How we made the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Published Jan. 14, 2015 in Mother Nature Network by Gerri Miller

The documentary 'Plastic Paradise' explains how this consumer-driven catastrophe is destroying the oceans and how we can fix it.

Initially mass-produced in the 1940s as the disposable answer to convenience-minded consumers, plastic is the ecological disaster few saw coming.

By 2050, plastic production will quadruple to 2 trillion pounds per year. The U.S. alone produces 15 billion pounds of plastics a year, and 85 million plastic bottles are used every minute. Most of this plastic is not recyclable, and much of it ends up in the ocean, where currents bring it to an area twice the size of Texas known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Midway Atoll, four hours by plane from Honolulu, is ground zero for this aquatic dumping ground, its beaches littered with debris. Discarded fishing nets strangle wildlife and destroy coral reefs, and tiny microplastic bits swallowed by birds and fish move up the food chain, all the way to our tables.

Journalist and filmmaker Angela Sun investigated several aspects of this complex environmental issue, its ramifications, who is responsible, and what can be done to fix the problem in her documentary "Plastic Paradise," a labor of love that was seven years in the making.

Why did you want to make the film?

Angela Sun: Simply because I love the oceans, and I love storytelling. I have always been fascinated with everything under the sea, from a young age. Growing up with immigrant Chinese parents, things like scuba diving, surfing and swimming with sharks were considered crazy talk. So, naturally, as the middle child I always wanted to go the less traveled route. As a journalist, I have always been curious and inquisitive about the world and love to explore and uncover untold stories. The oceans needed a platform, and as a journalist, the goal is to give a voice to the voiceless. 

How did you become aware of the plastics problem?

I was working for Current TV at the time when a colleague and good friend of mine were discussing story ideas and this was one of them. We were pitching it as a story for a news magazine on the network. When it got cut due to budget and access issues, I couldn't let the story go. From the inception of the idea to the finished locked picture, it took about seven years. 

What was your approach going into it?

My mission was to make this issue of disposable plastics interesting to the general public and get the mainstream to understand the gravity our incessant consumerism and dumping of waste into the oceans. I have always held true to my mission of reaching viewers in a landlocked area, for example, the Midwest, to care about something so far away and seemingly out of sight, out of mind.

What were your biggest challenges?

Financing is almost every independent film's biggest challenge. I ended up self-financing the project, which is why it took so long to finish. It was also hard to gain access to Midway as I had applied for permits during the time it became a national marine sanctuary. I think the biggest challenge is having the perseverance to see this project through to fruition. I would take breaks here and there, and people who were helping out on the film would come and go, but it took a lot of focus and determination to get this done. A lot of people see the glitz and glamour of film festivals, awards and accolades, but behind all of that, many times I have felt the lonely road. 

What were the most shocking things that you learned?

The most shocking thing I learned was simply seeing those birds with bellies full of plastic in real life. The smell too: On Midway Atoll there is an area where they would pile up all the dead birds and the rancid smell of decomposed remains almost made me throw up. Additionally the thought that almost every single piece of plastic is still somewhere on our planet is crazy! If it never goes away, and we don't see it, it's got to be somewhere, and those albatross on Midway are canaries in the coal mine. I was also shocked to learn that plastic was made for war just a few decades ago, and we are just at the tip of the iceberg with shocking statistics and findings of really how much plastic is in our oceans. 

What are the most important messages you wanted to convey?

My hope is to educate and shed light on this under-reported issue of our plastic trash and its effects, not just on wildlife but how harmful single-use plastics truly are to our waterways and how they are rapidly making their way up the food chain and into our bodies.

We, the general public, do have influence and can be the change we wish to see. If every single person just even did something as simple as saying 'no' to single disposable drinks, that would have a massive impact and save so much unnecessary waste in our environment. Where there is a will, there is a way. The journey of making this film and sharing it is testament to that.

I hear it took three years to get access to Midway. Why was it so difficult to get cooperation?

