products, like facewashes, hand and body scrubs and toothpastes. These microplastics enter wastewater treatment facilities, after being washed down the drain, and are subsequently released into nearby environments. They contain POPs similar to industrial nurdles, but also provide the ideal surface for bacteria to colonise.

Microplastics collected from an urban river in Chicago, Illinois, USA hosted a high concentration of pathogenic taxa known to cause human gastrointestinal infections. Out of concern for the freshwater and marine ecosystem the initiative Beat the Microbead was formed. It informs consumers about which products are safe to use and which to stay away from.

A number of countries, among them the United Kingdom and Canada , are moving to ban the use of microbeads in cosmetics.

Another problem

But tiny plastic particles aren’t the only problem. Secondary microplastics originate from the fragmentation of larger plastic items like plastic bottles, shopping bags, polystyrene cups and containers. These are often the most common type of plastic pollution in the marine environment. Larger plastic items enter the marine environment and undergo both chemical – photo-degradation from sunlight – and mechanical breakdown from repeated exposure to light and waves. The items degrades into smaller and smaller pieces.

Microplastic fragments may cause physical damage to various marine organisms who ingest them. Some marine creatures’ gill structures are damaged and their digestive tracts clogged. The fragments they ingest may also contain harmful additives known as plasticisers . They are also known as endocrine disruptors.

The entry of these particles into marine ecosystems can be reduced by beach clean-up programmes and the reduction of single use plastics. A recent movement to clean up Versova beach in Mumbai , which had so much litter the sand couldn’t be seen, resulted in 1,740 tons of waste being removed.

But studies have suggested that it may be what South Africans are wearing that’s polluting the beaches along the coast. Synthetic garments made of polyester blends and carpeting, may breakdown during the washing process releasing small microfibres into waterways, eventually entering the marine environment.

T-shirts, shorts, jeans and jerseys are a few examples of clothing made using polyester. Estimates suggest that the production of this plastic fibre has grown significantly and will continue to do so. Microfibres pose similar dangers to plastics like entanglement. This causes unnatural movement of smaller organisms and makes them more vulnerable to predators. Fibres may also link, forming clumps that block an organism’s intestinal tract and cause it to starve.

Between 80 to 90% of the microplastics contaminating many beaches are microfibres. There are estimates that a single item of clothing may release over 2000 microfibres per wash.

These numbers add up in a household of four, five or six. The particles in question are so small they’re not all captured by traditional wastewater treatment facilities. Even if they are removed and concentrated in the sludge, this sludge is often applied to agricultural areas. Rainfall then causes the particles to flow into nearby rivers and estuaries and into marine ecosystems.

Compacting the problem

There are ways that this problem can be managed better. These include:

1) Improving the design of synthetic materials, resulting in higher durability with less shedding of fibres.

2) Improving capture of fibres at source, like additional filters on washing machine outlets.

3) Improve wastewater treatment facility infrastructure.

4) Purchase less synthetic garments and invest in a few good quality items made from natural materials.

4) Reduce the unnecessary washing of garments.

5) Upcycle plastic waste into innovative products, like turning old t-shirts into bags .

Laws don’t change until people pressure politicians to change them. For starters, it’s up to consumers to become more conscious of their plastic footprint. By reducing microplastics and microfibres entering terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments, we’ll be better able to maintain resources that humans all over the globe depend on.

Holly Nel receives funding from The National Research Foundation South Africa (NRF, Pretoria/Grant UID - 88414).

The oceans are full of plastic, but why do seabirds eat it?

Wed, 09 Nov 2016 19:58:00 GMT

Imagine that you are constantly eating, but slowly starving to death. Hundreds of species of marine mammals, fish, birds, and sea turtles face this risk every day when they mistake plastic debris for food.

Plastic debris can be found in oceans around the world . Scientists have estimated that there are over five trillion pieces of plastic weighing more than a quarter of a million tons floating at sea globally. Most of this plastic debris comes from sources on land and ends up in oceans and bays due largely to poor waste management.

Plastic does not biodegrade, but at sea large pieces of plastic break down into increasingly smaller fragments that are easy for animals to consume. Nothing good comes to animals that mistake plastic for a meal. They may suffer from malnutrition, intestinal blockage, or slow poisoning from chemicals in or attached to the plastic.

