Can We Recycle Our Way Out of the Plastic Crisis?

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Commons Team

December 19, 2025

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From the halls of government to the depths of the ocean, how deep does the plastic crisis go and can we recycle our way out of this mess?

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Plastic has completely permeated our existence, and and its effects are far-reaching, from soil to glaciers. Recycling was supposed to take care of this mess — or was it? In this episode, we’ll figure ou how the plastic industry is behind one of th biggest greenwashing schemes of all time, the current state of recycling, and why Big Oil is banning big on plastic. We’ll also hear from our plastic-perplexed-but-optimistic community and our expert, Head of Research at The Ocean Cleanup, Laurent Lebreton.

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‍Episode Credits

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Listener contributions: Anna, Mac Hansen, Sawyer, Sobia Zaidi, Tiffany, Valli Divya, Rachel Radvany
Episode expert: Laurent Lebreton, Head of Research at The Ocean Cleanup
Editing and engineering: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Citations and Further Reading

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hi, welcome back to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons. Commons is the app that hundreds of thousands of people use to make their money matter. And this is the show where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world.

Katelan (00:17):

It's that time of year when we buy a lot more stuff and in turn, throw away a lot more stuff, especially plastic. We toss out 25% more plastic during the holidays. The plastic crisis has its tendrils in every aspect of our lives, from our beds to our breakfast, from our tap water to our toothbrushes. Over 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and that's super important to remember in all this because big oil is cashing in on the plastic crisis and we're making a ton of plastic. In just the past 30 years, plastic production has quadrupled. Production is expected to triple by 2050, and most of this plastic is not getting recycled. Most of it is ending up, burned or in landfills. So how deep from the halls of government to the depths of the ocean does the plastic crisis go? And can we recycle our way out of this mess? I'm your host, Kaitlin Cunningham. Let's find out what percentage of plastic do you think is recycled in the United States. I'll give you some points of reference. We recycle about 70% of our paper and about 60% of our metal. So what's your guess for plastic? If you guessed 50%, I love your optimism if you guess 20%. I'm sorry to say, that's still pretty aspirational. The reality is that in the US our plastic recycling rate is around 5%. Globally, we recycle around just 9% of plastic. Appalling, depressing. What happens to the rest of it? You might be wondering, 50% of it is sent to landfills. 19% is incinerated. The rest 20% is mismanaged. So who are we pointing our fingers at? Big oil, plastic companies, recycling plants. The government.

Katelan (02:22):

Well, to tell the story of how we got here, we have to look back at where we came from.

Katelan (02:30):

The year is 1956. Lloyd Soffer is an editor at Modern Packaging. He's speaking at an SPI conference in New York. That's the Society of the Plastics Industry, and he has an absolute mic drop moment when he says the future of plastics is in the trash can. This spicy statement came in the early days of plastic when it was still seen as something really precious, something to keep and reuse, but disposability, that's where the money was for the plastics industry. Later in the 1963 reflection on his talk, Soffer said, the happy day has arrived when nobody any longer considers the plastics package too good to throw away. The industry kind of rebranded plastic from a glorified material for reuse to one designed for disposability so that plastic companies could keep making money. As plastic got cheaper and cheaper, beating out the cost of metal and even paper, it became less precious and it was even considered glamorous in its disposability. With the 1960s came an environmental awakening of sorts. Plastic was getting a bit of blow back. Enter the crying Indian Keep America beautiful ad, which is offensive, not least of all, because it's from the perspective of a Native American man who's played by an Italian American actor, but also because it dumps the blame solely on individuals.

[Keep American Beautiful Ad] (04:01):

People start pollution, people can stop. It

Katelan (04:08):

Then came the decades long push for consumer recycling. Larry Thomas is the former president of SPI in 2000. He was reflecting back on how the plastic industry was under fire. He said, if the public thinks that recycling is working, then they're not gonna be as concerned about the environment. Plastic companies and groups have spent millions and millions of dollars in ad campaigns to convince us of this.

[Plastics ad] (04:34):

When you think about plastic, you may think about things like toy cars on your living room, carpeting,

Katelan (04:40):

But plastic recycling at the scale of the units we're producing. That is a dream that has yet to be realized and probably never will be. We've known this for a very long time. In 1974, an industry insider said There is serious doubt that recycling large quantities of plastic can ever be viable on an economic basis. The plastics and recycling industries, they knew that recycling wasn't going to keep up with production, but they kept producing more and more saying we could recycle our way out of it. And knowing perfectly well that we could not. And they weren't just saying this to people, they were also saying it to the government. In the eighties and nineties, the industry used recycling efforts to weasel their way to of plastic bans.

Katelan (05:27):

In the us we've been recycling plastic in earnest since the late eighties. At first, it was just plastic numbers one and two, largely milk jugs, soda bottles. But early on, plastic didn't have numbers stamped on the bottom. And then all of a sudden, recyclers started seeing unfamiliar plastics coming in from residence bins, plastics, they didn't know how to recycle these plastics had the chasing arrows, recycling symbol with a number in the middle. Now this symbol wasn't new, but the number in the middle that was new. This plastic rebrand of the recycling symbol didn't come from recyclers or waste processors, but the plastics industry, it's perhaps one of the most prolific greenwashing campaigns out there, because that numbered triangle doesn't actually tell you if that piece of plastic will be recycled or even if your city accepts it. It just tells you what type of plastic it's made from.

Katelan (06:27):

But residents thought, and rightfully so, that everything with this symbol was recyclable. Collection facilities were left picking up the slack, figuring out what they were gonna do with all these different types of plastic when they were only equipped to handle ones and twos. In the US we can only recycle around one out of every five PET bottles and HDPE containers. That's plastic numbers one and two. Respectively, we could only recycle about 6% of plastic cups plate to cutlery expanded polystyrene, 0% coffee pods also 0%. There are reports from as early as 1973 about how difficult and expensive it is to recycle plastic. But why? Why is recycling plastic so difficult? Well, there are a few key reasons. Number one, there are so many kinds of plastic, way more than the one through seven triangle thingies would lead you to bleed. In reality, there are hundreds and this makes it very, very difficult to sort and process them, much less recycle them.

Katelan (07:32):

Number two, sorting centers cannot keep up with the volumes. We're producing more and more plastic without investing in new facilities or sorting technology. Number three, the market for recycled plastic isn't great. It's usually cheaper for companies to buy virgin plastic than it is for them to buy recycled plastic. And finally, number four, you can only recycle plastic a couple of times as opposed to something like aluminum, which is endlessly recyclable. Every time plastic gets melted down and reformed, the polymer chains that make up the plastic, they get shorter and shorter, making the plastic harder and harder to use. So what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to keep wish cycling or plastic? Here's what y'all had to say.

Mac Hansen (08:23):

I did recycling, gosh, when I was in like fourth grade, we took a pledge in class to always recycle for the rest of our lives. So I've been doing it since then.

Tiffany (08:34):

I had an acquaintance tell me one time that in our area of the Midwest that we don't even recycle plastic anymore. I was like, wait, what? What? Like, wait, what? What?

Sawyer Stone (08:48):

I'm discouraged by the low rate of plastic recycling because it, it feels so large and so nebulous and so unachievable to get it right. This definitely affected my motivation to recycle plastic, which is why I was so encouraged to find my heart to recycle program. Why isn't it simple? Why is it difficult? Recycling plastics is just an overwhelming idea.

Mac Hansen (09:16):

I did a lot of wish cycling, which actually gums up the systems. Producers will put recycle able <laugh> as a marketing tactic. In theory, there's a lot of things that are recyclable. That doesn't mean a system can actually support it.

Vallidivya Rajendran (09:30):

I'm discouraged by the low rate of plastic recycling, but it has not affected my motivation to recycle plastic. It tells us we need to do more work on plastic recycling. That we need to push further this agenda strongly in society. There are many governmental policies on plastics, but are these policies effective? Is it helping to improve the situation? Policies need to be updated with time.

New Speaker (09:57):

You know, like every now and then I try to remove all plastic, try to replace it with other things. But it's so hard, especially when I'm in Lahore in Pakistan, it just gets impossible <laugh> because you know, there's a lot that you need to just kind of accept and it takes up a lot of energy. So I really hoping that this year I completely could just get rid of plastic from my life.

Sobia Zaidi (10:25):

Like I'm not gonna go out and buy new things that are plastic, but if I have something that is plastic, how do I use it in such a way that I can get the most use of it? Right? It's not like, oh, it just has a little crack, so now I'm gonna throw it. Well, can you still use it? I'm gonna swap all of these things in my home. I want to be able to do so with little to no interruption. And honestly, I found that a lot of the saleable swaps that I've made, especially in terms of skincare, like a lot of the bathroom products or cleaning products, I actually get a better result out of them than the items that I was previously using.

Rachel Radvany (11:01):

Environmental issues can seem so big and overwhelming, and this is one area where making changes in your life does actually protect you on a personal level, which at least helps me sleep a little bit at night. It's hard though because there's a lot of environments that we live in where we don't have full control and it's practically impossible, at least in the US, to never be exposed to plastic. So I try as much as I can, but I know it won't be perfect without some systemic society-wide changes.

