Who is polluting the ocean with plastic?

[Music] plastic waste is piling up in the world's landfills sewer systems and in the ocean plastic pollution is destroying life in the ocean a gigantic swell of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean and human Coastal communities we see plastic everywhere some of the places being hit hardest are small island States small island developing States contribute minimally to a lot of environmental challenges but impacted the most so what do these countries reveal about the problem and the answers urgently needed to solve [Music] [Music] it on a small island in Fiji Sam is a fisherman who depends

on the sea my community connection with the sea is it's our daily life the majority of fiji's Po population live near the coast and many are all too aware of an increasing Scourge in the water plastic pollution when we go to the Sea even the coral you'll see the Plastics there the fish that usually stays in the coral they are not there anymore now and usually the fish we catch you can catch it now there's a lot of plastic it's been poluting our ocean a lot I think Fiji has definitely changed uh due to plastic

pollution I believe that it going to bring uh many problems in the future Fiji is part of a group known as small island developing States or SIDS these islands have a combined population of just 65 million and suffer the consequences of plastic pollution disproportionately that's because plastic pollution damages the industries their economies depend on fishing but also tourism a lot of the plastic waste that washes assure small island developing States affect our tourism we're dealing with small economies already vulnerable to so many environmental challenges climate change rising sea level and economic growth globally humans produce

around 350 million tons of plastic waste per year a figure projected to almost triple by 2060 it's estimated around 11 to 14 million tons ends up in the ocean so how is this plastic getting into the [Music] water some does come from small Islands per person the Caribbean is one of the highest emitters of plastic to the ocean the challenge for small Islands across the world is overflowing and unregulated landfills like these with limited space dump sites are often close to the coast and the main option for getting rid of waste there are leakage issues

because of unsound waste management and low resources there's limited land space for landfill capacities and low resources for recycling which leads to an acceleration of the plastic waste in country but most plastic pollution in the ocean is not coming from small Islands Pacific island countries produce less than 1.3% of the mismanaged Plastics in the world's oceans yet are one of the main recipients a lot of plastic pollution washes up on the shores of small Islands because of ocean currents and I'm interested in the Dynamics of how the ocean actually moves Professor Eric Van seil was

one of the first to use simulation like this to show how and where currents lead to hotpots of plastic in the ocean we developed simulations of how the ocean currents move plastic from one location to the other location what we see is that a lot of the plastic stays near Shores and then some of the plastic eventually ends up in the centers of the what we call the subtropical gers there are five of them one in the North Pacific one in the North Atlantic and between the South Pacific the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean

large areas of the ocean and many coastlines are badly affected but his research backs up the idea that many small Islands suffer especially from plastic pollution so I think that seeds are particularly impacted by plastic pollution and that's both on the effect that it has on their local economies but also because those seids are in the middle of the ocean there where there's a lot of plastic floating around that um may end up on their Coastline the SE shells is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean which are particularly affected by ocean currents on

the alabra atel one of the country's largest Marine protected areas scientists from Oxford University collaborated with the SE shells Islands Foundation to collect data on the source of pollution as you can see the beach Crest is absolutely covered in Marine debris because alabra is not inhabited we know that none of the plastic that's arriving on alabra is actually coming from alabra this simulation created by the scientists shows how debris enters the ocean from countries such as Indonesia India and Sri Lanka some of that debris makes its way to the SE shells via ocean currents the

scientists also found another big source of waste on alabra Industrial fishing we found the majority of waste by weight was from the industrial Fisheries big ropes Nets boys um discarded barrels the team removed 25 tons of rubbish but estimated this was just 5% of the total amount on the island one of the biggest things that we noticed was that the turtle nesting beaches was so clogged with plastic that it was actually putting the turtles off from nesting there the whole of SE shells is impacted by plastic pollution and this is a global problem that's arriving

on their Shores on a scale at which they're not able to deal with although the fishing industry is a major cause of this Global problem research suggests the biggest sources are rivers in polluting countries in Asia those studying the hotpots in the ocean say tracking the different sources of this pollution is vital it means the polluters can be named and shamed one of the things that I really want to do with the simulation is run them in backward mode and then essentially play the blame game and then we can assign a probability a chance that

it comes from say a certain River from a certain Fisheries area from a certain country then we can maybe maybe maybe start thinking about litigation and really get the blame game into court but what are islands themselves doing to get rid of plastic in their own backyards there's one simple and obvious thing Beach cleanups these are now common on Islands across the world and they also help in ways that the naked eye cannot see and every time that plastic goes back and forth on the sand on the rocks that is where microplastics are actually created