Despite the pervasiveness and severity of this problem, scientists still do not fully understand why so many marine animals make this mistake in the first place. It has been commonly assumed, but rarely tested, that seabirds eat plastic debris because it looks like the birds’ natural prey. However, in a study that my coauthors and I just published in Science Advances, we propose a new explanation : For many imperiled species, marine plastic debris also produces an odor that the birds associate with food.

A nose for sulfur

Perhaps the most severely impacted animals are tube-nosed seabirds , a group that includes albatrosses, shearwaters and petrels. These birds are pelagic: they often remain at sea for years at a time, searching for food over hundreds or thousands of square kilometers of open ocean, visiting land only to breed and rear their young. Many are also at risk of extinction. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature , nearly half of the approximately 120 species of tube-nosed seabirds are either threatened, endangered or critically endangered.

Although there are many fish in the sea, areas that reliably contain food are very patchy. In other words, tube-nosed seabirds are searching for a “needle in a haystack” when they forage. They may be searching for fish, squid, krill or other items, and it is possible that plastic debris visually resembles these prey. But we believe that tells only part of a more complex story.

Pioneering research by Dr. Thomas Grubb Jr. in the early 1970s showed that tube-nosed seabirds use their powerful sense of smell, or olfaction, to find food effectively, even when heavy fog obscures their vision. Two decades later, Dr. Gabrielle Nevitt and colleagues found that certain species of tube-nosed seabirds are attracted to dimethyl sulfide (DMS) , a natural scented sulfur compound. DMS comes from marine algae , which produce a related chemical called DMSP inside their cells. When those cells are damaged – for example, when algae die, or when marine grazers like krill eat it – DMSP breaks down, producing DMS. The smell of DMS alerts seabirds that food is nearby – not the algae, but the krill that are consuming the algae.

Dr. Nevitt and I wondered whether these seabirds were being tricked into consuming marine plastic debris because of the way it smelled. To test this idea, my coauthors and I created a database collecting every study we could find that recorded plastic ingestion by tube-nosed seabirds over the past 50 years. This database contained information from over 20,000 birds of more than 70 species. It showed that species of birds that use DMS as a foraging cue eat plastic nearly six times as frequently as species that are not attracted to the smell of DMS while foraging.

To further test our theory, we needed to analyze how marine plastic debris smells. To do so, I took beads of the three most common types of floating plastic – polypropylene and low- and high-density polyethylene – and sewed them inside custom mesh bags, which we attached to two buoys off of California’s central coast. We hypothesized that algae would coat the plastic at sea, a process known as biofouling , and produce DMS.

After the plastic had been immersed for about a month at sea, I retrieved it and brought it to a lab that is not usually a stop for marine scientists: the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science at UC Davis. There we used a gas chromatograph, specifically built to detect sulfur odors in wine, beer and other food products, to measure the chemical signature of our experimental marine debris. Sulfur compounds have a very distinct odor; to humans they smell like rotten eggs or decaying seaweed on the beach, but to some species of seabirds DMS smells delicious!

Sure enough, every sample of plastic we collected was coated with algae and had substantial amounts of DMS associated with it. We found levels of DMS that were higher than normal background concentrations in the environment, and well above levels that tube-nosed seabirds can detect and use to find food. These results provide the first evidence that, in addition to looking like food, plastic debris may also confuse seabirds that hunt by smell.

When trash becomes bait

Our findings have important implications. First, they suggest that plastic debris may be a more insidious threat to marine life than we previously believed. If plastic looks and smells like food, it is more likely to be mistaken for prey than if it just looks like food.

Second, we found through data analysis that small, secretive burrow-nesting seabirds, such as prions, storm petrels, and shearwaters, are more likely to confuse plastic for food than their more charismatic, surface-nesting relatives such as albatrosses. This difference matters because populations of hard-to-observe burrow-nesting seabirds are more difficult to count than surface-nesting species, so they often are not surveyed as closely. Therefore, we recommend increased monitoring of these less charismatic species that may be at greater risk of plastic ingestion.

Finally, our results provide a deeper understanding for why certain marine organisms are inexorably trapped into mistaking plastic for food. The patterns we found in birds should also be investigated in other groups of species, like fish or sea turtles. Reducing marine plastic pollution is a long-term, large-scale challenge , but figuring out why some species continue to mistake plastic for food is the first step toward finding ways to protect them.

Matthew Savoca receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

Seagrass is a marine powerhouse, so why isn't it on the world's conservation agenda?