Katelan (11:45):

Over the years, big plastic producers have made some big promises, but really drop the ball on follow through. So much so that you start to wonder did they ever really plan on keeping those promises in the first place. In 2018, Nestle had a commitment to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, but it hasn't released any clear targets or timelines. So it's basically just an empty promise. Just a few years ago in 2022, Coca-Cola was very proud to say that by 20 30, 20 5% of its drinks would be sold in refillable or returnable glass. Sounds great. But a couple years later, that goal got trashed.

Katelan (12:31):

Nestle and Coca-Cola happen to be two of the biggest plastic polluters out there with Coca-Cola topping the charts by a wide margin. Some estimates show that by 2030, Coca-Cola could have 1.3 billion pounds of plastic in waterways and oceans. Loren Le Briton is the head of research at the Ocean cleanup. He has 20 years of experience in numerical modeling and physical oceanography with a focus on marine debris, which is what we wanna talk to him about. He's joining us to talk through the scale of the plastic crisis at sea and what work is being done to clean things up. Hi Lauren. Thank you for coming on the show.

Laurent Lebreton (13:12):

Hey, thanks for having me.

Katelan (13:13):

So I'm very unfamiliar with what the day of an oceanographer looks like, much less an oceanographer who focuses on plastic. So I wondered if you could quickly just give us an gist of what your job is like, what kinds of projects you're working on in your role of head researcher at Ocean Cleanup.

Laurent Lebreton (13:29):

Yeah, of course. So head of research at the Ocean cleanup. That means mostly actually now managing a team of scientists and overseeing the, the scientific program for the organization. So our role for the organization is to understand the source, the transport, and the fate of plastic pollution. And we exist to help the organization make the right decisions in terms of where to work, what to expect, what to design to sort of you know, mitigate the, the pollution. We organize field missions. So we go on the, on the field, whether it's in rivers or in the ocean, we collect data. So essentially we collect plastics and we look at the nature, the composition of that plastic. And then we develop different technologies, remote sensing, so any sort of like cameras and that we deploy on vessels, but also on drones. We develop numerical models to predict where plastic may be transported, where does it go? And then we publish science. So we write science and we try to go through the peer review process and, and keep a, a tight link with the academy. So my work is essentially a mix of all of this. And but I'm not the only one, right? It's a team of few of us who about 15, 15 scientists full time.

Katelan (14:43):

It looks like you guys did a really big study in 2017.

Laurent Lebreton (14:46):

Yeah, true. There must have been our original study we did on the Great Pacific Garbage patch, which is the area where we operate in the ocean halfway between the state of Hawaii and the state of California. And we organized actually in 2015, a very large expedition what we call actually the mega expedition. 'cause We worked with citizen scientists, sailors that sell all around the no specific collecting data for us. And we also had a, a mother, a ship that was also collecting plastic for us. And when we brought all that plastic back to the lab and then we had an army of students helping us in the process, we counted over a million pieces of plastic, but we counted them, but we also categorized them, weighted them, look at how they're shape the color, those kind of things, right. So that was a, a monumental piece of work. And that actually the year after we did a Al Expedition, which was also a first for the great Pacific Garbage Patch, which flew a C one 30 ulus plane above the Great Pacific Garbage patch with a bunch of sensors collecting yeah, tons of data at that time. And we published the, the findings in 2018 in Nature Scientific reports. And the main objective of the study was to have a comprehensive ification and characterization of plastic pollution in this accumulation in the middle of the ocean.

Katelan (16:07):

That's incredible. In your years sort of studying and like you said, categorizing ocean plastic, what trends have you found? What have been the biggest sources of plastic? What types of plastic are you finding and where are they coming from?

Laurent Lebreton (16:18):

Yeah, that's a good question. So I mean, so plastic is a, is a big word. You know, it comes in so many different types and shapes and sizes. So there's essentially two metric we use to, to quantify plastic pollution in the ocean. We use a number of pieces of plastic per unit of surface area, and then we use a unit of mass. If we look at the unit of piece, like the number of pieces, essentially the ma majority is microplastics. So little fragments that are a few millimeters wide made of floating plastics. So polyline and polypropylene mostly getting the exact origin of this type of plastic is really hard because there's no, there's no clue. We just know that they're little fragments. And so we use numerical models to try to understand where they come from. But if you really look at the, the problem in itself, and you look at the mass, the total mass of plastic, one of the outcome of that study we published in 2018 was that the majority of the mass is carried by larger objects, objects larger than five centimeters, what we call microplastics, and even sometimes mega plastics, what we call mega plastics is objects that are several meters in in size.

Laurent Lebreton (17:30):

And they are mostly made of fishing nets, very large fishing nets. Oh,

Katelan (17:34):

I see.

Laurent Lebreton (17:34):

Yeah. In terms of mass, we know that about half of the, the Great Pacific garbage patch is composed of fishing nets. So anything coming from the fishing industry and then we looked at the rest is what we call rigid like hard plastics. And especially the large ones. The advantage with those is that they have quite often some clues in it, some sort of markings you know, writings, language production dates. And so they are like really useful to understand where they come from. And we found that, you know, a big majority of those were also coming from the fishing industry, whether they were fishing crates, fishing traps, buoys, any sort of things that use on boats. So at the end when we estimated that, you know, nearly 80% of the plastic mass accumulated, the great plastic garbage patch is originating from fishing industry or a agriculture industry, we found different origins in terms of languages. Most reported languages would be Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English so any sort of like large fishing industrial countries around the north specific maybe contributing to, to the pollution in the region.

Katelan (18:46):

So one of the things I'm wondering, just with the sheerer size and scale of this issue, and specifically the great garbage patch <laugh>, it reminds me of when I was little, we had a pool and we would use the pool net and get out a couple leaves, and then an hour later more leaves are back. And it feels like this like ever replenishing thing. And I just wondered, how do you and your team stay motivated to tackle a problem as big as ocean plastic?

Laurent Lebreton (19:10):

Well, it's, you know, there's two sides. So at first there's the, cause obviously, you know, there's, you know, it is a global environmental problem. And yes, the problem is huge but it's fixable. I think, you know, and this is kind of like what's driving our mission at the ocean cleanup is like, we can fix that. And I'm, I'm convinced we can fix that, you know, working in the middle of the ocean, I mean, there's so many different ways you can try to tackle plastic pollution as a whole. What we do is one part of the, the equation, but you, you need many different sort of like actions and strategies. We're doing our part in the ocean, you know, when we go and collect plastic there and actually retrieve it with cleanup system, there's two sides to it. There is the side of obviously removing plastic from the ocean.

Laurent Lebreton (19:57):

Then also by one, making that pollution visible and two, documenting meticulously all that pollution, we are able to understand the reason for that pollution and target the sources and origin, right? So it's about trying to go and, and bring the discussion upstream. So then you are removing plastic the same way you were removing leaves from, from the pool when you were younger. But at the end you wanna make sure that there's no more leaves coming to the pool, right? And so by studying like that type of pollution, it's about trying to bring the discussion back on land and say, okay, like where is the problem? How can we make, you know, something that will solve the problem in the long term? You know, in that sense, this is very motivating mission and, and drive for us. And then we're a bunch of scientists who we're also just very excited to study something, you know, and the plastic pollution science is, you know, it's a few decades old, but it's, it's quite young, you know, so there's still so much like so many questions that needs to be to be answered, and the way to study it as well has to be invented, right?

Laurent Lebreton (21:03):

So we've invested in artificial intelligence and remote sensing and numerical modeling in the past decade, and we've just made like beautiful progress. And this is also very motivating, you know, as a scientist to, to sort of invent a field and come up with solution to, to try to understand something.

Katelan (21:19):

What are some of the key solutions that you guys advocate for either directly work toward or advocate for in legislation and things like that as far as like mitigating the plastic that's coming into the ocean?

Laurent Lebreton (21:34):

The mission of the ocean cleanup really is to develop technology to read the ocean of plastic, right? So we have two side of the the, the, the problem that we try to tackle. One is the, the removal of legacy pollution in the ocean. So that's what we've just talked about. And then we also work in rivers. So we try to intercept plastic before it reaches the ocean in the first place. But at the end, you know, we are removing plastic from the equity environment. This is our primary mission. We build series of evidence and we collect data that then can be used by other groups and policy makers and so on to try to to, to fix the problem upstream. And I think the end game is to fix the problem upstream. You know, like we don't want to be, we always say as a non-for-profit, we want to get out of business eventually.

Laurent Lebreton (22:26):

Like we don't want to be garbage man of the ocean forever. We don't advocate for interceptors in every river of the world. Like the perfect world is a world where you don't need interceptors, where you don't need up machine in the ocean, right? And I truly think that, you know, we like collectively, like there are discussions happening at the moment at UN level and policy makers are like, you know, it's like it's, it's become a serious topic. We're still far from having, you know, strong legislation at international level. So in the meantime, I think that work needs to happen, but in the long term, we need to have proper legislation to, to tackle plastic pollution. Mm-Hmm

Katelan (23:04):

<Affirmative>. How have policymakers used the research that you've created? Are there any like specific bills or policies that people are trying to get through with the data that you've provided?