and that means that cleaning up coastlines is actually the most effective way to clean up the ocean then you prevent it from getting back into the ocean as microplastics countries can also go further and ban some ways that Plastics are used one tiny Pacific island has led the charge here Vanuatu was one of the first countries in the world to enforce a single-use plastic ban and it now has some of the toughest plastic restrictions in the world in 2018 it banned items such as single use plastic bags plastic straws and takeaway containers with more items

added to the lists since since a band there is a big chance before we have many plastic bag but now we have none Regina is a local Weaver who says she is benefiting from the bands by selling bags made from alternative materials such as the leaves from local trees when we free the plastic Pikes in develop my business with our country free from the Plastics we can do many different kinds of things more apart from this and on vanuatu's beaches Dr Christina Shaw has measured the success of the Bands so that's um fishing line so

you get a um sort of everything mixed up together and then Tangled four during Beach cleanups band plastic items now make up 2% of recorded litter before the bands that figure was 25 to 35% I think one of the big things um that some of these small island nation has done is actually stepped up and made the decision they go no it is a problem we're going to ban these Plastics we're going to do what we can do um and I think that is a lesson for the bigger governments as well however it's near impossible

for any country especially inhabited small Islands to survive without any plastics it's difficult for small island nations to be completely plastic free cuz we're not in control of the whole life cycle of plastics all of our Plastics are important by far the biggest um item we have is plastic food packaging so you know your noodle rappers Lolly wrappers um chewing gum wrappers we're relying on the Innovations in other nations and other big companies um to to make so that it makes it easier for for us to to try and become plastic free now more than

120 countries across the world have bans and taxes on various single-use Plastics these include big countries such as India and Canada as well as small islands in the Pacific Caribbean and Beyond and while this has brought some reduction in waste Banning Plastics can pass the but switching to Alternative materials can create other waste problems so it's vital to get better at reusing and recycling Plastics globally only 9% of plastics are recycled 19% incinerated 22% mismanaged and 50% end up in landfill on small Islands recycling is tricky because they lack the infrastructure and space it requires

sending waste abroad often long distances and that's expensive we know we need to develop recycling capabilities I think we need to talk about the resource needs the gaps the challenges and the Avenues for support if we were to ever solve this problem and there's another much bigger Global challenge here current recycling methods even in rich countries are a bit rubbish most Plastics can only be recycled two or three times before they become unusable and end up in landfill to solve The World's plastic problem what's needed is a new technology to improve recycling one that depends

on work far beyond the shores of small Islands what we really need is a recycling process that takes that material back into virgin like properties so that it can be used in the original application again and again professor John mcgean and his colleagues have been working on just that a whole new approach to recycling at the University of Portsmouth on Britain's South Coast they have been identifying and Engineering what are known as plastic eating enzymes these can break Plastics down into their original component molecules which can then be used in infinite Cycles what we're looking

for is more circular um technologies that can really generate the building blocks and allow us to infinitely use that material again teams of researchers across the world are searching for these enzymes that can break down common Plastics many are looking in pollution hotspots like Indonesia and the Philippines and also on small islands like Singapore the best place to look for enzymes that can digest plastic is places like uh beaches corals and particularly mangroves places where there's High areas of of plastic pollution we've been working with colleagues all around southeast Asia particularly based in Singapore where

there's groups there that can go out into the field and in those areas we're starting to see enzymes that are developing evolving that can eat the Plastics eles and we can actually then bring them back to the laboratory identify the enzymes and then engineer them to be faster plastic eating enzymes have great potential to reduce waste although the technology is still a long way from being used at a global scale and from overcoming the infrastructure challenges link to current recycling practices we need to develop technologies that are scalable but also are Deployable uh into the

areas where plastic pollution exists and we think that's possible we think we can actually miniaturize some of the solutions so that local communities can potentially um degrade Plastics and and get chemicals out of those that they can then sell and actually give back to the local economy plastic pollution is ultimately the world's problem and new levels of global cooperation are needed to solve it although small island states have led calls for Action richer and larger countries will determine whether this happens we will have a strong Global International and comprehensive framework on plastic pollution in 2022

a UN resolution was signed by 175 countries committed to developing a global legally binding Plastics treaty by the end of 2024 this promises to cover production packaging design and disposal of plastics but for now it's just talk and no walk without coming together we're going to see fragmented approaches we're going to see a proliferation in this issue that would lead to unsustainable levels of plastic pollution we're hopeful the treaty will make a difference but it has to be strong enough to do [Music] so [Music]