Mon, 10 Oct 2016 13:18:00 GMT

Seagrass has been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth , it is responsible for keeping the world’s coastlines clean and healthy, and supports many different species of animal, including humans. And yet, it is often overlooked, regarded as merely an innocuous feature of the ocean.

But the fact is that this plant is vital – and it is for that reason that the World Seagrass Association has issued a consensus statement , signed by 115 scientists from 25 countries, stating that these important ecosystems can no longer be ignored on the conservation agenda. Seagrass is part of a marginalised ecosystem that must be increasingly managed, protected and monitored – and needs urgent attention now.

Seagrass meadows are of fundamental importance to human life . They exist on the coastal fringes of almost every continent on earth, where seagrass and its associated biodiversity supports fisheries’ productivity. These flowering plants are the powerhouses of the sea, creating life in otherwise unproductive muddy environments. The meadows they form stabilise sediments, filter vast quantities of nutrients and provide one of the planet’s most efficient oceanic stores of carbon .

But the habitat seagrasses create is suffering due to the impact of humans: poor water quality, coastal development, boating and destructive fishing are all resulting in seagrass loss and degradation. This leads in turn to the loss of most of the fish and invertebrate populations that the meadows support. The green turtle, dugong and species of seahorse, for example, all rely on seagrass for food and shelter, and loss endangers their viability. The plants are important fish nurseries and key fishing grounds. Losing them puts the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people at risk too, and exposes them to increasing levels of poverty.

Rapid loss

There is clear, extensive evidence of the rapid loss of seagrass. Growing historic, recent and current records show degradation and fragmentation of the plant around the world. In Biscayne Bay, Florida, for example, 2.6km² of seagrass disappeared between 1938 and 2009 . Up to 38% of the seagrass in a lagoon in the south of France may have been lost since the 1920s. The nearshore waters of Singapore has lost some 45% over the past 50 years . Similar examples have been reported in Canada , the British Isles and the Caribbean too.

Even the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has suffered periods of widespread decline and loss of seagrass over the past decade, particularly along its central and southern developed coasts; a consequence of multiple years of above average rainfall, poor water quality, and climate-related impacts followed by extreme weather events. The most recent published monitoring surveys show that the majority of inshore seagrass meadows across the reef – which cover some 3,063 km² – remain in a vulnerable state, with weak resistance, low abundance and a low capacity to recover.

Human impact

As the human population grows and the world economy expands, there will be increasing pressure on our coastal zone. And it must be ensured that this doesn’t negatively influence seagrass meadows. It is already recognised that poor water quality, specifically elevated nutrients, is the biggest threat to seagrasses ; these problems are particularly acute in many developing nations with rapidly growing economies, such as Indonesia, where municipal infrastructure is often limited and environmental legislation is largely weak.

Coastal development is a competition for finite space: boating, tourism, aquaculture, ports, energy projects and housing are all placing pressures on seagrass survival. These threats exist with a backdrop of the impacts of environmental change and sea level rise too. Humans must reduce their local-scale impact on seagrass so that it can remain resilient to longer term environmental stressors.

There can be a bright future for this oceanic plant, however. Across the world, communities, NGOs and governments are beginning to embrace the monitoring of meadows. As knowledge of the plants’ ecology improves, conservationists are learning more about how to successfully restore seagrass meadows: Tampa Bay in Florida and Virginia’s bays , for example, have seen genuine large scale recovery. We also now have greater appreciation for the value of seagrass in the global carbon cycle, and governments are more willing to include its conservation in ways to mitigate carbon emissions. Though commendable, these are just the first steps on a course of targeted strategic action.

As the WSA statement calls , seagrass meadows must be put at the forefront of marine conservation today. We need to increase its resilience by improving coastal water quality, prevent damage from destructive fishing practices and boating, include seagrasses in Marine Protected Areas and ensure that fisheries aren’t over exploited. Seagrasses also need to be managed effectively during coastal developments, and steps taken to ensure recovery and restoration in areas where losses have occurred.

The scientific community must be more united, not only in its work, but in engaging more actively with the general public, coastal managers and conservation agencies too. Seagrass ecosystems must fully pervade policy around the globe too, as well as the consciousness of our global coastal communities. For the sake of future generations we need to work together to ensure the survival of the world’s seagrass meadows now.

Richard K.F. Unsworth is a director of Project Seagrass and President of the World Seagrass Association.