There was a lot of red tape gaining access initially as it was switching to a national marine monument status, so the governmental agencies would play ping-pong sending us back and forth. It was difficult to get the elusive plastic industry to agree to speak. You will have to watch the film to find out what happens!

A pile of garbage on the Midway Atoll. The trash, from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, washes up on Midway's shore.

Where has the film been shown and where can it be seen now?

We have been to over 30 film festivals, garnered eight awards, and is now airing on Pivot TV network as well as iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, GooglePlay, Vudu, Target Ticket. The DVD is available at our website. It will be release on SBS TV Network in Australia in February. We are working with BullFrog Films for educational distribution. 

What has the reaction been to date?

Great reactions, and I usually get frustrated texts and messages from friends who decide to take our two-week pledge to say no to single-use plastics after watching the film. It's hard! But many people have joined us and told me they have changed their lifestyle because of the film. For more information on joining others worldwide, we have a pledge on our website.

Do you think it will make a difference? Can this problem be fixed? What will it take?

I can only hope. This problem is not going away anytime soon. It is just going to continue to grow. With every unfortunate search for missing planes, plastic trash in our oceans comes back into the news cycle. As China and other nations become more industrialized, following western ideologies of consumption, a precarious future is on the horizon. 

I think simple consumer changes can help pave the way and encourage industry to become more innovative. However, for real sweeping change, there needs to be legislation to keep the plastic industries in check. An example: I was fortunate to be presented an award from a California assemblymember who helped usher the historic SB-270 bill [prohibiting plastic grocery bags] through. He mentioned that he showed the film to others in the state legislature before the vote, and it helped explain the situation and what a burden it has been on taxpayers and the state of California. That was a tangible piece of evidence that this film can make a difference, little by little. Every day we can all be doing something quite simple. Practice the 4th R — REFUSE — then reduce, reuse, recycle. Say no to that straw, or bag, or coffee cup lid that will stay on for less than five minutes. Be aware and a conscious consumer. It starts with lowering our own consumption.

What do you hope audiences take away — and do?

I hope they take away a respect for the oceans and are moved to taking action along with understanding the urgency for change before we ruin ourselves just quietly. Just say no and refuse single-use plastics.

Read more: http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/how-we-made-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch#ixzz3Pa0zaHc5

A Love Story on Midway Island

Posted in Outside Blog Thursday, June 14, 2012 By Adventure Lab

 Midway Atoll is a 2.4-square-mile atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with three islands covering 1,549 acres. It's small, remote, and an essential landing strip for giant seabirds. More than three million of them plop down on the islands every year, which means it's crowded, especially when the birds decide to lay their eggs. Virtually every square foot has a nest.

Three species of albatross, of which the most prominent is the Laysan albatross—with 450,000 nesting pairs, take up space on the island every winter. Laysans are big birds, with roughly six-foot wingspans. They stay, more or less, for nine months. They are monogamous, for the most part, and can live for up to 40 years. After the pairs land in October or November, they spend some time dancing and clicking and deciding on a nest before laying an egg. The male and female take turns incubating the egg for about two months, fly off on a series of epic journeys to find food for their young over the course of four or five months, and then leave the youngsters alone so they can fledge in June or July.

Photographer and filmmaker Chris Jordan stepped into this scene—carefully, of course—and stayed for a couple weeks. It affected him in a profound way. That's because, as you've probably heard and seen, a lot of the chicks die with large amounts of plastic in their stomachs. Their parents inadvertently scoop up the debris while feeding on squid and other fish at the top of the Pacific Ocean, and regurgitate the plastic into the youngsters' mouths. Eventually, Jordan decided to make a movie called Midway, and he wants to go back. He's hoping to raise $100,000 on Kickstarter to finish his project. We checked in with him to find out a little bit more about his motivation.

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Do you have a favorite photograph of an albatross chick?The two weeks we spent photographing the hatching chicks on Midway was one of the most beautiful experiences of my whole life. The mother albatrosses allowed us so close to their hatching babies that in one case, my lens was right in the nest and the mother’s wing was resting on my head.