Laurent Lebreton (23:17):

You know, we're working in I think like eight or nine different countries at the moment deploying interceptors mostly in Southeast Asia and Central America. And you see that, you know, like the interceptor is that we deploy in river is sort of a catalyst to like change the way waste is being treated. Like, I mean, some examples in say like in Guatemala where we, we are working in the river Rio Tawa, which you know, literally receives like tsunami of trash putting that pollution very visible spot on discussion at governmental level, right? And like the way that waste is coming from a completely unmanaged landfills, like this is changing as we speak, you know? And so there is this whole like sort of ecosystem that is like being put in place, recycling into some type of plastic that is being in place as well.

Laurent Lebreton (24:08):

And so we see all those things kind of happening. So we come to a place or to a country, we are not the only one, right? Like we, like, we work with local communities, we work with local governments, and we see change to different aspects and different degrees in those countries happening. And we're getting, you know, sort of support from the local governments, which is very encouraging. But the ocean is yeah, is different because we work in international waters and so it's, you know, the ga great Pacific garbage patch is, is in no one's jurisdiction. Yeah, it's, it's a bit more complicated. And so that was one of the, you know, the aspect like, you know, about the the global plastic treaty that has been negotiated at the moment at unit nation level one of the key aspect that we wanted to have to see in the, in the treaty hasn't been signed yet. So there's still negotiation, but is the question of legacy plastic pollution beyond areas of jurisdiction, right? So if we find a bunch of plastic from the us from China, Korea, and Japan in the middle of the ocean, we need to make sure that there is that level of responsibilities and accountability for those countries to look after it, right? And so at the moment, there's no such thing.

Katelan (25:18):

Wow. Can you tell me a little bit about how you guys have been involved in the global plastics treaty?

Laurent Lebreton (25:24):

Yeah. Well we were participating to all the ncs and so NC stands for International Negotiating Committee. There were few rounds basically of all the countries state members are getting together to discuss what should be in the treaty and not, and then during those sessions there were, you could, you know, go there as observers. So mostly like NGOs would go there. So we were a part of you know, some of the NGOs going there. And yeah, we participated in those negotiation meeting delegates and, and discussing what we would advocate to have in the treaty, what we thought was important, and also obviously making sure that our science was yeah, distributed and communicated. So the question of fishing gear, the question of legacy plastic pollution, the question of monitoring the efficiency of, of different mitigation strategy, that's also something that we bring forward quite often.

Laurent Lebreton (26:18):

Like, you know, putting interceptors in rivers, but same for cleanup system in the ocean. Like we remove plastic from aquatic environment. So that's one win. But the second win is to monitor how well say a country is doing, right? If, if at some points we start to not collect any plastic in rivers, that means like, you know, policies are effective and we are winning, right? If we see some policies that are coming in place, but we still collect plastic, we can go back and say, Hey, like, you know, this is not working right? And so I think all this work, you know, assuming a treaty is sign in the coming years, which is going to be really difficult to have, but assuming that, and for those policy to take sort of shape, I think we're talking, you know, like years if not decades, right? So the, the work needs to happen. Now in the meantime,

Katelan (27:05):

One, I guess sort of personal question is like, I wonder, you spend a lot of time focused on plastic and there's this idea of like zero waste living and having no plastic. How does seeing all this plastic affect you and your daily life and how do you balance this sort of personal action versus systemic action? Like you're talking about all of these really big things, the global plastics treaty, all these regulations that need to happen. Does this come into your personal life at all and affect how you think about plastic in your everyday life?

Laurent Lebreton (27:33):

I think so. I mean, I've always been, you know, I've never been like a really big consumer in general. It's not only like plastic in general, but just, you know, i, I value time over things. I value offering an experience versus offering, you know, some other crap made on the other side of the planet. And I'm being cautious, you know, like obviously, I mean, there's some easy things, you know, reusable water bottle don't buy a bunch of like snacks all the time, like just, you know, go local, just like way of living and everything. But then in the same time, I'm not a plasticfree zero waste person. I mean, I know, and in New Zealand I've, I've been living or kind of befriended like zero waste people and I'm so impressed by the level of work that needs to happen and the time they need to spend there.

Laurent Lebreton (28:24):

And I'm not, definitely not at that level. And I don't think it's realistic to, you know, with the current system that we have to ask everyone to be zero waste. Like, you know, either you have time or you need to have money, but yeah, it's complicated, right? And I think, you know, citizens you, I, everyone can definitely make a dent in, in the choice we make and what we buy and everything, but it's not only our responsibility, right? That's what I'd like to say. The industry needs to step up, the governments needs to step up. We need to have system in place that just makes it easier to, you know, have one, have less plastic, have less toxic plastic, having, you know, good recycling stream. And not saying that recycling is the solution, but it can help. You know, there's different things that can happen and collectively I think we can fix that definitely. But but it's not only the consumers, you know, so I don't have too much guilt, but I'm being careful on, on what I buy.

Katelan (29:24):

Yeah. I was looking at some recent papers that you've released and you were part of one about citizen scientists. You named a few organizations in the paper Surfing for Science dive Against Debris. We have a lot of people who listen to the show who work in climate and varying degrees. And so I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about why are citizen scientists important to this work that you do and how they get involved?

Laurent Lebreton (29:48):

Yeah, so of course, so I mean, you know, organizing oceanographic mission, collecting data at sea is incredibly expensive. You cannot just collect data everywhere and you know, all the time. And so this is something we've relied on, like citizen science is something we relied on since the early days is, you know, there are people going to very remote region just because they, you know, like sailors for instance, they just enjoy it. And so we have worked with sellers in the past and we work with them to like collect data, right? So people organize races or expedition or just like are just cruising and they ask us if they can help, right? So we have different protocol in place, some very easy, some a little bit more complicated depending on their level of engagements, but they, yeah, we work with citizen scientists, benevolent sailors surfers as well divers to collect around on oceanic plastic pollution. And it allows us to essentially extend our observational coverage, right? We can have many eyes in the sea at the same time without having just us little, you know, team of scientists to try to be everywhere and doing everything.

Katelan (30:58):

One last question. As we're sort of coming out of one year and entering the next, I'm wondering what project you're most excited about that you worked on in the past year and then like what one project you're most excited about in the coming year?

Laurent Lebreton (31:11):

Well, one thing that I'm really excited about trying now is to, we're trying to to hunt hotspots in the middle of the ocean in the, the Great Pacific Garbage patch. So we know this area is accumulating plastic, but once we go there, it's very, what we call it heterogeneous. Like one hour you'll find a lot of plastic and another hour you'll find no plastic. And so we trying to understand and and follow what creates those sort of, you know, mini hotspot within the accumulation zone. And that's critical for the ocean cleaner because if we understand that properly, then we spend way less time at sea trying to like remove it. And so we save on money, we save on energy, we save on everyone's time and so it's mission critical for us. And so yeah, the steering strategy we call it and the hotspot hunting is something that's yeah, took a lot of my time this year and we're hoping to go back in the ocean next year to, to validate the finding of the year and try some new, new strategy to be more efficient at removing plastic from the ocean.

Katelan (32:10):

That sounds awesome. Thank you for all the work that you do. Thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Laurent Lebreton (32:15):

Thank you for having me.

Katelan (32:22):

It's important to keep reminding ourselves that plastics are product of the fossil fuel industry and the fossil fuel industry knows that the world is however slowly transitioning to more renewable energy. So it's putting more of its focus and funding into plastics. There's a lot to dig through here. So I called up commons founders, central Charlie St. Paul to help us understand the numbers and what we can do to slow the growth of plastics. Okay, char, so we know that the fossil fuel industry is investing way more in plastic these days, right?

Sanchali Seth Pal (32:58):

That's right. They are making a bet that we're gonna be using a lot more plastic over the next couple decades. Bloomberg predicts that by 2050, over 20% of all oil demand is gonna be for plastic. That's like double what it is today. It's kind of like their plan B

Katelan (33:14):

With's plan A being

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:16):

Fuel. Exactly. Yeah. Plan A is like oil, coal, natural gas, all being burned for energy and buildings and vehicles. But now with renewable energy starting to rise, they're trying to recoup their losses with plastic that's kind of like a hedge against a clean energy future.

Katelan (33:33):

It's honestly so hard for me to imagine where else in my life there could be more plastic. It already feels like it's everywhere.

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:40):

I know I feel like I touch plastic all day long, like from the kitchen to the shower, to the grocery store at the restaurant in my mail.

Katelan (33:49):

Is this just the case for western countries? Are we the only ones using way more plastic?