Jessie Jarvis is affiliated with the World Seagrass Association Inc (Treasurer) and the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society (Treasurer).

Len McKenzie receives funding from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. He is affiliated with the World Seagrass Association (Secretary) and Seagrass-Watch (Director)

Mike van Keulen is affiliated with the World Seagrass Association (Vice President). He receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation.

Five applications where plastic is not fantastic

Tue, 06 Sep 2016 20:49:00 GMT

A recent media campaign has highlighted the many ways in which South Africa relies on plastics. One part of the campaign is a print advert “Plastics – part of your everyday life!” that chronicles how plastics are essential for a wide range of South Africans’ daily activities. The tag line was that plastics

All true, except perhaps for the final point. If plastics really are safe for the environment, why did the top science journal Nature run an article by a group of leading researchers calling for them to be declared hazardous materials?

Two of the key properties of plastics that make them so central to our modern lives are their light weight and durability. This also makes them global pollutants when they are not disposed of correctly. South Africa fares particularly badly. A recent paper estimated that South Africa was the world’s 11th worst offender when it comes to releasing plastic wastes into the sea.

South Africa even comes in ahead of heavyweight polluter India. This is due to a combination of two factors. A high per capita consumption of plastics – estimated at 2 kg per person per day, almost as much as the US – and a high proportion of solid waste not entering a formal disposal scheme, for example, being reused, recycled or at least disposed of safely in a long-term landfill site. An astonishing 56% of plastic waste ends up littering the environment in South Africa, compared to 11% in Brazil or 2% in the US.

Effective solutions are needed to stem the flood of waste plastic. These include creating greater awareness among consumers and providing incentives to promote reuse or recycling. One effective intervention would be to stop making some litter-prone items from plastic. Among the top offenders are: ear buds, bottle lids, plastic straws, individual sweet wrappers and expanded polystyrene food packaging. There are ready alternatives for some and clever design could do away with the rest.

Marine pollution

Anything between 5 and 12 million tonnes of waste plastics enter the sea each year . Much of this floats and, given its very long lifespan in the sea, disperses across the planet. Floating litter accumulates in the centre of each ocean basin, where it is eaten by all manner of marine life including turtles, whales, seabirds and fish.

There is particular concern about the impact of microplastics on marine foodwebs because of their ubiquitous nature and potential to carry toxic substances. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic, ranging from a few microns to a few millimetres across that form when larger plastics are broken down by UV light.

When they drift at sea, plastic particles accumulate a cocktail of potentially toxic compounds that are released when consumed by marine organisms, affecting their predators, including humans. And denser plastic items sink to the seabed, where they block gas exchange, promoting the formation of anoxic sediments, devoid of oxygen, with severe implications for animals that live on the seabed.

Most marine litter is plastic packaging – single use applications that are particularly prone to inappropriate disposal.

Our survey of beach litter around South Africa in 2015, supported by Plastics SA , an industry sponsored body, found that 94% of litter on South African beaches is made of plastic. 77% of this is packaging. And the situation is not improving. The amount of litter washing up daily in Cape Town’s Table Bay tripled from 1994 to 2011, far outstripping human population growth over this period .

Some solutions

Waste plastic has value. It can be recycled, burned to generate electricity or used to make fuel. The challenge is to establish efficient ways of harnessing that value. Appropriate incentives are needed to promote reuse and recycling.

The pricing of consumer products ignores their environmental costs – which in the case of plastic litter runs to hundreds of millions of rands annually just keeping South African beaches clean .

In Australia and the US , for example, much higher proportions of plastic bottles that carry a nominal refund are recycled, compared to those that don’t. And getting people involved in recycling initiatives has wider environmental benefits.

Product substitution is another possibility. Although plastics are in fact the best product for the job - in terms of economic and environmental costs - for most applications, packaging design could be changed. Many packaging items are virtually impossible to recycle because they are made from multiple materials.

Replacing plastics may be warranted in some particularly high-risk products. Five applications that would be better served if they were not made from plastic include:

Of course, the problem lies not only with the plastics but also with plastic users’ behaviour. Education is a priority. But education alone will not solve the problem. A multifaceted approach that uses direct incentives, legislation and education to change behaviour is needed. Charging for shopping bags greatly reduced the number of bags littering South Africa. Similar initiatives to reduce other highly litter-prone products are needed.

