Finding A Cure for the Plastic Pollution Epidemic

Bioneers Pulse – updates from the Bioneers Community

Bioneer,  Worldwide reliance on disposable, single-use plastic products has long been taking a toll on the Earth and fragile ecosystems. These toxic materials are created using fossil fuels and can be found polluting every corner of the world, from the bottoms of oceans to the tops of mountains. Systems designed to abate this issue are largely falling short, and many "solutions" proposed by big industry leaders have proved to be nothing short of greenwashing. This week, we take a look at the plastic pollution epidemic and some of the real solutions that #bioneers are proposing to clean up our world. Creating A Future Less Disposable Than Our Plastics At the 2018 Bioneers Conference Anna Cummins, the co-founder and Global Strategy Director of 5 Gyres, hosted a conversation with Shilpi Chhotray of Break Free from Plastic and Conrad MacKerron of As You Sow on our worldwide plastic problem and some ways in which we could make progress toward solutions. An excerpt from this conversation is below. SHILPI: In looking at bioplastics, we asked a lot of sectors what they think about it, and there is a concern about using natural resources that can also be harmed or depleted if we go that route, especially if you’re talking about mass scale.  In my other life, I work a lot in seaweed and regenerative seaweed systems, and there is a big push for marine algae to be used as bioplastics. I am not about that if it’s going to be ravaging the ocean ecosystem. Not all aquaculture systems work in this arena, so we need to be looking a little bit more holistically when we talk about alternatives. ANNA: There’s a big push to “leash the lid” right now. But that water bottle, once the lid is off, is made from a kind of plastic that’s going to sink. If you talk to Sylvia Earle or James Cameron or other people who’ve gone down to the ocean floor, they will tell you that, especially in the Mediterranean, the floor is littered with those bottles.  CONRAD: Because of all the concerns about straws in the last six months, wheat straws have become one of the alternatives being tested and publicized, but a lot of other materials are as well. Wheat seems like it’s pretty benign, so that’s great. A lot of it has to do with supply, though. When you think about it, if Starbucks wanted that alternative material, they’d need several billion of those straws suddenly. Then it goes back to the land issues. So it’s complicated. ANNA: What if all of us – plastics people, climate change people, food sovereignty people – dedicated 1% of our time and resources to campaign finance reform? How else are we going to wrest ourselves from corporate control in order to be able to get rid of subsidies, make products their real cost, and make companies pay for the externalities. I don’t see that happening unless we shift the way corporations control our policymakers. CONRAD: These companies pay much more attention to their customers than to groups like us. Let’s be honest. Go into Starbucks and say, “I’m tired of seeing all this crap,” or “Why don’t you offer me a mug?” That needs to happen. We need to organize as consumers. Read more here. Reduce, Reuse, Rethink Plastic: Transforming Markets to Cut Pollution After the panel above, Teo Grossman, Senior Director of Programs at Bioneers, further discussed the plastic pollution issue with Anna Cummins of 5 Gyres. Read on for an excerpt of their conversation. TEO: Tell us about some of the specific projects, campaigns, collaborations that are progressing forward, giving you reason to think that we’re going to be able to make a dent here. ANNA: We’re seeing some really encouraging results from some of our partners in Southeast Asia working on community participation in zero waste. We have a partnership with some groups like the Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives. They’re scaling up zero waste techniques in cities, and getting huge reductions in the amount of plastic that is either going to landfill or escaping out into the environment. I think that’s really good news.  We’re working on a project in Los Angeles called Trash Blitz. The idea is looking at cities as centers for waste. We’re really trying to get a handle on understanding where and what the hotspots of plastic pollution are in a city like Los Angeles. We’re not just looking at shorelines and the sea surface, but inland and airborne and rivers. The goal is to get a sense of the location and source of the priority problems in a city — and then translate that data into a policy response. We’ve been doing something like that in San Francisco through a two-year project called the San Francisco Microplastics Project, looking at sediment, sea surface, biota, fish stomachs, etc., to find out what all the primary problems with microplastics are in the San Francisco Bay. Again, the intention is to determine how can we use that data to inform solutions at the city level. We’re hoping that we can create models for protocols that we can spread to other cities, since we’re not seeing a whole lot of federal action these days. We need to look at cities as the center for solutions.  Read more here. Video to Watch: The Story of Plastic This documentary uncovers the true scope of the current global plastic pollution crisis. It details the many corners of our world clogged with waste and choked with poisonous runoff from plastic production. Striking footage, original animations, and interviews with experts and activists provide powerful insight into the global movement rising up in response. Coming soon. Take Action: Break Free From Plastic This environmental nonprofit tackles plastic pollution across the whole plastics value chain, focusing on prevention rather than cure, and providing effective solutions. Get involved in an event near your area. Learn More More on Harmful Waste from Bioneers Plastic pollution is the challenge of our time, and while recycling has always been a popular method to reduce our "plastic footprint," many problems with this system have come to light. Two new Bioneers articles explain the issue. Author David Allaway answers questions about his controversial report that challenges many long-held assumptions about recycling and environmental impacts. Read more here. For more than three decades, most of your recycling bin contents didn't go to your local recycling center. Instead, it was stuffed onto giant container ships and sold to China. Read more here. Sponsor Spotlight: Conservation Corps North Bay Conservation Corps North Bay is the oldest local-based youth conservation corps in the country, helping 12,000 young people break the cycle of poverty through education and job skills, while serving the environment and community. Bioneers is thankful for Conservation Corps's partnership for this year's Conference. Learn more about their work here. The Latest from Bioneers.org: A student climate rally in Watsonville, CA focused on how climate change will affect its unique demographics as an immigrant farmworker community with an 81% Hispanic population. Many of the protest's youth organizers are first generation US citizens, whose parents migrated and worked low-paying, hard-labor farm jobs to make a better life for their kids. Read more here. Bioneers Senior Producer Stephanie Welch spoke with director Louie Schwartzberg about his new documentary film, Fantastic Fungi: The Magic Beneath Us. The film features mycologist and author Paul Stamets, and an all-star team of professional and amateur mycologists, artists, foodies, ecologists, doctors, and explorers joined forces with time-lapse master Louie Schwartzberg to create this mind-bending film about mushrooms and their mysterious interwoven rootlike filaments called mycelium. Read more here. Great Lakes Bioneers Detroit (GLBD) Conference This regional Bioneers chapter is holding its 15th annual Conference. GLBD welcomes you to a weekend celebrating and affirming the transformative work of so many in Detroit and SE Michigan. Learn more about how to attend or support this exchange of values, visions and actions to change our future. Read more here. Flair: Save Money. Save the Planet. Flair is the most energy-efficient and quiet portable fan ever developed, with a nature-inspired design that could save a billion tons of CO2 emissions and tons of money. The Kickstarter to fund this project has raised nearly $17,000. Support the Kickstarter Do you know people who might enjoy reading this? Please share it with them! Share Tweet Share +1 Forward

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