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:54):

Plastic use has grown in the US and Europe, but honestly the plastic growth trajectory in other countries has been even more extreme. There's just so much more room for it to expand. Like I spent a lot of time in India growing up and I remember when I was a kid, there was almost no plastic in our lives. Every day the milk cellar would come by and refill our glass jug at home. When we went out to eat, which wasn't that often, there was no concept of like a doggy bag. You were served food at the restaurant and if you were still hungry, you got more food until you were satisfied. Like you paid for a meal, you didn't pay for an item on a menu. If we got chai or coffee out, it was served in a thin clay cup called a cooled, which you'd smash on the ground when you were done. And then they'd kind of get reincorporated into the earth. And even at restaurants, like it was not that common that you'd have plastic. You'd often get served on a plate made of banana leaves or woven paper.

Katelan (34:50):

That sounds like an idyllic utopian future when in reality it's like your personal past <laugh>.

Sanchali Seth Pal (34:58):

I know it's, and it's so funny 'cause it's like a, a lot of it was because you know, there wasn't a lot of wealth, but we had these things that had been around forever and that didn't create waste. Like people knew how to create things from the earth and how to return them to the earth. But in the last 10 to 20 years, as wealth has also grown in India, now plastic is everywhere. The rise of especially various kinds of delivery services, I feel like has really expanded this from food to groceries to pharmacies, to e-commerce. You can order literally anything in India and get it within 15 minutes, like someone will deliver it to you. And plastic has become part of this whole delivery culture. People are buying and consuming way more than they used to, and the convenience of it has just exploded. The volume of single use plastic,

Katelan (35:46):

That is really shocking. I wonder when we're gonna hit like our plastic saturation point.

Sanchali Seth Pal (35:52):

I think we are actually starting to now last year government spent around $80 billion to subsidize the plastics industry, but the plastics industry is still producing more than we need.

Katelan (36:05):

That is wild. So the plastics industry got a little bit too eager with their plan B is what it sounds like.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:11):

Exactly.

Katelan (36:12):

So maybe that's enough traction for us as everyday people to really make a statement with our buying power right now.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:18):

I definitely think so. When we're talking about plastic waste and recycling, there are a couple key solutions. Use less plastic and recycle more plastic

Katelan (36:28):

In that order, right?

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:30):

For sure. First and foremost, the less plastic we use, the better. We can use less plastic by buying less stuff, using more refill items, opting for plastic free packaging and materials where possible.

Katelan (36:41):

I just switched to a plastic free deodorant, which to be fair I was skeptical about, but honestly it's been great.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:47):

Me too. I was also skeptical and it's also been great. And these little steps, they feel small, but they honestly make a difference. One thing you can do right away and that I really think is worth it is to just like notice all the times in your day that you touch plastic and then start to reduce or swap out just a few of them over time. Given how much waste we make on a daily basis, this can really add up.

Katelan (37:10):

And I think that noticing really helps to motivate us to show up for the bigger actions too, right? Because like companies, especially plastic companies, they want us to think that recycling is this silver bullet solution. So the more we sort of start looking at the reality of how much plastic there is, the more we can keep reminding ourselves, we can't just rely on plastic recycling.

Sanchali Seth Pal (37:32):

Exactly. Companies want us to think that it's just about the small actions, but it's not. It's about the big actions too. Yeah, Coca-Cola for example, it's one of the biggest drivers of plastic pollution in the world, but it's also one of the hundred companies lobbying against a packaging reduction and recycling infrastructure act in New York. This bill aims to limit toxic chemicals and packaging and hold companies responsible for the waste from their products even after the consumers use them.

Katelan (37:59):

I imagine that New Yorkers are on board with this.

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:02):

Yeah, 72% of residents support it.

Katelan (38:05):

So what can New Yorkers do, if anything, to have their voices heard on this bill?

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:09):

The folks at Beyond Plastic are urging New York residents to contact their local reps and tell them you support the P-R-R-I-A bill. It might seem like a small thing, but this kind of legislation is what drives real change.

Katelan (38:22):

Yeah, it may not be as sexy or fun, but this is the kind of stuff that it's important that we show up for.

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:29):

It's so true and it really adds up. I mean, if you look at the countries that have been able to really keep their plastic waste per capita down, it's stuff like this. Countries like Finland, Slovenia, France, Rwanda, they have strict legislation around plastic waste that avoids and ban single use plastic in a lot of cases. And then they also promote cultural practices around limiting plastic use and have strong plastic recycling programs.

Katelan (38:55):

I feel like there's a lot of enthusiasm around plastic recycling, around sorting your waste and putting in the right bin. It'd be awesome if we also had that enthusiasm for showing up for legislation around these things. So we could also be one of those countries

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:09):

Showing up for what we care about is cool and <laugh>. Hopefully everyone who's listening to this podcast is part of the people who are making the change. So everyone who's listening look to see what plastic or recycling legislation is coming up in your city, in your state, in your country, and see how you can make your voice heard.

Katelan (39:27):

And you can also take action yourself. You can start plastic free initiatives at your workplace, your school, or your church, and you might be surprised at how receptive others will be in getting involved with something like that.

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:39):

That's true. Anything we can do to push change out through our communities has massive ripple effects.

Katelan (39:44):

Thank you so much for the plastic deep dives. And Charlie,

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:47):

Thanks for having me.

Katelan (39:54):

So unfortunately we can't recycle our way outta the plastic crisis, but there are some things we can do at home. You can make reusable or plastic free swaps wherever you can remember. Plastic free living is practically impossible, so don't stress too much. Focus on the plastics that you throw away the most often and see if there are some practical easy swaps that you can make over time. Another thing we can do is double check our city's plastic recycling limitations. We wanna make sure that we're not wish recycling and giving those processors way more stuff than they can handle. We can also look to private services like Rid Well is one that's offered here in la. They do dedicated pickup and they have guaranteed processing for a lot of hard to recycle plastic. So look to see what's available in your city,

Katelan (40:42):

But then we can't forget to zoom out. We'll have an even bigger impact when we do things like find opportunities to advocate and initiate plastic free projects and initiatives in our communities through schools, churches, or workspaces. We can also participate in cleanups in our communities and we can seek out and show up for citywide efforts to improve plastic recycling, limit plastic use, and make producers responsible for the waste that they're producing. The plastics industry is out there persistently lobbying against plastic restrictions. Meanwhile, 71% of consumers want to ban single use plastics. So we have to show up at every opportunity to make our voices heard on new policies. If you're wondering why we didn't dive into microplastics on this episode, it's because, well, first of all, plastic recycling is a pretty ginormous issue, but also we did an episode on microplastics last season. I highly recommend it. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode on Greenwashing, that's another great follow up to this one. If you're looking for more ways to get involved locally, stay tuned to the very end of the episode to hear community classifieds where folks in our community are sharing ways that you can help in local climate efforts.

Katelan (42:02):

But first, we have to say a huge thank you to everyone who shared their recycling qualms and questions on today's episode. You heard from

New Speaker (42:10):

[credits]

Katelan (42:37):

This episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

Charlotte (42:51):

Hi everyone. I'm Charlotte from the Earth Prize. The Earth Prize is the world's largest environmental competition and ideas incubator for young people. Age 13 to 19. We help teens turn their ideas for the planet into real solutions through one-to-one mentoring. And each year we award a hundred thousand US dollars to seven outstanding teams from across the planet. We're also building the Earth Alliance, which is a global community to support these young people, and we're looking for volunteers, university students who can be mentors, intellectual property experts to guide our top teams and workshop speakers with diverse expertise to inspire teen innovators. If you want to support the next generation of chain makers, we'd love to have you join us.

Speaker 14 (43:32):

One Earth Wind Chance is a Dallas based environmental nonprofit that founded to respond to the growing impact of climate change. Our mission is to restore urban spaces and promote sustainable living, especially in underserved communities. Since 2019, we've planted more than 7,500 native trees and plants, expanded the local tree canopy by 11 million square feet and hosted over 150 community events focused on forestation, litter, cleanups, and environmental education. These efforts have improved air and water quality, reduced extreme heat, save millions of gallons of rainwater, and helped remove over 132 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere. We also empower youth and adults through our Green Ambassador and green practitioner programs teaching practical sustainability leadership and hands-on stewardship with a very low 0.4% expense ratio. Our impact per dollar is extremely high. So one Earth, one chance is really a movement to build a cleaner and greener future.

Mac Hansen (44:34):

My name is Mac Hanson. I work at AMP Sortation, and our company really has a mission to eliminate the need for landfills. We've developed a way to leverage artificial intelligence and automation to separate your recyclables from trash as well as your organics. We understand it's really hard for people to put things in the right place, and there's a lot of doubt in people's lives with regards to the effectiveness of recycling. So we've basically designed around it. We are about to launch a really big project over in the state of Virginia, scoping a large amount of their waste shed. So please look us up if you're looking for any more information and if you're looking to boost recycling in your community, or if you are a municipality looking for a better alternative, please get in touch. We'd really love to help out and expand because this solution works.

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APPLE PODCASTS

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Can We Recycle Our Way Out of the Plastic Crisis?