Peter Ryan receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology, through the National Research Foundation, the University of Cape Town, and various other bodies. The costs of the 2015 beach litter survey were met in part by a donation from Plastics SA.

Coleen Moloney receives research funding from South Africa's National Research Foundation and the University of Cape Town. The costs of the 2015 beach litter survey were met in part by a donation from Plastics SA.

Pollution guidelines leave a blind spot for assessing the impact of coal and oil

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 20:06:00 GMT

Coal’s impact on the Great Barrier Reef by causing climate change is one of the reasons why environmentalists oppose the development of coal fields and exports in Queensland. But fossil fuels could have a more direct impact on the reef and the waters around it, through chemicals produced during their production and distribution.

When coal dust is released in the marine environment it can damage marine ecosystems . Coal contains a number of different chemicals, but it is polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are known carcinogens, that are of most concern.

Some components of coal PAHs cause biochemical changes in fish and can lead to cancer . The coal dust has a very slow degradation rate and will build up in the ecosystem from the continuous input .

Coal dust also absorbs chemicals in the coastal zone and transports things like pesticides and herbicides offshore. Oil spills are another source of PAHs in the marine environment.

It is currently impossible for Australia to assess the impact of these chemicals in marine sediments, because our sediment guidelines are out of date. They need to be updated to match the standards used elsewhere, such as in the United States.

Coal dust and Great Barrier Reef marine life

I have previously looked at how far these chemicals can travel from coal ports. I found they can be detected in suspended sediments all the way to the shelf break 200km offshore . (I also published a corrigendum to this paper to correct data errors and to explain how sediment guidelines need to be updated.)

I used the Australian and the US Environment Protection Authority (EPA) sediment quality guidelines to assess the concentration of PAHs in the sediments and suspended sediments on the Great Barrier Reef. The guidelines are meant to indicate “trigger values” for the concentration of possible toxins. If trigger values are reached then sources should be curtailed.

My study showed the concentrations were below toxic levels as then defined by the US guidelines. But it is impossible to know based on the Australian guidelines because these guidelines don’t target the PAHs contained in coal or oil. To explain why, we have to go into a bit of chemistry.

The composition of the PAHs can indicate the source from coal, oil or combustion processes.

The US guidelines use 34 key PAH groups (a total of about 290 individual compounds) and are currently the best available for assessing oil pollution incidents.

The Australian guidelines do not assess the PAHs that are the major contributor to PAHs in coal and oil. The Australian guidelines specify only 20 “parent” PAHs. These guidelines are more relevant to combustion products.

When is it toxic?

The Australian guidelines consider PAHs reach toxic levels at 10-50 milligrams per kilogram of sediment . But research suggests this is way too high.

Modern assessments of oil spills now rely on the PAH content of oils in addition to the total oil content .

PAHs make up about 1% of total oil content . If you applied these guidelines to an oil spill, the toxic level of 10mg PAH per kg of sediment would equal 1,000mg of oil per kg. This oil content would kill everything in marine sediments.

For example, I and a colleague published a detailed study of fiddler crabs after the West Falmouth oil spill . We determined that total oil concentrations of 100-200mg oil per kg of sediment were toxic to juvenile crabs. Concentrations of 1,000mg per kg were toxic to adults and/or caused a number of impacts before the crabs died.

As PAHs make up around 1% of most oils, this means that the trigger values should be 1mg PAH per kg (with a maximum of 5mg per kg). And this assessment must include the PAHs that are commonly found in oil and coal.

Commercial Australian labs don’t assess all these PAHs yet, but neither did the American labs until it became necessary for assessing major oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We should not wait for the next disaster to upgrade our capability.

Cleaning up coal ports

We also need the ports to reduce their inputs. Townsville port has reduced the dust emission from its powdered zinc and lead loadings.

The train cars are covered and one at a time enter a shed which is under negative pressure. The powder is dumped in a hopper, transported to the conveyors and loaded onto the ships with no or little dust escaping the process.

The cars are then rinsed before leaving the shed. Water is retained and filtered so no dust leaves the area.

Why can’t coal be handled the same way? Improvement in loading metal powders was brought on by public objections to the previous operations.

This would eliminate coal piles in the coastal zone which blow dust all over nearby cities such as Gladstone and leach into coastal creeks. We also need the Australian sediment quality guidelines for PAHs brought up to 21st-century standard.

