More Plastic Than Fish in the Ocean by 2050

Published by Cole Mellino, January 20, 2016 in EcoWatch.com

There will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, warned the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in a report published Tuesday. The report, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics, was produced by the foundation and the World Economic Forum with analytical support from McKinsey & Company.

There will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, according to a new report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Photo credit: Plastic Pollution

Every year “at least 8 million tons of plastics leak into the ocean—which is equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute,” the report finds. “If no action is taken, this is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050.

“In a business-as-usual scenario, the ocean is expected to contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight).”

Plastic production has increased 20-fold since 1964, reaching 311 million tons in 2014, the report says. It is expected to double again in the next 20 years and almost quadruple by 2050. New plastics will consume 20 percent of all oil production within 35 years, up from an estimated 5 percent today.

Plastic production has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. Photo credit: Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The vast majority of plastics is not effectively recycled, either, according to the report. Only 5 percent is properly recycled, while 40 percent is sent to a landfill and a third ends up in the environment, including in the world’s oceans. Much of the rest is burned, which generates energy, The Guardian noted, but also causes “more fossil fuels to be consumed in order to make new plastic bags, cups, tubs and consumer devices demanded by the economy.”

The report provides a first-ever “vision of a global economy in which plastics never become waste, and outlines concrete steps towards achieving the systemic shift needed,” the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said.

Our current economic model is largely linear. Photo credit: Ellen MacArthur Foundation

This vision is built on applying “circular economy principles” to global plastic packaging flows, which could “transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans,” the foundation explained. The report calls for a transition away from “today’s linear ‘take, make, dispose’ economic model” and towards an economy that is “restorative and regenerative by design” and which altogether eliminates the concept of waste (just as there is no concept of waste in natural systems).

The report concludes that the plastics industry is not doing nearly enough to address plastic pollution.

“Plastics are the workhorse material of the modern economy, with unbeaten properties,” Dr. Martin Stuchtey of the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, who helped produce the report, said. “However they are also the ultimate single-use material. Growing volumes of end-of-use plastics are generating costs and destroying value to the industry. After-use plastics could, with circular economy thinking, be turned into valuable feedstock.”

The report calls for a transition to a circular economy. Photo credit: Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The report calls for smarter packaging, such as phasing out hard-to-recycle plastics like polyvinyl chloride and expandable polystyrene, redesigning plastic items so they can be reused better, rethinking their production methods to make recycling easier and developing compostable packing on a larger scale.

More Plastic, Fewer Oysters?

Posted by Carl Safina of The Safina Center on February 23, 2016
published on NationalGeographic.com , Co-authored by Erica Cirino

2016 started off with a dire prediction for the world’s oceans: By 2050, the seas will contain more plastic—by weight—than fish. There’s an estimated 8 -12 million metric tons of plastic making its way into the oceans each year. And as the plastic mess in the oceans grows, so do concerns over the health of the marine creatures living in it.

While it’s known that plastic bags and bottles pose a risk to sea creatures, a lesser-known threat is now coming to light, one that’s created when ocean waves and wind pulverize the plastic bags, bottles and other trash that ends up in the seas: “microplastics.”

These tiny plastic pieces are about the same size and shape as the algae eaten by some marine animals. How microplastics affect marine animals is not well understood.

Microplastic poses a growing concern in oceans and other aquatic habitats. (Image by 5Gyres, courtesy of Oregon State University)

But in recent years scientists have found that crustaceans that consume microplastics have a hard time reproducing. Going off a hunch that microplastics may affect the fertility of other filter feeders, researchers at the French Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea started feeding oysters microplastics.

The researchers observed two groups of oysters: one fed a normal diet of algae and another fed a mix of algae and microplastics. The oysters fed the mixed diet swiftly sucked up the microplastics as easily as they did algae. After two months the researchers have found microplastics take a toll on both oyster digestion and reproduction.

Oysters that consume microplastics eat more algae and absorb it more efficiently, says Arnaud Huvet, marine physiologist at the French research center and lead author of the study. This is because oysters expend extra energy to pass plastic through their digestive systems, increasing the rate at which they digest algae.

While the digestion of microplastics diverts some energy away from reproduction, oysters’ ability to reproduce is almost halved: Female oysters produce fewer and smaller eggs while male oysters produce slower-swimming sperm. Offspring produce more slowly. The cause? Blame the chemicals that make up microplastics.

During digestion microplastics appear to leach hormone-disrupting chemicals into oysters’ bodies, says Huvet. These chemicals, also called “endocrine disruptors,” are known to lead to diminished fertility and an increased cancer rate in laboratory animals, wildlife and humans. They’re found in all kinds of everyday products, including cosmetics, pesticides and plastics.

Can the microplastics accumulating in oysters’ bodies harm the animals or humans that eat them? Right now, Huvet says, that’s unclear. But he points out his study adds to a slowly growing body of evidence highlighting the health impacts of plastic pollution in the oceans.

Safina Center Sustainable Seafood Program Director Elizabeth Brown-Hornstein agrees: “This study provides further evidence that plastic litter has far-reaching effects on the oceans and that there is an urgent need to take meaningful action to tackle this issue.”

Learn more about plastic and other marine pollution, and what you can do to help, here.

Technology has hurt our oceans, but we can also harness it to reverse the damage

Published in The Guardian, Friday 9 October 2015 by Catherine A Novelli

The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic, and it’s our fault – but we can find the solution

The demise of global waters isn’t inevitable, but the time to act is now. Photograph: Marck Botha / Barcroft Media/Marck Botha / Barcroft Media 

• From the sea’s shore, it can be hard to believe that something as vast and deep as the ocean can be harmed by a human being. But individuals are parts of communities, and our global community has exploded to over 7 billion people. The multiplier effect of growing populations, increasing demand for food and 200 years of carbon-intensive industrial production have put a tremendous burden on the ocean.

The ocean is being depleted of critical fish stocks, choked with discarded plastic and made increasingly acidic from increased carbon emissions absorbed from the air. If things continue as they are, experts estimate that by 2025 there will be a ton of plastic in the ocean for every three tons of fish.

It doesn’t have to be like that. We can stop the flow of plastic into the ocean and move away from disposable plastics altogether using a variety of technological and scientific innovations.

One example is the Marine Debris Tracker, a free app developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Georgia. It allows people to report when they see litter in waterways or coastlines. The crowd sourced data is then plotted on maps to show areas most in need of clean up.

As for the plastic itself, companies are finding profitable ways to reuse it or replace it entirely. For example, US-based MHG uses microbial bacteria and canola oil to make safe, biodegradable products like food containers, bottles and fishing line.

It’s harder to visualize ocean acidification from carbon absorption – though its effects may become increasingly apparent. The ocean is 30% more acidic than it was before the Industrial Revolution, which has dramatic implications for marine ecosystems that we are only just beginning to understand.

 

We need more data to understand the impacts of acidification, especially in vulnerable habitats, so much of the focus of research on this problem has been on monitoring. The XPRIZE Foundation, which has spurred technological leaps in space exploration and healthcare, in July awarded grants to developers of affordable and accurate pH sensors. These sensors can be deployed in a variety of marine environments and are particularly needed in developing countries that currently lack monitoring capabilities.

To get the most out of these technological tools, we need strong global partnerships that can put them to use. This past week Secretary of State John Kerry and I joined hundreds of policymakers, scientists and business leaders in Chile for the second Our Ocean conference. There, we committed to expanding marine protected areas and to forming international partnerships to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. (Vessels doing this are often the same ships that traffic in arms and people.)

The challenge now is to establish shared protocols and integrated data systems to catch rule breakers and, in the end, reward the honest fishing industry.

One example in the works is the mFish initiative, a partnership between governments, NGOs and the private sector. This project puts GPS and smartphone technology in the hands of fishermen in developing nations. The devices are loaded with software that can report on catches, forecast the weather and track navigation.

Scientists and regulators get data on what’s being caught and where, while boat captains get tools to plan their expeditions and bring their fish to market. A pilot project of mFish this year in the Philippines will connect 13 coastal communities and 20,000 fishermen by the end of the year, expanding to 200 communities and 100,000 people in 2016.

The threats facing our ocean are profound, but it’s far from a lost cause. As the Our Ocean conferences have demonstrated over the past two years, the global community has woken up to the problem and is ready to take action to preserve our shared marine resources. Working together and harnessing new technological tools, we can undo the damage and protect our ocean.

Catherine A Novelli is the US Under Secretary of State for economic growth, energy and the environment