APPLE PODCASTS

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‍

From the halls of government to the depths of the ocean, how deep does the plastic crisis go and can we recycle our way out of this mess?

‍

Plastic has completely permeated our existence, and and its effects are far-reaching, from soil to glaciers. Recycling was supposed to take care of this mess — or was it? In this episode, we’ll figure ou how the plastic industry is behind one of th biggest greenwashing schemes of all time, the current state of recycling, and why Big Oil is banning big on plastic. We’ll also hear from our plastic-perplexed-but-optimistic community and our expert, Head of Research at The Ocean Cleanup, Laurent Lebreton.

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‍Episode Credits

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Listener contributions: Anna, Mac Hansen, Sawyer, Sobia Zaidi, Tiffany, Valli Divya, Rachel Radvany
Episode expert: Laurent Lebreton, Head of Research at The Ocean Cleanup
Editing and engineering: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Citations and Further Reading

‍

Full Transcript

‍

Katelan (00:00):

Hi, welcome back to Second Nature, a podcast from Commons. Commons is the app that hundreds of thousands of people use to make their money matter. And this is the show where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world.

Katelan (00:17):

It's that time of year when we buy a lot more stuff and in turn, throw away a lot more stuff, especially plastic. We toss out 25% more plastic during the holidays. The plastic crisis has its tendrils in every aspect of our lives, from our beds to our breakfast, from our tap water to our toothbrushes. Over 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuels, and that's super important to remember in all this because big oil is cashing in on the plastic crisis and we're making a ton of plastic. In just the past 30 years, plastic production has quadrupled. Production is expected to triple by 2050, and most of this plastic is not getting recycled. Most of it is ending up, burned or in landfills. So how deep from the halls of government to the depths of the ocean does the plastic crisis go? And can we recycle our way out of this mess? I'm your host, Kaitlin Cunningham. Let's find out what percentage of plastic do you think is recycled in the United States. I'll give you some points of reference. We recycle about 70% of our paper and about 60% of our metal. So what's your guess for plastic? If you guessed 50%, I love your optimism if you guess 20%. I'm sorry to say, that's still pretty aspirational. The reality is that in the US our plastic recycling rate is around 5%. Globally, we recycle around just 9% of plastic. Appalling, depressing. What happens to the rest of it? You might be wondering, 50% of it is sent to landfills. 19% is incinerated. The rest 20% is mismanaged. So who are we pointing our fingers at? Big oil, plastic companies, recycling plants. The government.

Katelan (02:22):

Well, to tell the story of how we got here, we have to look back at where we came from.

Katelan (02:30):

The year is 1956. Lloyd Soffer is an editor at Modern Packaging. He's speaking at an SPI conference in New York. That's the Society of the Plastics Industry, and he has an absolute mic drop moment when he says the future of plastics is in the trash can. This spicy statement came in the early days of plastic when it was still seen as something really precious, something to keep and reuse, but disposability, that's where the money was for the plastics industry. Later in the 1963 reflection on his talk, Soffer said, the happy day has arrived when nobody any longer considers the plastics package too good to throw away. The industry kind of rebranded plastic from a glorified material for reuse to one designed for disposability so that plastic companies could keep making money. As plastic got cheaper and cheaper, beating out the cost of metal and even paper, it became less precious and it was even considered glamorous in its disposability. With the 1960s came an environmental awakening of sorts. Plastic was getting a bit of blow back. Enter the crying Indian Keep America beautiful ad, which is offensive, not least of all, because it's from the perspective of a Native American man who's played by an Italian American actor, but also because it dumps the blame solely on individuals.

[Keep American Beautiful Ad] (04:01):

People start pollution, people can stop. It

Katelan (04:08):

Then came the decades long push for consumer recycling. Larry Thomas is the former president of SPI in 2000. He was reflecting back on how the plastic industry was under fire. He said, if the public thinks that recycling is working, then they're not gonna be as concerned about the environment. Plastic companies and groups have spent millions and millions of dollars in ad campaigns to convince us of this.

[Plastics ad] (04:34):

When you think about plastic, you may think about things like toy cars on your living room, carpeting,

Katelan (04:40):

But plastic recycling at the scale of the units we're producing. That is a dream that has yet to be realized and probably never will be. We've known this for a very long time. In 1974, an industry insider said There is serious doubt that recycling large quantities of plastic can ever be viable on an economic basis. The plastics and recycling industries, they knew that recycling wasn't going to keep up with production, but they kept producing more and more saying we could recycle our way out of it. And knowing perfectly well that we could not. And they weren't just saying this to people, they were also saying it to the government. In the eighties and nineties, the industry used recycling efforts to weasel their way to of plastic bans.

Katelan (05:27):

In the us we've been recycling plastic in earnest since the late eighties. At first, it was just plastic numbers one and two, largely milk jugs, soda bottles. But early on, plastic didn't have numbers stamped on the bottom. And then all of a sudden, recyclers started seeing unfamiliar plastics coming in from residence bins, plastics, they didn't know how to recycle these plastics had the chasing arrows, recycling symbol with a number in the middle. Now this symbol wasn't new, but the number in the middle that was new. This plastic rebrand of the recycling symbol didn't come from recyclers or waste processors, but the plastics industry, it's perhaps one of the most prolific greenwashing campaigns out there, because that numbered triangle doesn't actually tell you if that piece of plastic will be recycled or even if your city accepts it. It just tells you what type of plastic it's made from.

Katelan (06:27):

But residents thought, and rightfully so, that everything with this symbol was recyclable. Collection facilities were left picking up the slack, figuring out what they were gonna do with all these different types of plastic when they were only equipped to handle ones and twos. In the US we can only recycle around one out of every five PET bottles and HDPE containers. That's plastic numbers one and two. Respectively, we could only recycle about 6% of plastic cups plate to cutlery expanded polystyrene, 0% coffee pods also 0%. There are reports from as early as 1973 about how difficult and expensive it is to recycle plastic. But why? Why is recycling plastic so difficult? Well, there are a few key reasons. Number one, there are so many kinds of plastic, way more than the one through seven triangle thingies would lead you to bleed. In reality, there are hundreds and this makes it very, very difficult to sort and process them, much less recycle them.

Katelan (07:32):

Number two, sorting centers cannot keep up with the volumes. We're producing more and more plastic without investing in new facilities or sorting technology. Number three, the market for recycled plastic isn't great. It's usually cheaper for companies to buy virgin plastic than it is for them to buy recycled plastic. And finally, number four, you can only recycle plastic a couple of times as opposed to something like aluminum, which is endlessly recyclable. Every time plastic gets melted down and reformed, the polymer chains that make up the plastic, they get shorter and shorter, making the plastic harder and harder to use. So what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to keep wish cycling or plastic? Here's what y'all had to say.

Mac Hansen (08:23):

I did recycling, gosh, when I was in like fourth grade, we took a pledge in class to always recycle for the rest of our lives. So I've been doing it since then.

Tiffany (08:34):

I had an acquaintance tell me one time that in our area of the Midwest that we don't even recycle plastic anymore. I was like, wait, what? What? Like, wait, what? What?

Sawyer Stone (08:48):

I'm discouraged by the low rate of plastic recycling because it, it feels so large and so nebulous and so unachievable to get it right. This definitely affected my motivation to recycle plastic, which is why I was so encouraged to find my heart to recycle program. Why isn't it simple? Why is it difficult? Recycling plastics is just an overwhelming idea.

Mac Hansen (09:16):

I did a lot of wish cycling, which actually gums up the systems. Producers will put recycle able <laugh> as a marketing tactic. In theory, there's a lot of things that are recyclable. That doesn't mean a system can actually support it.

Vallidivya Rajendran (09:30):

I'm discouraged by the low rate of plastic recycling, but it has not affected my motivation to recycle plastic. It tells us we need to do more work on plastic recycling. That we need to push further this agenda strongly in society. There are many governmental policies on plastics, but are these policies effective? Is it helping to improve the situation? Policies need to be updated with time.

New Speaker (09:57):

You know, like every now and then I try to remove all plastic, try to replace it with other things. But it's so hard, especially when I'm in Lahore in Pakistan, it just gets impossible <laugh> because you know, there's a lot that you need to just kind of accept and it takes up a lot of energy. So I really hoping that this year I completely could just get rid of plastic from my life.

Sobia Zaidi (10:25):

Like I'm not gonna go out and buy new things that are plastic, but if I have something that is plastic, how do I use it in such a way that I can get the most use of it? Right? It's not like, oh, it just has a little crack, so now I'm gonna throw it. Well, can you still use it? I'm gonna swap all of these things in my home. I want to be able to do so with little to no interruption. And honestly, I found that a lot of the saleable swaps that I've made, especially in terms of skincare, like a lot of the bathroom products or cleaning products, I actually get a better result out of them than the items that I was previously using.

Rachel Radvany (11:01):

Environmental issues can seem so big and overwhelming, and this is one area where making changes in your life does actually protect you on a personal level, which at least helps me sleep a little bit at night. It's hard though because there's a lot of environments that we live in where we don't have full control and it's practically impossible, at least in the US, to never be exposed to plastic. So I try as much as I can, but I know it won't be perfect without some systemic society-wide changes.