Do we have to wait until we have another incident like the Montara platform explosion in the Timor Sea in 2010 before we update our guidelines and response times?

Kathryn Burns received funding from the Australian Institute of Marine Science for chemistry studies in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon 2008-2010, and retired in 2011.

FactCheck: do Australians with an average seafood diet ingest 11,000 pieces of plastic a year?

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:51:00 GMT

Australians are growing increasingly aware of the real danger posed by the vast amount of plastic dumped in our seas every year. It’s an important issue, so it’s crucial we get the facts right.

Ahead of a Senate committee hearing on the threat of marine plastic pollution in Australia , Dave West from the environmental group Boomerang Alliance told a Fairfax video journalist that an average seafood diet in Australia would result in ingesting about 11,000 pieces of plastic a year .

Is that accurate?

Checking the source

When asked for a source to support his assertion, West referred The Conversation to a BBC article published in October 2015 that said:

The Conversation asked Galloway, a professor of ecotoxicology, to clarify and provide sources. She said by email:

Professor Galloway also said she had co-written a commentary article for the journal PNAS which

You can read Professor Galloway’s full reply here .

The 2014 Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen paper to which Galloway refers was published in the journal Environmental Pollution .

However, that paper does not show that anyone consuming an average amount of seafood would ingest about 11,000 plastic particles a year. The figure of 11,000 is an upper-end estimate for Europeans who eat quite a lot of molluscs. The paper estimates that:

In that paper, the researchers note that shellfish consumption differs greatly among countries.

The researchers also noted that

What does this mean for the average Australian seafood consumer?

The 11,000 figure applies to an estimate for “European top consumers” of molluscs, not an average Australian seafood diet.

We don’t yet have all the data needed to make a good estimate of how much plastic an average Australian seafood consumer ingests per year.

The Boomerang Alliance’s Dave West acknowledged the limitations of applying the 11,000 figure to Australia, telling The Conversation by email that:

Small plastic particles can be ingested by bivalves (such as mussels, cockles, oysters, pipi and scallops) and remain there for some time. And these bivalves can be eaten by larger predators, pushing the plastic up the food chain.

It’s worth noting the important difference between eating fish and shellfish. Unless you’re eating sardines and anchovies, humans don’t typically consume the digestive tract of a fish (where plastics would be found). But if you’re eating molluscs and shellfish, particularly from urban centres, you may be adding plastic to your diet.

Australians are not the world’s top shellfish consumers , trailing behind Belgium, most East Asian countries, the US and many European nations.

Verdict

There is insufficient published research to support the statement that a person with an average seafood diet in Australia today is probably ingesting about 11,000 pieces of plastic every year.

The 11,000 figure applies to an estimate for “European top consumers” of molluscs, not an average Australian seafood diet. This is an important issue that needs more attention. – Britta Denise Hardesty

Review

This article is factually correct and represents a sound analysis.

In fact, our own studies found levels of microplastics in mussels from the Dutch coast that are one order of magnitude higher than those reported in the 2014 Belgian study by Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen: 13.2 particles per gram of mussel.

However, it should be noted that microplastics are everywhere and that humans are broadly exposed to them through the food. For example, microplastics have been recently detected in a range of terrestrial products such as milk, beer, honey and sea salt. Therefore, an analysis and assessment of the potential health risk of microplastics for humans should comprise dietary exposure from a range of foods across the total diet, in order to assess the contributing risk of contaminated marine food items.

Although it is evident that humans are exposed to microplastics through their diet and the presence of microplastics in seafood could pose a threat to food safety, our understanding of the fate and toxicity of microplastics in humans constitutes a major knowledge gap that deserves special attention. – Dick Vethaak

Dick Vethaak is a member of the scientific UNEP/GESAMP Work Group 40 Global assessment of microplastics that is advising governments, the UN, the FAO and other organisations on issues relating to microplastic pollution.

Britta Denise Hardesty does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

We created a new material from orange peel that can clean up mercury pollution

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 05:42:00 GMT

Mercury pollution is one of the most insidious problems in our environment. Today my colleagues and I at Flinders University have unveiled a new material than can scrub mercury from the environment, as a result of research to be published this week. The material – sulphur-limonene polysulphide – binds to mercury and changes colour, helping us see how effective it is.

Mercury is a neurotoxin . Developing fetuses are most vulnerable and mercury poisoning can cause developmental delays in unborn babies.