 

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Albatrosses are as big as eagles, with powerful beaks that could rip your face off if they decided to. But they trusted us to come literally within a few inches of their hatching babies with our cameras, displaying an elegance and grace that was incredible to behold. I will never forget the intimacy of that experience.

Laysan albatross and chick. Photo: Chris Jordan

Was there a specific moment when you decided to make the film?
The moment I knew I had to push deeper into the story of Midway was when I was visiting a girls’ school in Brisbane, Australia, showing my photographs of the plastic-filled birds. At the end of my talk, one of the teachers broke down weeping in front of her whole school. I stood there frozen, with my heart breaking, as tears poured down her face and her voice shook with horror and grief, and she asked me “How do we get to hope from here?” Her question resonated for me like a temple bell on so many levels, and I didn’t have an answer. I think maybe that’s a question we are all holding right now, as the news about the health of our world gets worse every day, and our leaders become more and more lost and paralyzed. I knew I had to go back to Midway and stand in the fire of that question until I had something to offer that teacher. The result has been a three-year project that has changed my life at the very core. 

What have scientists told you about what the plastic does to the Albatross chicks?
That is complex because albatross chicks have a high natural mortality rate, and it is difficult to determine in a particular case whether a chick died from plastic or from other causes. For example, if two parent albatrosses leave their nest for five days in search of food, their chick may be subjected to dehydrating heat, or rain storms that cause hypothermia. If the baby dies during that time, who can say what was the exact cause of death, and whether the 22 plastic bottle caps in its stomach had a contributing effect? All that can be said with certainty is that the plastic is increasing the mortality of the albatross chicks by an unknown factor.

But personally, I am not so much interested in saving the albatross as I am in receiving the urgent alarm signal they are sending us about the state of our world. The birds on Midway are like messengers, the canary in the coal mine. When the canary dies, the miners don’t run over and try to save the canary— they receive the message that bird just gave its life delivering, and then act quickly to save themselves. That approach resonates with me because it doesn’t view the birds as helpless victims that we passively observe; it places a duty on us to receive their message, and be changed by it (or not). 

What do you hope the end result of the movie will be?
I believe the story of Midway Island offers a profound metaphor for our time, like an epic piece of literature that carries symbolism and archetype on multiple levels. A lot of smart people are saying that what humanity needs right now is a shift in our story, and my own theory is that we need a new love story—a real one that we can believe in, and that includes us all. First-world culture has lost its connection with a deeply felt reverence for the miracle of our life, and for our sacred place in the great mystery. Being on Pihemanu (the Hawaiian name for Midway) is like standing on a razor’s edge between darkness and light, paradise and hell, the past and the future; it is a focused microcosm of our world, where horror meets innocence, grief meets joy, birth meets death, all wrapped in an envelope of violent history and stunning natural beauty that overwhelms the senses and transforms the mind. I don’t hold any specific hopes for the end result of my project; my fiduciary duty runs to the story itself, and I consider it my job to honor that story with the highest quality piece of visual poetry that can be achieved with the resources I have available to me. And once I tell that story, my role is done, and that is where the viewer’s responsibility begins.

For more on the Midway Film Project by Chris Jordan, check out Kickstarter.

H/T: @Revkin
 —Joe Spring
@joespring
facebook.com/joespring.1

Amazing Documentary by Chris Jordan

Midway: A Message from the Gyre trailer by Chris Jordan

Check out Chris Jordan's website - here's the link to his "Running the Numbers" gallery, where he uses computer tricks to create huge large scale works depicting things like: number of pieces of junk mail mailed every 3 seconds in the US, or number of plastic bottles consumed each minute.

Filmmaker sounds alarm over plastic

published 2012-02-06 in kalahari.com

Hong Kong - On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead in the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other plastic scraps their parents mistook for food.

That sad and surreal sight is one of the many symptoms of a plague afflicting the world's oceans, food chains and human communities: The onslaught of discarded plastic, said Hong Kong-based film director Craig Leeson.