Katelan (11:45):

Over the years, big plastic producers have made some big promises, but really drop the ball on follow through. So much so that you start to wonder did they ever really plan on keeping those promises in the first place. In 2018, Nestle had a commitment to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025, but it hasn't released any clear targets or timelines. So it's basically just an empty promise. Just a few years ago in 2022, Coca-Cola was very proud to say that by 20 30, 20 5% of its drinks would be sold in refillable or returnable glass. Sounds great. But a couple years later, that goal got trashed.

Katelan (12:31):

Nestle and Coca-Cola happen to be two of the biggest plastic polluters out there with Coca-Cola topping the charts by a wide margin. Some estimates show that by 2030, Coca-Cola could have 1.3 billion pounds of plastic in waterways and oceans. Loren Le Briton is the head of research at the Ocean cleanup. He has 20 years of experience in numerical modeling and physical oceanography with a focus on marine debris, which is what we wanna talk to him about. He's joining us to talk through the scale of the plastic crisis at sea and what work is being done to clean things up. Hi Lauren. Thank you for coming on the show.

Laurent Lebreton (13:12):

Hey, thanks for having me.

Katelan (13:13):

So I'm very unfamiliar with what the day of an oceanographer looks like, much less an oceanographer who focuses on plastic. So I wondered if you could quickly just give us an gist of what your job is like, what kinds of projects you're working on in your role of head researcher at Ocean Cleanup.

Laurent Lebreton (13:29):

Yeah, of course. So head of research at the Ocean cleanup. That means mostly actually now managing a team of scientists and overseeing the, the scientific program for the organization. So our role for the organization is to understand the source, the transport, and the fate of plastic pollution. And we exist to help the organization make the right decisions in terms of where to work, what to expect, what to design to sort of you know, mitigate the, the pollution. We organize field missions. So we go on the, on the field, whether it's in rivers or in the ocean, we collect data. So essentially we collect plastics and we look at the nature, the composition of that plastic. And then we develop different technologies, remote sensing, so any sort of like cameras and that we deploy on vessels, but also on drones. We develop numerical models to predict where plastic may be transported, where does it go? And then we publish science. So we write science and we try to go through the peer review process and, and keep a, a tight link with the academy. So my work is essentially a mix of all of this. And but I'm not the only one, right? It's a team of few of us who about 15, 15 scientists full time.

Katelan (14:43):

It looks like you guys did a really big study in 2017.

Laurent Lebreton (14:46):

Yeah, true. There must have been our original study we did on the Great Pacific Garbage patch, which is the area where we operate in the ocean halfway between the state of Hawaii and the state of California. And we organized actually in 2015, a very large expedition what we call actually the mega expedition. 'cause We worked with citizen scientists, sailors that sell all around the no specific collecting data for us. And we also had a, a mother, a ship that was also collecting plastic for us. And when we brought all that plastic back to the lab and then we had an army of students helping us in the process, we counted over a million pieces of plastic, but we counted them, but we also categorized them, weighted them, look at how they're shape the color, those kind of things, right. So that was a, a monumental piece of work. And that actually the year after we did a Al Expedition, which was also a first for the great Pacific Garbage Patch, which flew a C one 30 ulus plane above the Great Pacific Garbage patch with a bunch of sensors collecting yeah, tons of data at that time. And we published the, the findings in 2018 in Nature Scientific reports. And the main objective of the study was to have a comprehensive ification and characterization of plastic pollution in this accumulation in the middle of the ocean.

Katelan (16:07):

That's incredible. In your years sort of studying and like you said, categorizing ocean plastic, what trends have you found? What have been the biggest sources of plastic? What types of plastic are you finding and where are they coming from?

Laurent Lebreton (16:18):

Yeah, that's a good question. So I mean, so plastic is a, is a big word. You know, it comes in so many different types and shapes and sizes. So there's essentially two metric we use to, to quantify plastic pollution in the ocean. We use a number of pieces of plastic per unit of surface area, and then we use a unit of mass. If we look at the unit of piece, like the number of pieces, essentially the ma majority is microplastics. So little fragments that are a few millimeters wide made of floating plastics. So polyline and polypropylene mostly getting the exact origin of this type of plastic is really hard because there's no, there's no clue. We just know that they're little fragments. And so we use numerical models to try to understand where they come from. But if you really look at the, the problem in itself, and you look at the mass, the total mass of plastic, one of the outcome of that study we published in 2018 was that the majority of the mass is carried by larger objects, objects larger than five centimeters, what we call microplastics, and even sometimes mega plastics, what we call mega plastics is objects that are several meters in in size.

Laurent Lebreton (17:30):

And they are mostly made of fishing nets, very large fishing nets. Oh,

Katelan (17:34):

I see.

Laurent Lebreton (17:34):

Yeah. In terms of mass, we know that about half of the, the Great Pacific garbage patch is composed of fishing nets. So anything coming from the fishing industry and then we looked at the rest is what we call rigid like hard plastics. And especially the large ones. The advantage with those is that they have quite often some clues in it, some sort of markings you know, writings, language production dates. And so they are like really useful to understand where they come from. And we found that, you know, a big majority of those were also coming from the fishing industry, whether they were fishing crates, fishing traps, buoys, any sort of things that use on boats. So at the end when we estimated that, you know, nearly 80% of the plastic mass accumulated, the great plastic garbage patch is originating from fishing industry or a agriculture industry, we found different origins in terms of languages. Most reported languages would be Japanese, Chinese, Korean, English so any sort of like large fishing industrial countries around the north specific maybe contributing to, to the pollution in the region.

Katelan (18:46):

So one of the things I'm wondering, just with the sheerer size and scale of this issue, and specifically the great garbage patch <laugh>, it reminds me of when I was little, we had a pool and we would use the pool net and get out a couple leaves, and then an hour later more leaves are back. And it feels like this like ever replenishing thing. And I just wondered, how do you and your team stay motivated to tackle a problem as big as ocean plastic?

Laurent Lebreton (19:10):

Well, it's, you know, there's two sides. So at first there's the, cause obviously, you know, there's, you know, it is a global environmental problem. And yes, the problem is huge but it's fixable. I think, you know, and this is kind of like what's driving our mission at the ocean cleanup is like, we can fix that. And I'm, I'm convinced we can fix that, you know, working in the middle of the ocean, I mean, there's so many different ways you can try to tackle plastic pollution as a whole. What we do is one part of the, the equation, but you, you need many different sort of like actions and strategies. We're doing our part in the ocean, you know, when we go and collect plastic there and actually retrieve it with cleanup system, there's two sides to it. There is the side of obviously removing plastic from the ocean.

Laurent Lebreton (19:57):

Then also by one, making that pollution visible and two, documenting meticulously all that pollution, we are able to understand the reason for that pollution and target the sources and origin, right? So it's about trying to go and, and bring the discussion upstream. So then you are removing plastic the same way you were removing leaves from, from the pool when you were younger. But at the end you wanna make sure that there's no more leaves coming to the pool, right? And so by studying like that type of pollution, it's about trying to bring the discussion back on land and say, okay, like where is the problem? How can we make, you know, something that will solve the problem in the long term? You know, in that sense, this is very motivating mission and, and drive for us. And then we're a bunch of scientists who we're also just very excited to study something, you know, and the plastic pollution science is, you know, it's a few decades old, but it's, it's quite young, you know, so there's still so much like so many questions that needs to be to be answered, and the way to study it as well has to be invented, right?

Laurent Lebreton (21:03):

So we've invested in artificial intelligence and remote sensing and numerical modeling in the past decade, and we've just made like beautiful progress. And this is also very motivating, you know, as a scientist to, to sort of invent a field and come up with solution to, to try to understand something.

Katelan (21:19):

What are some of the key solutions that you guys advocate for either directly work toward or advocate for in legislation and things like that as far as like mitigating the plastic that's coming into the ocean?

Laurent Lebreton (21:34):

The mission of the ocean cleanup really is to develop technology to read the ocean of plastic, right? So we have two side of the the, the, the problem that we try to tackle. One is the, the removal of legacy pollution in the ocean. So that's what we've just talked about. And then we also work in rivers. So we try to intercept plastic before it reaches the ocean in the first place. But at the end, you know, we are removing plastic from the equity environment. This is our primary mission. We build series of evidence and we collect data that then can be used by other groups and policy makers and so on to try to to, to fix the problem upstream. And I think the end game is to fix the problem upstream. You know, like we don't want to be, we always say as a non-for-profit, we want to get out of business eventually.

Laurent Lebreton (22:26):

Like we don't want to be garbage man of the ocean forever. We don't advocate for interceptors in every river of the world. Like the perfect world is a world where you don't need interceptors, where you don't need up machine in the ocean, right? And I truly think that, you know, we like collectively, like there are discussions happening at the moment at UN level and policy makers are like, you know, it's like it's, it's become a serious topic. We're still far from having, you know, strong legislation at international level. So in the meantime, I think that work needs to happen, but in the long term, we need to have proper legislation to, to tackle plastic pollution. Mm-Hmm

Katelan (23:04):

<Affirmative>. How have policymakers used the research that you've created? Are there any like specific bills or policies that people are trying to get through with the data that you've provided?