The primary pathway for mercury in people is through eating fish. Mercury accumulates in animals’ tissues, so fish at the top of the food chain can contain high and potentially toxic levels. It can cause both chronic and acute effects in marine life. Pregnant women are recommended to avoid eating large amounts of certain types of fish.

Since the Industrial Revolution humans have increased the concentration of mercury in the ocean by 10%, and the rate is increasing.

The major sources of mercury in water in Australia are from water supply, manufacturing, mining, oil and gas extraction, and electricity generation.

Our new material not only removes mercury from water and soil, but is created from industrial waste products. So our material effectively solves two problems: cleaning up pollution, and doing it sustainably.

When life gives you limonene

Sulphur-limonene polysulphide is a polymer or large molecule made, as the name suggests, from sulphur and limonene. Sulphur is the element known for smelling like rotten eggs when combined with hydrogen to produce hydrogen sulphide. Limonene is found in the oil of orange peel and other citrus fruits.

Both are waste products. The petroleum industry produces between 60 million and 70 million tonnes of sulphur each year. There are literally mountains of sulphur lying around the globe, unused.

The citrus industry produces more than 70 thousand tonnes of limonene each year. Finding a use for these materials is an important contribution to the preparation of sustainable materials.

The vast majority of polymers (plastics, rubber, paints, coatings etc) are derived from finite supplies of petroleum. Identifying new sources is therefore critical for the sustainable production of polymers.

In waste-valorisation, new uses are found for byproducts that are otherwise stockpiled as waste. Contributing to this goal, the new polymer in this research is made entirely from industrial byproducts sulphur and limonene – no other parts are required.

Cleaning up mercury

At the outset of the project, we were primarily interested in making a new polymer from widely available and sustainable materials. There have been some recent reports on using sulphur and limonene as starting materials for very different types of polymers. We simply wanted to see if we could use both sulphur and limonene in the same polymer.

The chemical merger of these two industrial byproducts proved remarkably easy. The real surprise came when we studied its behaviour in metal binding. Because the polymer has a high sulphur content, we anticipated it should have a high affinity for metals that bond to sulphur. This was indeed the case.

Moreover, we found it could remove more than 50% of the mercury from water after only a single treatment. Subsequent treatments can be used to approach mercury levels suitable for drinking.

While there are other materials that are very efficient at removing mercury from water, our material is unique in that it is far less expensive. Also, when the polysulphide is exposed to mercury, it changes colour. This colour-changing or chromogenic response was a very welcome surprise. We can use this property as a sensor for mercury.

Our preliminary studies indicate that the sulphur-limonene polysulphide is not toxic. This is a critical finding if the polymer is to be used directly in natural ecosystems such as rivers, lakes and oceans.

We are currently exploring commercialisation of the technology. These efforts are aimed at partnering with existing industries and environmental agencies to produce and use the material in large-scale remediation efforts. We are also weighing options for seeking investment for a startup company.

Using the material in toxic waste clean-up may be a year or more away, but we are pursuing these efforts actively with a partnership between Flinders Partners (the commercialisation arm of Flinders University) and The University of Tulsa (collaborators in this research).

We aim to use this material to remove mercury from groundwater and soil. We are also exploring its use as a component in water filters to ensure safe drinking water. More generally, we hope to inspire other scientists and engineers to develop novel and useful materials that address urgent challenges in sustainability.

Justin Chalker declares competing financial interests. He is an inventor on a patent application for this technology (PCT/US15/55205). Justin Chalker also receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE150101863).

Tiny beads, big problem, easy fix: why scientific evidence supports a ban on microbeads

Thu, 04 Jun 2015 05:53:00 GMT

Every day, millions of people around the world wash their skin and brush their teeth with products containing tiny pieces of plastic.

Plastic microbeads are used as exfoliating agents in hundreds of personal care products globally, including face wash, body wash and toothpaste. Products containing microbeads, like all washes and toothpastes, are designed to be rinsed down the drain, and thus trillions of these tiny plastic beads travel to wastewater treatment plants daily.

Due to their small size – some not much bigger than the period at the end of a sentence – many are not filtered by typical treatment processes. As a consequence, billions of microbeads are littered into aquatic habitats via final effluent or sewage sludge. Once in aquatic and marine environments, microbeads can be consumed by shellfish and fish and have already likely made their way back to us through seafood.