"Every piece of plastic ever made since the 1950s exists in some shape or form on the planet," Leeson said. "We throw plastic into a bin, it's taken away from us and we never see it again - but it still comes back at us."

Over the past year, the Australian director has been following the menace of plastic from Sardinia to Canada to the Indian Ocean for a film that aims to combine the art of nature documentary with a campaigning quest.

Provisionally called Away, the movie - backed by David Attenborough and the UK-based Plastic Oceans Foundation - brings together new research on the spread of plastic with missions by "explorers" such as Britain's Ben Fogle to show the diverse effects of plastic trash.

Research

Its message is that while you may throw out your plastic goods, they are never really thrown "away".

Crews under Leeson's direction have so far swum with blue whales, taken a deep-sea submarine to the depths of the Mediterranean and found swirling clumps of plastic trash in the Indian Ocean.

They have used a harpoon-like instrument to take biopsies from whales and dissected a dead Corsican turtle in a laboratory - "dead turtles are the smelliest things you can imagine", he said. Sea lions are yet to come.

The foundation cites research showing that at least 250 species are known to have ingested or become entangled in plastic in the seas.

They put forward plastic ingestion as one of the main causes of "skinny whale syndrome", in which whales are discovered mysteriously starved.

The 250 million tons of plastic we discard each year make their way for thousands of miles around the oceans, and Leeson's team - many of whom have backgrounds in the BBC's Natural History Unit - are determined to document this in spectacular fashion.

But beyond this, their goal is to show that the environmental damage is systemic, going far beyond a series of water-borne trash heaps.

Health problems

In fact, Leeson said, the mass of plastic the size of Texas often said to exist in the North Pacific is a myth. Instead, particles of plastic lurk there invisibly, in seemingly clear water.

"If you trawl for it with these special nets that they've developed, you come back with this glutinous mass - it's microplastics that are in the water along with the plankton," he said.

"The problem is that it's being mistaken for food and being eaten by plankton eaters, who are then eaten by bigger fish, and so it goes on, and it ends up on our dinner tables."

Studies have linked this with health problems in humans including cancer, diabetes and immune disruption.

And it is not just the plastic itself that enters the food chain, but other man-made substances from sources such as industrial waste that attach themselves to plastics in the water.

The team will be shooting until mid-2012 and will also visit communities living beside rivers that are heavily polluted with plastic to see its more direct effects on human life.

This is not the first high-profile campaign on the subject: Greenpeace, currently researching plastic in the Arctic Ocean, has warned that urgent action is needed to address the sources of plastic waste, and campaign group WWF calls the problem "staggering".

Message

But Leeson hopes the images in his film will jolt viewers out of their complacency about rubbish that apparently disappears into the waste collection system.

"When you see a toy soldier or a lighter that's manufactured in China that ends up in the stomach of an albatross at Midway Point in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that just shows you how much effect you're having on the environment," he said.

Leeson will not divulge all the findings from new research carried out for the film, but it is clear the message will be an alarming one.

Does he think his team can compete in the busy market for alarming messages, currently dominated by the threat of climate change?

"Clearly climate change is one of the most pressing issues, if not the most pressing issue that we face, because it affects everything we do," Leeson said.

But plastic and carbon emissions are directly linked: Plastic is estimated to account for around eight percent of the world's fossil fuel use, half of it in energy consumed during its manufacturing.

The film will question the "disposable lifestyle" behind discarded plastic, but not advocate banning the substance altogether.

It will also look at solutions to the waste mountain, including plastic recycling and biogenesis, in which plastic is reduced back to its core elements while producing energy.

An initial aim is to persuade consumers and manufacturers to reconsider their use of disposable plastics such as mineral water bottles.

Leeson said responsibility for waste cuts across different environmental issues, including climate.

"Plastic is part of that, but also if we are raising awareness about issues such as plastic then we’re raising awareness about what does actually affect the planet we live on, and I think that’s a good thing," he said.

- AFP