Laurent Lebreton (23:17):

You know, we're working in I think like eight or nine different countries at the moment deploying interceptors mostly in Southeast Asia and Central America. And you see that, you know, like the interceptor is that we deploy in river is sort of a catalyst to like change the way waste is being treated. Like, I mean, some examples in say like in Guatemala where we, we are working in the river Rio Tawa, which you know, literally receives like tsunami of trash putting that pollution very visible spot on discussion at governmental level, right? And like the way that waste is coming from a completely unmanaged landfills, like this is changing as we speak, you know? And so there is this whole like sort of ecosystem that is like being put in place, recycling into some type of plastic that is being in place as well.

Laurent Lebreton (24:08):

And so we see all those things kind of happening. So we come to a place or to a country, we are not the only one, right? Like we, like, we work with local communities, we work with local governments, and we see change to different aspects and different degrees in those countries happening. And we're getting, you know, sort of support from the local governments, which is very encouraging. But the ocean is yeah, is different because we work in international waters and so it's, you know, the ga great Pacific garbage patch is, is in no one's jurisdiction. Yeah, it's, it's a bit more complicated. And so that was one of the, you know, the aspect like, you know, about the the global plastic treaty that has been negotiated at the moment at unit nation level one of the key aspect that we wanted to have to see in the, in the treaty hasn't been signed yet. So there's still negotiation, but is the question of legacy plastic pollution beyond areas of jurisdiction, right? So if we find a bunch of plastic from the us from China, Korea, and Japan in the middle of the ocean, we need to make sure that there is that level of responsibilities and accountability for those countries to look after it, right? And so at the moment, there's no such thing.

Katelan (25:18):

Wow. Can you tell me a little bit about how you guys have been involved in the global plastics treaty?

Laurent Lebreton (25:24):

Yeah. Well we were participating to all the ncs and so NC stands for International Negotiating Committee. There were few rounds basically of all the countries state members are getting together to discuss what should be in the treaty and not, and then during those sessions there were, you could, you know, go there as observers. So mostly like NGOs would go there. So we were a part of you know, some of the NGOs going there. And yeah, we participated in those negotiation meeting delegates and, and discussing what we would advocate to have in the treaty, what we thought was important, and also obviously making sure that our science was yeah, distributed and communicated. So the question of fishing gear, the question of legacy plastic pollution, the question of monitoring the efficiency of, of different mitigation strategy, that's also something that we bring forward quite often.

Laurent Lebreton (26:18):

Like, you know, putting interceptors in rivers, but same for cleanup system in the ocean. Like we remove plastic from aquatic environment. So that's one win. But the second win is to monitor how well say a country is doing, right? If, if at some points we start to not collect any plastic in rivers, that means like, you know, policies are effective and we are winning, right? If we see some policies that are coming in place, but we still collect plastic, we can go back and say, Hey, like, you know, this is not working right? And so I think all this work, you know, assuming a treaty is sign in the coming years, which is going to be really difficult to have, but assuming that, and for those policy to take sort of shape, I think we're talking, you know, like years if not decades, right? So the, the work needs to happen. Now in the meantime,

Katelan (27:05):

One, I guess sort of personal question is like, I wonder, you spend a lot of time focused on plastic and there's this idea of like zero waste living and having no plastic. How does seeing all this plastic affect you and your daily life and how do you balance this sort of personal action versus systemic action? Like you're talking about all of these really big things, the global plastics treaty, all these regulations that need to happen. Does this come into your personal life at all and affect how you think about plastic in your everyday life?

Laurent Lebreton (27:33):

I think so. I mean, I've always been, you know, I've never been like a really big consumer in general. It's not only like plastic in general, but just, you know, i, I value time over things. I value offering an experience versus offering, you know, some other crap made on the other side of the planet. And I'm being cautious, you know, like obviously, I mean, there's some easy things, you know, reusable water bottle don't buy a bunch of like snacks all the time, like just, you know, go local, just like way of living and everything. But then in the same time, I'm not a plasticfree zero waste person. I mean, I know, and in New Zealand I've, I've been living or kind of befriended like zero waste people and I'm so impressed by the level of work that needs to happen and the time they need to spend there.

Laurent Lebreton (28:24):

And I'm not, definitely not at that level. And I don't think it's realistic to, you know, with the current system that we have to ask everyone to be zero waste. Like, you know, either you have time or you need to have money, but yeah, it's complicated, right? And I think, you know, citizens you, I, everyone can definitely make a dent in, in the choice we make and what we buy and everything, but it's not only our responsibility, right? That's what I'd like to say. The industry needs to step up, the governments needs to step up. We need to have system in place that just makes it easier to, you know, have one, have less plastic, have less toxic plastic, having, you know, good recycling stream. And not saying that recycling is the solution, but it can help. You know, there's different things that can happen and collectively I think we can fix that definitely. But but it's not only the consumers, you know, so I don't have too much guilt, but I'm being careful on, on what I buy.

Katelan (29:24):

Yeah. I was looking at some recent papers that you've released and you were part of one about citizen scientists. You named a few organizations in the paper Surfing for Science dive Against Debris. We have a lot of people who listen to the show who work in climate and varying degrees. And so I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about why are citizen scientists important to this work that you do and how they get involved?

Laurent Lebreton (29:48):

Yeah, so of course, so I mean, you know, organizing oceanographic mission, collecting data at sea is incredibly expensive. You cannot just collect data everywhere and you know, all the time. And so this is something we've relied on, like citizen science is something we relied on since the early days is, you know, there are people going to very remote region just because they, you know, like sailors for instance, they just enjoy it. And so we have worked with sellers in the past and we work with them to like collect data, right? So people organize races or expedition or just like are just cruising and they ask us if they can help, right? So we have different protocol in place, some very easy, some a little bit more complicated depending on their level of engagements, but they, yeah, we work with citizen scientists, benevolent sailors surfers as well divers to collect around on oceanic plastic pollution. And it allows us to essentially extend our observational coverage, right? We can have many eyes in the sea at the same time without having just us little, you know, team of scientists to try to be everywhere and doing everything.

Katelan (30:58):

One last question. As we're sort of coming out of one year and entering the next, I'm wondering what project you're most excited about that you worked on in the past year and then like what one project you're most excited about in the coming year?

Laurent Lebreton (31:11):

Well, one thing that I'm really excited about trying now is to, we're trying to to hunt hotspots in the middle of the ocean in the, the Great Pacific Garbage patch. So we know this area is accumulating plastic, but once we go there, it's very, what we call it heterogeneous. Like one hour you'll find a lot of plastic and another hour you'll find no plastic. And so we trying to understand and and follow what creates those sort of, you know, mini hotspot within the accumulation zone. And that's critical for the ocean cleaner because if we understand that properly, then we spend way less time at sea trying to like remove it. And so we save on money, we save on energy, we save on everyone's time and so it's mission critical for us. And so yeah, the steering strategy we call it and the hotspot hunting is something that's yeah, took a lot of my time this year and we're hoping to go back in the ocean next year to, to validate the finding of the year and try some new, new strategy to be more efficient at removing plastic from the ocean.

Katelan (32:10):

That sounds awesome. Thank you for all the work that you do. Thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Laurent Lebreton (32:15):

Thank you for having me.

Katelan (32:22):

It's important to keep reminding ourselves that plastics are product of the fossil fuel industry and the fossil fuel industry knows that the world is however slowly transitioning to more renewable energy. So it's putting more of its focus and funding into plastics. There's a lot to dig through here. So I called up commons founders, central Charlie St. Paul to help us understand the numbers and what we can do to slow the growth of plastics. Okay, char, so we know that the fossil fuel industry is investing way more in plastic these days, right?

Sanchali Seth Pal (32:58):

That's right. They are making a bet that we're gonna be using a lot more plastic over the next couple decades. Bloomberg predicts that by 2050, over 20% of all oil demand is gonna be for plastic. That's like double what it is today. It's kind of like their plan B

Katelan (33:14):

With's plan A being

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:16):

Fuel. Exactly. Yeah. Plan A is like oil, coal, natural gas, all being burned for energy and buildings and vehicles. But now with renewable energy starting to rise, they're trying to recoup their losses with plastic that's kind of like a hedge against a clean energy future.

Katelan (33:33):

It's honestly so hard for me to imagine where else in my life there could be more plastic. It already feels like it's everywhere.

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:40):

I know I feel like I touch plastic all day long, like from the kitchen to the shower, to the grocery store at the restaurant in my mail.

Katelan (33:49):

Is this just the case for western countries? Are we the only ones using way more plastic?