Microbeads represent one of the most difficult-to-monitor and difficult-to-clean, yet easy-to-solve, components of the global microplastic debris problem in our marine environments. By banning plastic microbeads from personal care products, we would remove this source of plastic debris from our waterways.

The California Assembly late last month voted to prohibit the sale of microbeads starting in 2020; a similar measure failed in the state Senate last year. Other states and countries have advanced similar – although not as strict – bills to ban microbeads.

Bigger microplastic problem

Microbeads add to the growing accumulation of microplastic debris .

Like other forms of microplastics, they can persist in nature for decades to hundreds of years, becoming increasingly hazardous as they accumulate a cocktail of chemical pollutants from surrounding water. Many of these are listed as priority pollutants under the US EPA Clean Water Act.

Like microplastics, microbeads are bio-available to hundreds of species of wildlife , which means they can be mistaken for a meal or inhaled through the gills. And research has demonstrated that plastic debris of the same size, shape and plastic type as microbeads can transfer hazardous chemicals to fish and cause toxic effects.

When we (Chelsea Rochman and colleagues) exposed laboratory fish to concentrations of plastic marine debris they might experience in nature, we found increased levels of flame retardants in their tissues. Moreover, these fish showed clear signs of stress in their livers, changes in gene expression related to endocrine disruption and some had lesions or abnormalities in their livers or gonads .

Microplastics have been reported in hundreds of species worldwide, including marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, fish and invertebrates. Perhaps most relevant to humans, microplastics have been shown to bio-accumulate in species regularly consumed by people including mussels, oysters, salmon, anchovy and tuna.

Trillions of beads

Individual tubes of exfoliating facewash can contain hundreds of thousands of individual microbeads. These microbeads are rinsed down drains and eventually make their way to wastewater treatment plants. Even the most sophisticated wastewater treatment plants have proved unable to remove all of these particles from their water, since many are 0.5 millimeters or smaller in size, smaller than a grain of sand.

Reports have shown that the process of settling solids in sewage can remove up to 99% of microbeads from the final effluent that is pumped into natural waterways. This number sounds good, but even with just 1% of microbeads escaping directly into waterways, we estimate that over 471 million microbeads are released into the San Francisco Bay every single day.

Across the United States, this number is likely to be more than three billion microbeads per day. Finally, the remaining trillions of microbeads that are removed through the settling process may slowly make their way into waterways and natural ecosystems via runoff when sewage sludge is applied to fields or sent to landfills.

Simple solution to global problem

It is not going to be simple to solve the global problem of tiny microplastics entering our environment on a massive scale. But if we stop using microbeads in personal care products, we cut off one large source of microplastic to aquatic habitats. Microbeads are therefore the low-hanging fruit and an essential step in addressing the global microplastic debris problem.

We, along with our peers from the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship , recently authored a policy brief to outline the scientific evidence that supports these legislative bans.

Bans on the use of microbeads in personal care products have been proposed in the US, Canada and the EU. For example, legislation has been introduced in over 20 US states, including in California, whose economy is the eighth largest in the world. Such bills have already passed in several states, beginning with Illinois, and now a federal bill is being considered.

Moreover, 66 nongovernmental organizations from 32 countries support the “ beat the microbead ” campaign, and several multinational companies, including Unilever, Johnson & Johnson and Procter and Gamble, pledged to stop the use or sale of microbeads in their products.

While we applaud proposed legislation and are thrilled to see how the momentum has grown to remove plastic beads from personal care products, we also want to raise concern about some language that has been amended in bills by industry. For example, the recently passed bill to ban microbeads in Illinois defined microbeads as any “non-biodegradeable” compound that does not change in shape “during life cycle or after disposal.”

This language creates loopholes for products that degrade slightly after disposal, and gives no timeline or definition for what is deemed fully biodegradeable. Moreover, these bans often only ban microbeads in rinse-off products, excluding a line of products that are not designed to be washed directly down the drain during use, such as nail polish or makeup.

As such, we point out that proposed bans are one positive step to a larger issue. We look forward to seeing how environmental managers, environmental groups and industry can work together to continue to cut off the source of microbeads to the environment.

In the meantime, consumers should avoid products that use plastic microbeads and instead rely on products using other types of natural exfoliants, such as sugars, salt and pumice. You can also contact your local representative to support a ban on microbeads.

Chelsea Rochman receives funding from the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship and the NOAA Marine Debris Program.

Sara Kross receives funding from the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship.