Curbing the World’s Ocean Plastic Problem Requires Solving Every Link in the Chain
According to The Ocean Cleanup, approximately 1.15 — 2.41 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean every year via rivers.
Addressing the Issue
Estimates by a recent study state that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Approximately 50% of humans alive today will live with this problem in their lifetime. Solving the issue needs to be done not on just one or two fonts, but every link in the chain from production to it eventually settling on our shores and at the bottom our oceans.
Trash has a long cycle from dumping to its eventual resting point on the seafloor, the coastline, or an ocean gyre. Dumping can occur on multiple fronts; from your average Joe tossing his Coke bottle out the window and the wind blowing it into the nearest body of water i.e. your local river or lake, or an enterprise company dumping straight from the factory to the nearest river. Neither the factory trying to avoid the hassle of paying to dispose of their waste, or your average Joe tossing his bottle rather than waiting for an opportune moment to toss it in a recycling bin or for heaven’s sake just a trash can are innocent. Both are guilty. Guilty of destroying our precious world’s biodiversity, one of humanity’s main food sources, and soon enough they could be guilty of poisoning our children from the degradation of these plastics into microplastics.
Alas, both Joe and the enterprise are oblivious to their actions and its final cost. This is sadly just human nature not calculating the consequences of actions until it’s too late. History is unfortunately loaded with such examples of societies unintentionally destroying their food and building resources. (A notable read on this subject is Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.) This cycle doesn’t have to continue. Identifying the root of the problem starts by analyzing the pathways of plastic trash.
The Chain
The majority of plastic worldwide comes from only a handful of regions and countries. According to The Ocean Cleanup, approximately 1.15–2.41 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean every year via rivers. 86% of this comes from Southeast Asia alone.
The chain starts in plastic and oil refinery plants and ends in our oceans. These plastic items as you may be well aware end up in our stores and eventually our trash cans. Shipments of the trash are then sent to foreign countries such as China or elsewhere in Southeast Asia where the “useful” trash such as e-waste is taken and the rest is discarded. It’s much easier for a company to dispose of its waste offsite such as a river than to pay a fee to have it collected and destroyed.
Major efforts have recently been made to curb trash after it ends up on the shore from private enterprises such as the now-viral company 4Ocean who use their recycled plastic bracelets to fund their massive pickup effort. This sadly enough can only go so far. It is but one link in the chain from plastic entering a waterway and ending there.
Other links in the chain such as when trash ends up stuck circling in a gyre in the middle of the ocean via ocean currents are difficult problems to solve. The Ocean Cleanup, a company founded on cleaning up these gyres, has found little success thus far even with massive funding and publicity. Not taking anything away from their valiant effort thus far, it’s just not working well enough and it sadly, again, is only one piece of the puzzle. Tributaries and rivers in Southeast as previously stated, produce by current estimates upwards of 86% of the world’s ocean plastic. This is the Pareto principle in full throttle. 80% of trash being dumped is by 20% of the world’s waterways.
Rivers are only one piece of the puzzle, its a giant and yet often ignored piece in comparison to the ocean itself. All the attention of the world (or popular media) has been towards picking up the trash after it’s in the ocean or on our shores and avoiding using plastic in our everyday lives. Unfortunately, plastic can’t be avoided entirely from everyday life as of right now due to its well-documented uses, i.e. for food and medical transportation as well as other miscellaneous uses. Single-use plastic on the other hand such as packaging, bags, straws, etc. are the real problem that can be easily avoided. We need to stop the links in the chain that we can at least somewhat control.
The focus now needs to become when the trash inevitably enters the waterways whether on accident or from dumping what to do to stop it before it enters the ocean.
Solving the Problem Via Rivers
If upwards of 80% of this is created by one area of the world, and on only a handful of waterways, why not focus the effort of curbing plastic on these areas? These giant waterways such as the Yellow and Yangtze rivers in China and the Ganges in India are spewers of trash that will have many linkages to them via tributaries and major urban areas. Finding and targeting these inflection points within these areas can be the root of solving our problem of ocean plastic. Much research has been done on the locations of the mountains of trash that enter waterways, we now just need a way of stopping it before it reaches the ocean.
Identifying where trash accumulated from and where it goes over large systems of waterways is difficult but has and continues to be done. Picking up the trash is an entirely different beast. Efforts have been made on smaller scales such as the static Baltimore’s Mr. Trash Wheel or the dynamic WasteShark. These however again are only designed for the occasional tossed bottle and not for the millions of tons of plastic flowing down the rivers of Southeast Asia. A lesser-known company, Storm Water Systems, and just as of this week, 4Ocean have attempted to curb the river problem in the chain by using boom systems attached to boats and trash traps. This remains to be seen whether it’s a viable collection method for large quantities coming downriver in massive quantities. Although it is a step in the right direction. Companies like these need to be better publicized for their efforts in curbing a lesser publicized about link in the chain of trash flow through the world’s waterways. More funding, opportunity, and innovation need to be done for companies like these as well. Their efforts also need to be directed not only on western markets but also Asian markets where the majority of the problem lies. Solving this issue isn’t going to be easy but big ideas come to fruition through the cauldron of big problems.