Sanchali Seth Pal (33:54):

Plastic use has grown in the US and Europe, but honestly the plastic growth trajectory in other countries has been even more extreme. There's just so much more room for it to expand. Like I spent a lot of time in India growing up and I remember when I was a kid, there was almost no plastic in our lives. Every day the milk cellar would come by and refill our glass jug at home. When we went out to eat, which wasn't that often, there was no concept of like a doggy bag. You were served food at the restaurant and if you were still hungry, you got more food until you were satisfied. Like you paid for a meal, you didn't pay for an item on a menu. If we got chai or coffee out, it was served in a thin clay cup called a cooled, which you'd smash on the ground when you were done. And then they'd kind of get reincorporated into the earth. And even at restaurants, like it was not that common that you'd have plastic. You'd often get served on a plate made of banana leaves or woven paper.

Katelan (34:50):

That sounds like an idyllic utopian future when in reality it's like your personal past <laugh>.

Sanchali Seth Pal (34:58):

I know it's, and it's so funny 'cause it's like a, a lot of it was because you know, there wasn't a lot of wealth, but we had these things that had been around forever and that didn't create waste. Like people knew how to create things from the earth and how to return them to the earth. But in the last 10 to 20 years, as wealth has also grown in India, now plastic is everywhere. The rise of especially various kinds of delivery services, I feel like has really expanded this from food to groceries to pharmacies, to e-commerce. You can order literally anything in India and get it within 15 minutes, like someone will deliver it to you. And plastic has become part of this whole delivery culture. People are buying and consuming way more than they used to, and the convenience of it has just exploded. The volume of single use plastic,

Katelan (35:46):

That is really shocking. I wonder when we're gonna hit like our plastic saturation point.

Sanchali Seth Pal (35:52):

I think we are actually starting to now last year government spent around $80 billion to subsidize the plastics industry, but the plastics industry is still producing more than we need.

Katelan (36:05):

That is wild. So the plastics industry got a little bit too eager with their plan B is what it sounds like.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:11):

Exactly.

Katelan (36:12):

So maybe that's enough traction for us as everyday people to really make a statement with our buying power right now.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:18):

I definitely think so. When we're talking about plastic waste and recycling, there are a couple key solutions. Use less plastic and recycle more plastic

Katelan (36:28):

In that order, right?

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:30):

For sure. First and foremost, the less plastic we use, the better. We can use less plastic by buying less stuff, using more refill items, opting for plastic free packaging and materials where possible.

Katelan (36:41):

I just switched to a plastic free deodorant, which to be fair I was skeptical about, but honestly it's been great.

Sanchali Seth Pal (36:47):

Me too. I was also skeptical and it's also been great. And these little steps, they feel small, but they honestly make a difference. One thing you can do right away and that I really think is worth it is to just like notice all the times in your day that you touch plastic and then start to reduce or swap out just a few of them over time. Given how much waste we make on a daily basis, this can really add up.

Katelan (37:10):

And I think that noticing really helps to motivate us to show up for the bigger actions too, right? Because like companies, especially plastic companies, they want us to think that recycling is this silver bullet solution. So the more we sort of start looking at the reality of how much plastic there is, the more we can keep reminding ourselves, we can't just rely on plastic recycling.

Sanchali Seth Pal (37:32):

Exactly. Companies want us to think that it's just about the small actions, but it's not. It's about the big actions too. Yeah, Coca-Cola for example, it's one of the biggest drivers of plastic pollution in the world, but it's also one of the hundred companies lobbying against a packaging reduction and recycling infrastructure act in New York. This bill aims to limit toxic chemicals and packaging and hold companies responsible for the waste from their products even after the consumers use them.

Katelan (37:59):

I imagine that New Yorkers are on board with this.

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:02):

Yeah, 72% of residents support it.

Katelan (38:05):

So what can New Yorkers do, if anything, to have their voices heard on this bill?

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:09):

The folks at Beyond Plastic are urging New York residents to contact their local reps and tell them you support the P-R-R-I-A bill. It might seem like a small thing, but this kind of legislation is what drives real change.

Katelan (38:22):

Yeah, it may not be as sexy or fun, but this is the kind of stuff that it's important that we show up for.

Sanchali Seth Pal (38:29):

It's so true and it really adds up. I mean, if you look at the countries that have been able to really keep their plastic waste per capita down, it's stuff like this. Countries like Finland, Slovenia, France, Rwanda, they have strict legislation around plastic waste that avoids and ban single use plastic in a lot of cases. And then they also promote cultural practices around limiting plastic use and have strong plastic recycling programs.

Katelan (38:55):

I feel like there's a lot of enthusiasm around plastic recycling, around sorting your waste and putting in the right bin. It'd be awesome if we also had that enthusiasm for showing up for legislation around these things. So we could also be one of those countries

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:09):

Showing up for what we care about is cool and <laugh>. Hopefully everyone who's listening to this podcast is part of the people who are making the change. So everyone who's listening look to see what plastic or recycling legislation is coming up in your city, in your state, in your country, and see how you can make your voice heard.

Katelan (39:27):

And you can also take action yourself. You can start plastic free initiatives at your workplace, your school, or your church, and you might be surprised at how receptive others will be in getting involved with something like that.

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:39):

That's true. Anything we can do to push change out through our communities has massive ripple effects.

Katelan (39:44):

Thank you so much for the plastic deep dives. And Charlie,

Sanchali Seth Pal (39:47):

Thanks for having me.

Katelan (39:54):

So unfortunately we can't recycle our way outta the plastic crisis, but there are some things we can do at home. You can make reusable or plastic free swaps wherever you can remember. Plastic free living is practically impossible, so don't stress too much. Focus on the plastics that you throw away the most often and see if there are some practical easy swaps that you can make over time. Another thing we can do is double check our city's plastic recycling limitations. We wanna make sure that we're not wish recycling and giving those processors way more stuff than they can handle. We can also look to private services like Rid Well is one that's offered here in la. They do dedicated pickup and they have guaranteed processing for a lot of hard to recycle plastic. So look to see what's available in your city,

Katelan (40:42):

But then we can't forget to zoom out. We'll have an even bigger impact when we do things like find opportunities to advocate and initiate plastic free projects and initiatives in our communities through schools, churches, or workspaces. We can also participate in cleanups in our communities and we can seek out and show up for citywide efforts to improve plastic recycling, limit plastic use, and make producers responsible for the waste that they're producing. The plastics industry is out there persistently lobbying against plastic restrictions. Meanwhile, 71% of consumers want to ban single use plastics. So we have to show up at every opportunity to make our voices heard on new policies. If you're wondering why we didn't dive into microplastics on this episode, it's because, well, first of all, plastic recycling is a pretty ginormous issue, but also we did an episode on microplastics last season. I highly recommend it. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode on Greenwashing, that's another great follow up to this one. If you're looking for more ways to get involved locally, stay tuned to the very end of the episode to hear community classifieds where folks in our community are sharing ways that you can help in local climate efforts.

Katelan (42:02):

But first, we have to say a huge thank you to everyone who shared their recycling qualms and questions on today's episode. You heard from

New Speaker (42:10):

[credits]

Katelan (42:37):

This episode was edited and engineered by Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.

Charlotte (42:51):

Hi everyone. I'm Charlotte from the Earth Prize. The Earth Prize is the world's largest environmental competition and ideas incubator for young people. Age 13 to 19. We help teens turn their ideas for the planet into real solutions through one-to-one mentoring. And each year we award a hundred thousand US dollars to seven outstanding teams from across the planet. We're also building the Earth Alliance, which is a global community to support these young people, and we're looking for volunteers, university students who can be mentors, intellectual property experts to guide our top teams and workshop speakers with diverse expertise to inspire teen innovators. If you want to support the next generation of chain makers, we'd love to have you join us.

Speaker 14 (43:32):

One Earth Wind Chance is a Dallas based environmental nonprofit that founded to respond to the growing impact of climate change. Our mission is to restore urban spaces and promote sustainable living, especially in underserved communities. Since 2019, we've planted more than 7,500 native trees and plants, expanded the local tree canopy by 11 million square feet and hosted over 150 community events focused on forestation, litter, cleanups, and environmental education. These efforts have improved air and water quality, reduced extreme heat, save millions of gallons of rainwater, and helped remove over 132 million pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere. We also empower youth and adults through our Green Ambassador and green practitioner programs teaching practical sustainability leadership and hands-on stewardship with a very low 0.4% expense ratio. Our impact per dollar is extremely high. So one Earth, one chance is really a movement to build a cleaner and greener future.

Mac Hansen (44:34):

My name is Mac Hanson. I work at AMP Sortation, and our company really has a mission to eliminate the need for landfills. We've developed a way to leverage artificial intelligence and automation to separate your recyclables from trash as well as your organics. We understand it's really hard for people to put things in the right place, and there's a lot of doubt in people's lives with regards to the effectiveness of recycling. So we've basically designed around it. We are about to launch a really big project over in the state of Virginia, scoping a large amount of their waste shed. So please look us up if you're looking for any more information and if you're looking to boost recycling in your community, or if you are a municipality looking for a better alternative, please get in touch. We'd really love to help out and expand because this solution works.

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